“Lemme think,” Beltrán said absently. “Mirror. Mirror. Where’s a mirror?” Ah, there was a mirror over the lavatory where the cooks washed their hands. But, it was screwed to the bulkhead. Well, no matter.

  He picked up Starwatcher and held him up in front of the mirror. Let’s see, that was too high, and standing him on the edge of the lavatory was too low. He hoisted the Fuzzy up on his shoulder and steadied him with one hand. Starwatcher sat back and regarded his own reflection very seriously. Then he looked sidewise at Beltrán. Then he reached up with tiny hands and cocked the barracks cover over to one side and snugged the little visor down above his right eye. He contemplated this for a moment before nodding approval. Then he threw his arms around Beltrán’s neck and hugged it vigorously.

  Beltrán’s cigar fell into the sink, but he didn’t care. He had made a Fuzzy very happy.

  Hugo Ingermann’s eyes lighted up with unconcealed glee. “An inside man at the CZC you say? One with a direct pipeline to Grego, himself?”

  Ivan Bowlby preened himself, like the proud little bird he was. “Yes, Mr. Ingermann, and I don’t think the information we’ll be getting will be too outrageously expensive— considering.”

  “Well, who, man,” Ingermann asked eagerly, “who?”

  Bowlby wagged a finger. “Now, now, “he said. “It’s my contact. You’ll have to be content to work through me on this matter.”

  Ingermann’s neck began to swell. The expression of joy on his face was replaced with one of rising anger. “Why, you son of a Khooghra! You’re trying to put the squeeze on me, aren’t you?”

  Bowlby took the hankie from his jacket pocket and sniffed at it. “Sticks and stones, Mr. Ingermann,” he said. “Sticks and stones. If I’m forced to put this information out to the highest bidder, you’ll see how utterly reasonable I’m being in my offer of it to you exclusively.”

  Ingermann’s face began to redden.

  “And no rough stuff, either,” Bowlby cautioned. “There is another go-between below my level. If something happens to me, then you’ll be forced to deal with him, and he may not feel the generosity toward you that I have come to know during our long and profitable association together.”

  “All right!” Ingermann said suddenly. “I’ll give your ‘inside man’ a try for two weeks. Two weeks—no more. If I’m not satisfied, then you can both go to Nifflheim!”

  “Done,” Bowlby said quietly and extended his hand.

  XXXI

  “Helton!” O’Bannon roared from inside his tent. “Is that yourself?” Actually, it wasn’t a roar, but the tone of voice was pretty tense for the unflappable Lieutenant Colonel James O’Bannon.

  Helton raised his eyebrows. An observance of the niceties of protocol seemed indicated. “Yes, sir!” Helton barked. “Permission to enter—sir!”

  “Come in!” O’Bannon barked back at him.

  Helton stepped through the tent portal and snapped to an attention brace with a deafening clack of boot-heels.

  O’Bannon was in his sock feet and seated at his field console. “Sit down,” he said simply, with a wave toward the other field chair.

  Helton sat.

  O’Bannon fixed him with a cold look. “Exactly why does Commodore Napier want to see us?” he asked. “Have you gone and put my tail in a crack?”

  “His indication to me, Colonel,” Helton said, “was that he desired to de-brief us on the contents of the cavern.”

  O’Bannon waved his hand as if at some triviality. “Well, then,” he said, “there’s no need for me to go along. I haven’t the least notion of what’s in the cavern.” He glared at Helton. “Because they won’t let me in the damned place!” He paused. “My own damned troops, and they won’t let me in the place! Perhaps you might be able to explain that in some way that I can understand.”

  Helton pursed his lips and inhaled.

  “Well?” O’Bannon snapped.

  “It’s part of the dig, sir. You put me in charge of the dig. That is a part of the dig, and I have declared it off-limits to everyone. I have this tape—”

  “Lest you lose track of things, Gunnie,” O’Bannon hissed, “I am in command of this operation. Nothing is off-limits to me!”

  “I felt the Colonel should look at this tape before I take him into the cavern,” Helton said, deftly switching to the more formal third-person form of address. “I have to destroy the tape after the Colonel has looked at it.”

  “Helton,” O’Bannon said, “I looked your record over pretty thoroughly before I put this kind of responsibility on you—Master Gunnie or no Master Gunnie. But, by Ghu’s guts, you have overstepped yourself!”

  Helton looked at O’Bannon directly. “Would the Colonel like to rant and rave some more, or would he prefer to see the tape at this time?” he asked evenly.

  O’Bannon had been looking at his own feet. Without moving his head, he lifted his gaze and peered at Helton through his eyebrows.

  Commodore Alex Napier closed the folio in front of him and arranged it in the exact center of his desk. There was no sound in his domed office, except an occasional double click as photo cells acted to close one segment of the sunscreen and open another.

  He tapped the heel from his pipe, blew through the stem, and carefully refilled the bowl with tobacco. After lighting the pipe, he puffed lightly on it and stared at the floor for several minutes. Then, he leaned forward and punched out a combination on his communications screen. The burst of colors solidified into the face of a smooth-cheeked young ensign, the duty officer in the Operations Center.

  “Yes, sir,” the ensign responded.

  “Get me your boss, Mister,” Napier said.

  “Commander Johnsen?” the ensign asked.

  “He is the Ops Officer, isn’t he?” Napier said.

  The ensign swallowed. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Napier said.

  Momentarily, a man with iron-gray hair, wearing the insignia of a full commander appeared. “Yes, Commodore,” he said.

  “Call,” Napier said, “is the Ranger still our fastest corvette?”

  “Yes, sir,” Johnsen said, “she is. She’s fitted and provisioned for emergency launch right now.”

  “How soon can she be provisioned with Class-A rations and fully manned?” Napier asked.

  “Six to twelve hours, Commodore,” Johnsen said. “She’s on half-crew liberty.”

  “Mmmm,” Napier said. “Well, Carl, there’s no dreadful rush about it, but I’ll have a courier mission for her in the next few days—week at the most.”

  “I’ll put her on standby alert,” Johnsen said.

  “Thank you, Carl,” Napier said. He blanked the screen and punched out another combination—this time to the private office screen of his Executive Officer, Captain Conrad Greibenfeld.

  Greibenfeld was just sitting down behind his desk when the screen cleared. Apparently he had been out of his office. “Yes, Alex?” he said, using the first-name address, since there were no junior officers or enlisted men within earshot.

  “Connie,” Napier said, “I need a good Class-A agent— one with an impeccable security record.”

  “Sure, Alex,” Greibenfeld said. “How long will you need him?”

  “Might be quite a while,” Napier said. “I want him attached to my personal staff.”

  Greibenfeld looked slightly uncomfortable. He liked to be in on everything, and here was “something” he was obviously not in on. “Very good, sir,” he said. “I’ll send you a selection to choose from. Say, three of them?”

  Napier smiled. “That won’t be necessary, Connie,” he said. “Just pick the one with the most spotless record and highest fitness rating from the qualified Class-A agents on the station.”

  “Yes, sir,” Greibenfeld said. “I’ll get right on it, personally.”

  Napier chuckled. “Don’t look so pained, Connie. You’ll find out all about it at the meeting.”

  “What meeting?” Greibenfeld asked suddenly.

  “The one you’ll get about an hour’s notice on,” Napier said, and blanked the screen.

  Everett Diehl rolled over in his bunk, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and stretched. That was the only good part about drawing the mid-watch; you could sleep until noon that morning, if you wanted to. Then, Diehl remembered what had happened in the cavern the night before. It seemed like a dream, now. Quickly, he reached down and scrambled one hand into his right boot, pulling out the sock he had wadded up in it. Carefully, he opened the sock and was relieved to see the half-dozen shiny pebbles inside. He warmed them between his hands. They started to glow softly. It wasn’t a dream. What he had seen was true; maybe an acre of cavern roof and walls, thickly embedded with suns tones.

  “Jim?” he said. “You awake?”

  Spelvin’s head emerged from under the pillow in the next bunk. “I am now,” he said. “What time is it?”

  “1030,” Diehl said.

  “1030?” Spelvin grumped. “Why the Nifflheim did you wake me up if it’s only 1030?”

  “I can’t sleep,” Diehl said simply. “Jim? Did you pick some up, too?”

  “Some what?” Spelvin asked sleepily.

  “Sunstones,” Diehl said.

  Spelvin sat bolt upright in his bunk. “Shhhh!” he hissed, looking over his shoulder.

  “It’s all right,” Diehl said. “There’s nobody in the barracks but us. Did you pick some up, too?”

  “Yeah,” Spelvin said, scratching himself. “A few,” he lied. He had nearly half a sock full of the precious gems. The time that Diehl had spent gaping in wonderment, Spelvin had spent gathering up loose sunstones—some undoubtedly spilled from the pockets of the late Mr. Squint—right up to the place where a cataclysmite charge had collapsed the fissure at the rear of the cavern.

  “Y’know, Jim,” Diehl said, “I been thinkin’. We could sell a couple of these apiece and pay off Laporte, once and for all.”

  “Sure,” Spelvin said scornfully. “Right away he’ll start wondering where we got that much money all at once. It oughta take about ten minutes for him to find out that we had sold some sunstones to get the money.”

  “So?” Diehl said.

  “So Raul Laporte is the kind of guy that would beat us to a pulp and pull out our fingernails one at a time till we told him what we know,” Spelvin said. “In the end of it, we’ll be out our sunstones, and the information.”

  “Well, what’re we gonna do then?” Diehl whined.

  Dense as he was, there was a reason for Spelvin being a junior sergeant while Diehl was a corporal. “We’ll tell him what we know in exchange for him wiping out our debt. I think the information is worth that much. Dumb-bell,” Spelvin said.

  “So what’re gonna do with the sunstones?” Diehl asked.

  “Nothing,” Spelvin said. “If we try to sell ‘em on Zarathustra, somebody is going to get nosy about how come two Marines got hold of some sunstones—especially two Marines from this particular battalion.”

  “You mean we could still wind up gettin’ our fingernails pulled out,” Diehl said.

  “Now you got it,” Spelvin said. “We just put ‘em away until we get transferred to some other planet. They’ll bring at least three times as much anyplace but Zarathustra, anyway. We sell ‘em off one or two at a time and put the money away, see?”

  “Yeah,” Diehl said dreamily. “It would work out to a whole bunch of sols, all right.”

  “Then, maybe we can get out of these green suits,” Spelvin said, “and start living like human beings. Maybe buy a little business someplace, maybe a little restaurant and tavern.”

  “Maybe our own little whorehouse, too,” Diehl said dreamily.

  Gerd van Riebeek laid the binocular loupe and went back into his office. His own observations jibed with the report abstract, but it all seemed a bit odd to him. Well, it would all hinge on whether there was one rockslide or two. He still felt uneasy about the test results. There was something— something he couldn’t put his finger on.

  “Yet,” he said out loud in his empty office. “Not yet we got it. Eventually, though, we will.” He thumbed the intercom on his communications screen.

  A thin, middle-aged face materialized before him. “Haskins, here,” said an efficient-looking man in a white lab coat.

  “Bill, how are you doing on the sides analysis of those rock samples?” Gerd asked.

  “I’ve cross-typed and done weathering comparisons with freshly-broken faces,” Haskins said. “I’ve still a little double-checking to do, but it looks to me as if it was all one rockslide. The tape records are quite clear. There’s absolutely no overlap of weather aging or solar radiation absorption in sample belt ‘B’. It all came down at the same time. I’ll have a final for you this afternoon or early tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, Bill,” Gerd said and blanked the screen.

  He was still drumming his fingers on the console and staring out the window at his pet featherleaf tree when Ruth came in the office with a sheaf of printout in her hand.

  “Gerd—” she began.

  “Have you seen the datings on the two sets of Fuzzy bones?” he asked her abruptly.

  “Why, yes,” Ruth said. “I did some of the fractioning analyses myself. Why?”

  “Anything strike you as odd about the comparisons?” Gerd asked her.

  “Not chemically,” she said. “Not until—”

  “There’s something odd there,” he interrupted, “but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

  She sat down and laid the printout on his desk. It was obvious she wasn’t going to get a word in about it until Gerd got around to what he was pondering over. “Well,” she said, “what is it?”

  Gerd leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together on top of his head. ‘ The Fuzzy bones in the starship are about three hundred years older than the Fuzzy bones from the cave,” he said simply. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “You mean it doesn’t make sense to you,” Ruth said. “What’s so odd about it?”

  “That’s just it,” Gerd said. “I can’t put my finger on it. Something to do with Fuzzies burying their dead. The ones that were trapped in the cave; that I can understand. They couldn’t get at them to bury them. But what about the ones in the ship? Why were they left there?”

  “Radiation?” Ruth suggested.

  “Did you find any radiation abnormalities in the remains?” Gerd asked her.

  “No,” she said, “but it could have been short-life radiation. Fuzzies don’t know anything about nuclear hazards. If some of them got into the ship and died, the rest would studiously avoid the place, I would think.”

  “Mmmmm,” Gerd said. “I guess that will have to wait for engineering data. After the Navy is through tearing everything apart, they may be able to decipher what the ship’s drive was and tell us something about potentials for radiation leakage.”

  “And types,” she said.

  “And types,” Gerd agreed. He leaned forward in his chair and began riffling through the stack of printout. “What’s this?” he asked.

  “This,” Ruth said, “is what I came in here about in the first place.”

  “Which is?” Gerd asked.

  “Which is,” Ruth said, “what I’ve been trying to get a word in edgewise about since I got here. Namely, my readouts show that there was a much higher concentration of anti-NFMp in the Fuzzy bones in the wreck than in the Fuzzy bones in the cave.”

  Gerd carefully and deliberately shook a cigarette out of the pack on his desk, lighted it, and leaned back in his chair once again. “Questions, questions, questions,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “Why do we always have more questions than answers?”

  “Send him in, Myra,” Victor Grego said to the image in the intercom screen.

  The uniformed man who entered Grego’s office shut the door behind himself. That figured. Anything important enough to bring Harry Steefer over in person must be pretty confidential. The Company Police Chief was not a messenger boy.

  “Afternoon, Harry,” Grego said, motioning him to a chair. “What is it?”

  Steefer could not conceal the fact that he was pleased about something. “We’ve finally done it, Victor. We have penetrated the ZNPF. Our man has managed to wangle himself an assignment to the liaison patrol up there in Fuzzy Valley where all those Marines are milling about.”

  “What has he found out?” Grego asked.

  “Precious little, so far,” Steefer replied, handing over a slender folder, “but there’s more there than meets the eye.”

  Grego lighted a cigarette, flipped open the folder, and absently scratched his Adam’s apple as he looked over the report.

  “The very fact that he can’t find out anything means there’s plenty worth finding out,” Grego said. “Uh—the Colonial Investigations Bureau doesn’t know about him, do they?”

  Steefer grinned. “Course not. Then it wouldn’t be a secret anymore, would it?”

  Steefer was no sooner out the door than Grego’s private screen chimed. He keyed it on. “Why, hello, Christiana,” he said. “You’re looking lovely this afternoon.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Grego,” she said, slightly flustered. It was her normal reaction to a compliment—especially one from Victor Grego. Then she frowned slightly. “I was wondering, Mr. Grego, if I could have the afternoon off. I—I have some things to attend to.”

  “Where’s Diamond?” Grego asked.

  She brightened. “Oh, he’s over at Company House, playing with Flora and Fauna. I’ll be back in time to get him.”

  Grego held up a hand. “No need, my dear. I’m going over there, myself, as soon as I can break away from here. I’ll bring him back home. You take as long as you like.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Grego,” she said.

  “Christiana,” Grego said. “Are you all right? I mean, is anything wrong?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I—I guess I just have my mind on my errands.”

  “Dinner?” he asked.

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be,” she said. “I’ll screen you, either at Governor Rainsford’s or at home.”

 

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