The Legacy of Lehr (2 page)

Interests of this sort had brought Mather Seton and Wallis Hamilton to B-Gem, though Mather's intelligence background and Wallis's medical training also qualified them for more esoteric pursuits than hunting exotic game. Except that they had come not just for
a
hunting expedition, but a
specific
hunting expedition, for game that must be brought back alive. Their quarry had been the fierce and elusive blue creatures called Lehr cats, of which hitherto only two had been in captivity, and those in the emperor's own menagerie.

Now four more of the creatures prowled the confines of separate plasteel cages in the cargo area adjoining passengers reception, their eerie cries setting chills on the hearts of those who heard them, whenever the connecting door opened between the two holding areas. Rather than mere zoological curiosities, these particular cats had become unwitting pawns in a game of intergalactic treaty talks: sweeteners for the proposal that an alien ambassador would take back to his planet-hungry masters. They had cost several lives already.

“Doctor Hamilton?”

Wallis raised a hand in acknowledgment of the young Ranger lieutenant who called to her as she entered the holding area. His dark green coverall was impeccable, as usual, but his thin face mirrored the fatigue and tension under which all of them had been laboring in the weeks since coming to B-Gem. From the other side of a glassite wall behind him, the four Lehr cats glowered in their cages, their jaws parting periodically in what would be ear-splitting screams without the insulation of the wall.

“What is it, Wing?”

The young man glanced beyond her at the passengers in the lounge outside, some of whom stared back in sullen sympathy with the demonstrators massed outside the spaceport gates, then beckoned her closer as he backed toward the door leading to the cats. Slight and wiry in the manner of his Asian forbears, still he had to look down at the diminutive Wallis.

“The cats are getting awfully restless, Doctor. I think you ought to have a look.”

He slapped the door activator, and the increased volume of the cats' screaming assailed them as soon as the door began sliding back. As Wallis and Wing entered, two Imperial Rangers snapped to attention, needler carbines slung over their shoulders in readiness for any possible trouble, and four more roamed among the piles of equipment surrounding the cages.

“You see what I mean?” Wing had to raise his voice to be heard above the racket of the cats' howling. “They started up right after you left to find Commodore Seton.”

“Hmmm, maybe they missed me,” Wallis said with a wry smile, as she unsnapped a medscan pickup from her belt and held it closer to the nearest cage. “No one strange has been in there, have they?”

“Are you kidding, Doctor?” Our own people don't even want to be in here, with that caterwauling going on. My head feels like it's going to split right open.”

She swung the medscan briefly in his direction, trying not to grin, then returned her attention to the cats.

“Take a headache tablet, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you, Doctor, for that helpful advice.”

The cats
were
more upset than usual, though. Wallis had no doubt about that. The male they called Sebastian bristled and spat when she leaned too close, his enormous ruff rippling like an electric-blue dandelion around huge golden eyes. Slender whiskers jutted from his cheeks like sapphire soda straws, quivering each time he roared. Wallis jumped back in reflex as the smaller female in the next cage suddenly leaped against the plasteel mesh and tried to bat at her with a melon-sized paw.

“Hey, easy, Emmaline! Have you forgotten Mama?”

She got only a snarl for an answer.

Unfortunately, Wallis suspected she already knew what the problem was—and there was nothing she could do about it for now. Ordinarily, the four cages were interconnected, end-to-end, allowing the cats access to the full length of the combined run and to one another. But just an hour ago, because of the imminent arrival of the
Valkyrie
's shuttle, Wallis had ordered the Rangers to break down the cage system into four separate compartments again, for ease of handling. The cages were still sitting next to one another, in their usual configuration, but double plasteel divider panels now locked each cat into a separate compartment. It was necessary, of course, but the cats could hardly be expected to understand why.

“Maybe they just don't like being separated,” Wing said, as Wallis consulted her scanner again.

“Oh, that's certainly a part of it,” she replied. “And the're frightened. Of course, they're a little hungry, too, but there isn't a lot we can do about that, either, until we've moved them aboard the
Valkyrie
. They ought to calm down, once they're back together and fed.”

“I sure hope you're right, Doctor,” Wing murmured, making a notation on a tally board. “It's too bad we can't tranquilize them.”

As one of the females shrieked again on an even higher frequency than before, Wallis could hardly disagree with Wing's observation, but they had learned the hard way that the cats were very sensitive to most medications. They had killed two with inadvertent overdoses before discovering that the drug used in standard needler charges was several times stronger than it needed to be: Even using the low-dose needles that all of them now carried, they had almost lost Rudolph, the smaller of the two surviving males.

And how the cats would react to unmedicated hyperspace jumps was anybody's guess, though she and Mather made unmedicated jumps all the time without ill effect—or at least
she
did. The cats simply would have to take their chances, for the standard jump medication was particularly toxic to them.

Not for the first time on this trip, however, Wallis almost wished she were a veterinarian rather than a physician. Not that anyone else from off-world knew much more about Lehr cats than she did. Presumably, the folk of Il Nuadi knew, since they had been living with the animals for several hundred years; but such zoologists as the planet had produced since its reentry into galactic civilization had left the cats strictly alone, relegating them to a complicated legend-taboo-myth cycle that forbade any interference with the creatures. That was what had drawn the crowd camped outside the spaceport gates and had nearly provoked a global incident when they brought the cats here after capture.

A deep rumble vibrated through the entire chamber, more felt than heard, followed by a jarring shake and then total silence. The cats were quiet for all of five seconds before taking up their wailing with renewed vigor.

“That has to be the shuttle ship,” Wing said, rushing toward a darkened viewport where another Ranger was already hitting the polarizing controls. “The pilot must have set it down right on the roof!”

The wall went slightly transparent—clear enough to see the sleek, streamlined bulk of the shuttle ship now resting hardly twenty meters beyond, elegant and stylish in the murrey and silver livery colors of the Gruening Line.

“Well, well, Susmen Limited's latest model,” the older Ranger murmured. “Gruening doesn't skimp, does it?”

“Aye, she's a beauty,” Wing agreed, after a low whistle between his teeth. “I didn't know Gruening had such hotshot pilots, either.”

Wallis had to try very hard not to laugh at the younger man's exuberance. He was the youngest of all their surviving Rangers—almost young enough to be her son—and still very green.

“They don't,” she said with a grin, “though I suspect Mather would be flattered at the compliment. He might just have landed it on the roof, too, if he'd thought it would support the weight. That way, we wouldn't have to take the cats outside at all.”

“Commodore
Seton
landed it?” Wing gasped, though the older Ranger only nodded knowingly. “And he must have done it by remote, too,” Wing went on. “I'd heard he was a crack pilot before they made him retire, but you never really believe half the stories they tell you in the Academy.”

“But you
can
believe
some
of them,” Wallis murmured, almost to herself, as she hid a smile behind her hand and watched the ground grew already undogging the hatches, preparing for passenger and cargo boarding.

Aboard the
Valkyrie
an hour later, the return of the shuttle ship from planetside met with a variety of reactions, depending upon whether one was a passenger or a member of the crew. For the crew, it was hardly a matter for rejoicing, since the change in schedule had cost them the bonuses promised if the
Valkyrie
's speed sprint had been successful.

Few passengers really minded, however, for the unexpected stop at B-Gem provided a welcome break in the monotony of long-distance space flight, even aboard a great luxury liner like the
Valkyrie
. Taking on new passengers and exotic cargoes was one of the highlights of any long trip, and an unscheduled stop at one of the Empire's outer worlds was almost guaranteed to pique the interest of even the most seasoned star traveler.

Nor was the management of the Gruening Line blind to this fascination. Long in the business of catering to the wishes of a wealthy and sometimes eccentric clientele, Gruening had provided an observation deck, above the shuttle bays, where interested passengers could watch the docking operations from behind safety ports and not get in the way of the crew. Less active passengers could even observe from the privacy of their cabins, via closed-circuit viewers. The ship's recreation computer correlated fifteen video channels, several having to do with routine operation of the ship, plus a wealth of library functions designed to amuse and inform.

Hence, the observation deck had attracted more than a dozen passengers for the B-Gem rendezvous. More might have come, but the ship's day had begun only an hour before, and many were still asleep in their berths. A handful of adults watched with casual interest, a few exotically clad aliens among them, but it was the children who had turned out in full force—who always seemed to know when a docking would take place. Five of the youngsters, fresh-faced and wide-eyed, clung to the railings behind the observation ports this morning; they obviously itched to go down on the loading docks for a closer look at the shuttle, the new passengers, and any interesting-looking cargo that might be coming aboard.

The new passengers disembarked first, each individual or party being met by a steward who conducted them to the purser's check-in, just inside the passenger reception lounge. The
Valkyrie
's captain was also on hand to greet the passengers, though his motives were less of sociability than of vexed curiosity as he waited for the
other
passengers, one in particular, who had virtually commandeered his vessel. A man of impeccable abilities, and humors as dark as his handsome face, Captain George Lutobo was not likely to dismiss lightly the fact that he had been forced to mar the Gruening Line's reputation for precision scheduling—his mood was becoming darker by the minute. When a break came in the line of passengers waiting to check in with the purser, Lutobo drifted over to the foot of the shuttle ramp long enough to snap at a baggage handler bringing down expensive-looking luggage.

“One break in the normal routine, and the whole operation falls apart,” he grumbled, pacing back toward the purser. “Mister Diaz, what
is
going on?”

The bleat of an all-clear signal in the adjoining bay drowned out his words, and Lutobo realized that the man could not have heard him. Diaz had piles of customs declarations, visas, passports, and other travel documents all over his desk, in an order that apparently made sense to him but probably not to anyone else. He was presently logging in a med chip for a family of three, asking the usual questions about any special requirements of diet or preferred environment.

“Mister Diaz,” the captain repeated.

Diaz glanced up, nodding slightly as he saw that it was the captain.

“Good morning, Captain. How can I help you?”

The captain tried unsuccessfully to control a scowl. “This Commodore Seton—has he come aboard yet?”

“Seton? No, sir. I think he and his people are still with their cargo. Someone brought their papers, though.”

With a grudging nod, the captain picked up the stack of passports and shuffled through them until he found what he was looking for:
Seton, Mather V.; Fleet Commodore, Imperial Navy (Ret.); Ph.D. linguistics, psychology; clearance 1-A-1
. The passport itself bore a codicil endorsed by Prince Cedric, the brother of the emperor, guaranteeing a credit line whose upper limit was not even specified, though Lutobo knew that the code letter after it would return an astronomical figure if he ran a credit check.

Lutobo harrumphed at that, glaring at the “retired” notation and glaring more at the 1-A-1 clearance, then dropped the stack of passports back on the purser's desk and strode purposefully toward the shuttle ship hatch. As he reached the foot of the ramp, two Imperial Rangers in dark green coveralls appeared at the top, carefully guiding an anti-grav dolly clamped under a huge plasteel container. A vaguely Oriental-looking younger Ranger with a tally board followed them, accompanied by a tiny, titian-haired woman who could have been almost any age from twenty on up. Lutobo had gone partway up the ramp to meet them before he made out what was inside the mesh-sided container and hastily backed down again.

“Coming through, Captain,” one of the Rangers called.

The animal was curled into a tight, furry blue ball, but it still seemed to fill the cage. Lutobo guessed it might weigh close to two hundred pounds under standard gravity, but just now it was bobbing, nearly weightless, from the anti-grav dolly supporting its cage. The cage lurched a little as its handlers tried to ease it carefully off the end of the ramp, and the change of angle produced a cry—somewhere between a screech and the sound of metal being shredded—as the ball of fur suddenly was transformed into a bristling, spitting bundle of enormous blue cat. It was maned like an Earther lion around angry golden eyes, with pointy ears flattened to a skull suggesting extreme cunning. It lashed more than a meter of tufted tail hard enough against the side of the cage to make the cage and dolly rock, as it hooked razor-sharp claws into the floor mesh to catch its footing. The creature yowled again, blinking in the harsh light of the dock, and the sound sent a shiver up Lutobo's spine. The light also glinted off wicked-looking fangs, just before the creature closed its mouth.