The Legacy of Lehr (10 page)

Slowly the sounds of the cats' screaming, the tiny vibrations of the ship, and even the pressure and chill of the bulkhead at his back began to fade from awareness. He let his eyes drift shut as he turned all his attention inward. After several moments of mental quieting, he gradually began to see though his mind's eyes.

He did not like what he saw. He was aware of the cats pacing in their cage, each of them radiating fear and the pain the scanners had detected earlier. In fact, he could distinguish among the cats in a way he had never been able to do before—not that he had ever tried to read an animal's mind. The level of pain varied from cat to cat, with the larger of the two females being most distressed by the sensation.

But the cats' discomfiture was not the sum total of pain around him. As Mather pushed his awareness farther to include other life forms in the hold, he was startled to realize that the pain extended to himself and the Rangers as well—though theirs was not nearly as intense as the cats' and registered only as mild but persistent headaches.

More than a little curious at that, and able to block his own pain now that he had become aware of it, Mather broadened his sensitivity to read the inanimate structure of the hold itself, sweeping his attention over the cages, the equipment, even the bulkheads, searching for something, anything out of the ordinary that might account for the pain he was reading from both cats and men.

He missed it the first time around. He almost missed it the second. But just before he was about to try a third sweep, he detected a blur of psychic noise to his right that grated like a fingernail on stone.

Slowly he slit his eyes open, visually inspecting the suspect bulkhead and integrating optical input with psychic. Another stanchion rose directly across from him, similar to the one whose shadow camouflaged him. The psychic static he had finally brought into focus seemed to be coming from that direction.

Still psychically open, Mather roused his body and forced it to move cautiously toward the place in question, bracing one hand against the bulkheads at his right, blocking the screams of the cats at his left, each careful step a conscious act. Bending to peer behind the bulk of the stanchion, he hesitated only briefly before extending his hand tentatively toward a flat, featureless gray box the size of his open palm; it clung to the back of the metal support. Though he did not touch it, he knew instantly that somehow the box was the source of the pain he had been reading.

With a blink, he was back in normal consciousness, the cats' screams reverberating at his back. He took a deep breath as he straightened and glanced toward the door and the security station. Most of the Rangers were still engrossed in their own duties and probably had not even noticed his silence or his stealth, but Perelli was watching him curiously.

“Perelli, would you come here, please?”

Perelli said something to the two Rangers at the door, then came on the run. Mather took out his pocket medscanner and made an adjustment as the man approached; then he dropped down on his hunkers to point behind the stanchion with bland detachment.

“Ever seen that before?”

Perelli looked, then gestured for one of the other Rangers by the door and shook his head as the other man came and gave a similarly negative response.

“And you're sure that no one has been around the cats?” Mather insisted, running his scanner close above the box's gray crackle finish and studying the readouts.

“Only authorized personnel, sir,” Perelli replied, puzzled. “Webb and Wing are still going over the tapes, but—you don't think it's a bomb, do you, sir?”

“No. Nor does it appear to be booby-trapped to prevent what I'm about to do.”

He handed the scanner to Perelli, then touched the box gingerly with a fingertip before using both hands to slide it sideways and pry loose the limpet seal holding it in place. The device was featureless but for two slightly sunken screw heads on the underside, both faintly glowing red.

“Well, well,” Mather muttered to himself, reaching into an inner jacket pocket for a flat, narrow case as the two Rangers looked on with interest.

Balancing the case on one knee, he extracted a slender, nonmetallic probe, the blade of which he fitted delicately to the right-hand screw and gave a minute turn to the left.

The result was far more dramatic than he had expected. As the screw moved, the cats immediately stopped screaming; but the watching Rangers gasped and clutched at their heads in pain so intense that they could not even cry out. Casey, Perelli's partner, even fell to his knees.

Quickly Mather turned the screw in the opposite direction, relieving the Rangers and momentarily enraging the cats again—and then, nothing. The screw stopped glowing, the cats stopped screaming, and the Rangers could finally blurt out a few dazed words of inquiry as to what had happened.

Ignoring their questions for just a moment longer, Mather tightened down the other screw until it, too, ceased glowing—fortunately, without further ill effect on those around him. He did not bother to speculate as to why he had not been affected, but it was fortunate he had not—for, judging by the Rangers' reactions, he doubted he could have functioned coherently enough to neutralize the device if he had been.

Wing and a shaken-looking Webb came running from the adjoining security room. They were followed by the Rangers who had been sleeping and Perelli's other partner from the door. Casey's voice finally began to cut through Mather's concentration.

“Commodore! Commodore Seton! What did you do?”

“What's going on, Commodore?” Wing echoed. “We were running the last of the tapes, and I thought the top of my head was going to come off!”

“Mine, too,” said Casey. “I've never felt anything like that in my life! What was it, sir?”

Mather replaced his probe in its case and got ponderously to his feet, controlling the tendency of his knees to go a little wobbly in after-reaction. “Apparently, someone has left us a not-so-friendly gift,” he said, hefting the box in his hand as he slipped the instrument case back inside his jacket. “As nearly as I can tell without further analysis, it's a psychic irritator of some sort, designed to focus random psychotronic energy and then disperse it on specific frequencies. In this case, it was tuned to enrage the cats and to hover just at the edge of human awareness—which would account for the cats' behavior and for the headaches and general irritability experienced by almost everyone who's had to work near the cats for any length of time since we came aboard. Call it a psychic itch, if that's a good image for you.”

“But, where did it come from, sir?” asked Peterson, Perelli's second partner. “No one's been in here, except our people and ship's security, since we brought the cats aboard.”

“The tapes confirm that, Wing?”

“Yes, sir. There's been absolutely no unauthorized entry.”

“I see.” Mather thought for a moment. Then: “Mister Webb, how clear a view did you actually have of this area on the tapes?”

Webb blinked and glanced at Wing, at the other Rangers, and back at Mather. “Are you asking if I think one of us could have planted the device, sir?”

“I'm asking you to eliminate that possibility for me,” Mather said. “Can you go back through the tapes and see who, if anyone, had the opportunity to place such a device? I'm going to have to give Captain Lutobo some kind of report, after all, even if it's a negative one.”

“We'll see to it sir,” Webb said. “Is there anything else?”

Mather pursed his lips in thought, then glanced at the cats, now sitting or lying peacefully in their cages. One of the males was grooming a huge blue paw with studied nonchalance. The other male and his mate were observing the activities of the humans with bored indifference. The fourth cat had opted for a nap, and occasional snorts of contentment came from her end of the cage.

All eyes turned to follow Mather's line of attention, then returned to him questioningly. Mather's lips compressed in a grim line as he hefted the device in his hand. “As a matter of fact, there is something else that you can do. Wing, do you remember those force nets that we didn't use on Il Nuadi? I think it's time we broke those out and set up a new perimeter.”

“Aye, sir, I can do that,” Wing said with a nod. He looked puzzled. “But—is it true, what security said—that someone was murdered, and the evidence points to our cats?”

Mather sighed, glancing back at the cats reflectively. “That's the way security is reading the evidence,” he conceded, “though there
has
to be another explanation. Doctor Hamilton is working on the autopsy with the ship's surgeon right now. Since I'm going to have to answer to Captain Lutobo far sooner than I'd like, I don't suppose anyone wishes to change his statement as to unusual occurrences here in the hold since last night?”

No one did. There was some nervous shuffling of feet, a cough or two, but each man continued to look directly at Mather without evasion. Mather smiled grimly, nodding acknowledgment of his faith in their competence.

“Thank you, gentlemen. That's the response I expected, but you understand why I had to ask. Mister Fredricks, I'll ask you and Neville to help Wing with the new perimeter setup, since you're both fresh. Peterson, you go on the tapes with Webb. Casey will have to man the door lock alone for now.”

“Very good, sir.”

“And Perelli,” Mather continued as the others began dispersing to attend to their new assignments, “perhaps you can help me with something else. I want to take our gadget up to engineering and run some tests before I have to confront the captain. Who's their best electronics expert? Who helped build these earmuffs?”

As he pulled the headset from around his neck and handed it to Perelli, the Ranger shook his head.

“We worked with a Wes Brinson, sir. But I can't guarantee he's ever seen anything like this.”

“I'd be surprised if he had.” Mather smiled. “Frankly, I'll settle for an open mind and some cooperation.”

He whistled a grim little tune under his breath as he left the hold and headed for the crew lift, fielding the questions of the waiting security men with a polite but firm “No comment” and picking up his escort again, in the process. The rest stayed to keep watch on the cats.

In Shivaun Shannon's surgery, meanwhile, the situation had deteriorated badly. Wallis's and her confrontation with the Aludrans quickly escalated to the point that Shannon was ready to call security to escort the aliens from the room, except that Captain Lutobo arrived—and
he
called the guards.

Within three minutes the aliens were gone, Lutobo had viewed the body of the victim, and an abashed chief of security was trying in vain to explain what his men had been doing instead of protecting the ship's passengers. Lutobo was not inclined toward charity this morning.

“I find it truly incomprehensible that my entire staff could be this incompetent, Mister Courtenay.” Lutobo was raging, and Shannon wished she could disappear through the floor. “A Lehr cat is not a small animal. I want to know how a creature that large could have made its way from the cargo level to Deck Three, and back, without anyone seeing it.”

“We're looking for additional witnesses, Captain,” Courtenay began, “but I only have so many men.”

“For all the witnesses you've found, it doesn't appear it makes any difference
how
many men you have!” Lutobo retorted. “And Doctor Shannon, according to your testimony, the victim was still alive when Lord Elderton found him. From the damage done to the body, how long could Fabrial have survived, between the attack and his death? I can't imagine that even a Lehr cat could move
that
fast, in that kind of situation, and not have
someone
see it. Doesn't
anyone
have any answers?”

Shannon toyed with a power probe she had picked up from beside the now covered body of Fabrial, and Courtenay shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, not daring to drop his attitude of attention. Wallis had tried to make herself as unobtrusive as possible behind the draped body, for she had no more answers than Shannon or Courtenay, but her reprieve was shortlived.

“Well, Doctor Hamilton? I haven't heard
you
offering any brilliant explanations. And where is Commodore Seton?”

“I believe he's gone to check on the cats, Captain. We're aware how the situation must appear. I expect word from him at any moment.”

“You say that as if there were some doubt of who's to blame,” Lutobo retorted, moving to the intercom and punching the call button. “ComNet?”

“ComNet here.”

“This is the Captain. I want you to locate Commodore Seton. He should be in the cargo hold where his damned cats are berthed.”

“Stand by, please, Captain.”

As the tally light beside the Gruening logo went from red to amber, the captain glanced at Wallis again.

“Come, now, Doctor. Speechless? I seem to recall being reassured by your people, several times, that this could never happen. I suppose it does make a difference when one has seen the mangled body of a victim, however. Even the most calloused—”

At the sound of a chime, the tally light went to red again and the image of a uniformed crewman appeared on the screen. The man was half turned away from the video pickup, but the permanent legend across the bottom of the screen identified the location as Engineering Section. As the crewman moved aside, Mather Seton stepped into frame.

“I thought you'd be with your Lehr cats, Commodore,” Lutobo said icily, not waiting for Mather to speak first. “Why are you in Engin—what the devil is that?”

Mather, a look of resigned patience on his face, had held up a gray, metallic box with several wires trailing from it.

“I found it in the hold with the cats, Captain.
We
didn't place it here. Regarding the cats, I did not find any sign of blood, a fight, or tampering with the cages. Nor, according to your own security scanners and the testimonies of your and my men, has anything happened in the hold in the past twelve hours that could be construed as unusual in any way—which the exit of one of the cats certainly would be. Furthermore,
your
people tell me they've never seen this thing before, or even anything like it. I have my Rangers rechecking the security tapes now, just to see who even had the opportunity to plant it.”