The Legacy of Lehr (9 page)

CHAPTER 5

For an endless instant, no one spoke. The blue hairs said all. The horrible wounds on the rest of the body reinforced the growing conclusion that no one had yet dared voice. A stunned Shannon glanced at Mather in surprise as the big man abruptly roused himself and headed toward the door.

“Commodore, just where do you think you're going?”

Shannon's voice was strained, and Mather turned to glance at her and all of them as he paused by the intercom just inside the door and punched the call button. The screen lit immediately with the bright Gruening Line logo.

“ComNet,” said a pleasant voice.

“ComNet, this is Commodore Seton, in Medical Section. Please connect me with the duty officer in my cargo hold, priority status one.”

“Stand by.”

Shannon stared at him aghast as he glanced at her again.

“I know what you must be thinking, Doctor,” Mather said carefully, “and frankly, I can't say I blame you. Well soon see whether your suspicions are justified.”

“But, isn't it obvious to you what's happened?”

“I know what it
looks
like happened. ComNet, are you having some problem getting through?”

Even as he spoke, the speaker chimed and the Gruening logo dissolved to the gaunt face of a Ranger named Webb.

“Webb here.”

Drawing a deep breath, Mather glanced at Wallis, at Shannon and the body between them, at the med tech waiting uneasily behind them, and at the security guard, who looked as if he might just draw the needler on his hip.

“Mister Webb, is everything all right there in the hold?”

“Well, sir, I was just about to call you.” Webb's drawl sounded strained. “There are two men here from ship's security, demanding to see the cats. They seem to think the critters got out and killed someone during the night.”

“Is that possible?” Mather demanded. “And have you let them see the cats?”

“No to both questions, sir. I wasn't about to let them in with weapons, and they wouldn't disarm before coming in. The cats are fine, though. They're still making a lot of noise, of course, but—what's going on, sir?”

“I'll explain when I get there,” Mather replied, glancing at the others again. “In the meantime, I want you and Wing or somebody to go over the security tapes, working backward from right now. Look for anything,
anything
out of the ordinary. Have you got that?”

“Well, yes, sir, but—what about the security men?”

“They'll just have to wait until I get there. I'm on my way.”

As he slapped off the intercom and headed for the door again, Shannon started after him.

“But—wait a minute! Are you trying to say that your cats
aren't
responsible? That's ridiculous. Any idiot—”

“Any idiot can jump to conclusions based on circumstantial evidence, Doctor,” Mather said, stopping her with a glance. “Why don't you get started on the autopsy, while I go and do what
I
do best? Wallis, give her a hand. And
you
—” He turned on the anxious security guard with a finger pointed like a pistol. “If you intend to come with me, don't even think about pulling a weapon or trying to arrest me. I have the authority to place this ship under martial law, if I have to, and I'll place
you
under arrest if you interfere.”

“He'd do it, too,” Wallis told the man, who hesitated to follow the retreating Mather. “But go ahead after him,” she went on. “He knows you have a job to do. Just don't try to keep him from doing his.”

Shannon, still agape at the entire exchange, dismissed the med tech with a gesture and tried to collect her wits.

“What does he mean,
circumstantial evidence?
” she blurted when the door had closed behind the technician. “And who's the idiot?” She gestured angrily at the mutilated body. “Look at the man, Doctor Hamilton!”

Wallis let out a slow sigh. “I know. And I did. I admit that it looks fairly clear-cut. But you and I are scientists. Let's look at the facts. If the cats really are responsible, I want to know as much as you do.”

“The facts speak for themselves, Doctor.”

“But, these aren't the only facts,” Wallis argued. “Look, will you humor me for a few minutes? Let's think about this.”

With a look of extreme cynicism, Shannon set the medical sensors to scanning for data and pulled a disposable lab gown from a shelf, tossing another to Wallis before putting hers on.

“Go ahead. I'm listening.”

“All right. Let's suppose—just suppose—that we've never heard of Lehr cats.”

“I wish
I
hadn't,” Shannon muttered under her breath as she pulled on surgical gloves.

“I know. Just suppose. We're provincial doctors. We've never been off-planet, we've never heard of Lehr cats, we've never seen them—we have no idea that such creatures might exist.”

“Oh, they exist, all right,” Shannon said, rolling a cart with surgical instruments closer. “Just ask Gustav Fabrial.”

Wallis ignored the younger physician's comment as she, too, gloved and resumed her inspection of the body.

“Now,” she continued, “this man, this Fabrial, is brought in dead, and you, as chief medical officer, are asked to perform the autopsy and form a hypothesis as to cause of death. Remember, you've never heard of a Lehr cat. Fabrial could have been the victim of anyone or anything.” She gestured toward Shannon with a probe. “Now, who killed Fabrial?”

Shannon, cutting away the dead man's jacket with a pair of surgical scissors, only shook her head. “This is pointless.”

“No, don't quit on me already. Who killed Fabrial? What was the physical cause of death?”

Shannon gave a stubborn smile. “All right, just offhand, I'd say he died of shock, contingent upon massive loss of blood induced by trauma.…”

“Good. Go on.”

“He has multiple lacerations of the chest and forearms”—she looked shrewdly at Wallis—“perhaps from claws—”

“We don't know that yet.”

“Very well, then, Doctor—not
necessarily
claws, then. Let's say multiple parallel lacerations, approximately six to ten centimeters apart, in groups of four to five.” She threw down her scissors. “Oh, come
on
, Doctor! From
claws!
What else could make wounds like that?”

Wallis bowed her head and worried her lower lip briefly with her teeth.

“All right, I'll accept that for now, if you insist. Go on.”

“And multiple throat lacerations, especially along the lateral aspects,” Shannon continued sourly. “From
teeth
, Doctor Hamilton!
Long
teeth,
sharp
teeth—
fangs
, if you will!”

Wallis leaned both hands against the edge of the table and nodded slowly. “I know. And long blue hairs clenched in his fist, presumably from the murderer. Ergo, something with long blue hair, fangs, and claws killed Fabrial. And that something could only have been a Lehr cat. I have to admit, it looks bad.”

Shannon's jaw dropped and she stared at her colleague dumbly for a few seconds. “You mean,” she finally managed to reply, “you're still not convinced? You still maintain that your cats didn't do it?”

“Do you want me to assert that I think the cats broke through plasteel, a force lock, and the regular door of the hold, evaded regular ship's security on three decks, and then killed Fabrial and got back without anyone being the wiser?” Wallis countered.

“The screamers-in-the-night can do thus,”
said a familiar voice.

They turned to see Muon and Bana standing in the doorway, swathed in their fur-lined robes and shaking with cold and dread.

“I know that the demons were responsible,” Muon continued, walking farther into the room and staring expressionlessly at the bloody body on the table. “Did I not tell you that the demons would devour us all? And now it has begun.”

The cats were screaming even worse than the night before when Mather reached Deck Six and headed toward their hold. Four confused ship's security guards came to attention as he approached: two Mather recognized from the night before, and two he had never seen.

“Commodore Seton, just what
is
going on?” one of the familiar guards demanded as. Mather pushed his way between them and thumbed the intercom button on the panel outside the door. “When Burton and Lewis, here, came and asked to see the cats a little while ago, your Rangers chucked us all out. Burton says someone was murdered by one of the cats.”

“We don't know that yet,” Mather said tersely, “and my men were just following their orders.” He glanced back at the door as the upper half transluced. Behind it, Perelli came to attention as he saw Mather. He had a heavy-duty stun carbine slung over his shoulder at the ready and was wearing a strange headset arrangement that completely covered his ears.

“Ah, Commodore Seton, am I glad to see you.”

Two more Rangers with headsets backed up the first as the outer door sphinctered open just far enough for Mather to duck into the security lock, but their stun carbines discouraged the remaining security men from trying to follow. Unlike a needler, whose darts could kill if too many struck a victim, a stun weapon would disable a living target with five to ten minutes of excruciating, paralyzing pain but leave no lasting effect or damage beyond sore muscles for a few days, making it an ideal defensive weapon for use aboard a spacecraft—and one with which the civilian-trained security guards had no desire to contend.

“What's happened, Perelli?” Mather asked, as the Ranger took a fourth headset off a hook on the wall and handed it to him, and the other two took over at the door monitor. “Did ship's security give you any trouble? And what is this thing?”

“It helps filter out the cats' screaming, sir,” Perelli replied. “Wing put the first one together last night, after you left, and engineering made up several more for us. They don't help a lot, but they're better than nothing. And you don't really think those security guys wanted to mess with
us
, do you, sir?” he added with a grin. “They obviously don't know what they're talking about, if they think the cats got past
us
.”

“I hope not,” Mather murmured, glancing beyond Perelli at the cat cages and their vocal occupants. “Where
is
Wing?”

“Reviewing the tapes, sir, just as you ordered. And I'd really advise using the headset, sir.”

With a nod, Mather put the device over his ears and turned it on. He concluded, as he began moving closer to the cages, that any benefit to be derived from the device was as much psychological as anything else. He slipped it off and let it hang loosely around his neck as he continued around the cages, for he wanted no interference with natural perceptions.

To all outward appearances, however, nothing had changed since the night before. The cages were still joined end to end, the four units forming a long, plasteel-meshed run in which the animals were pacing restlessly. As Mather passed one end, the female they called Matilda stopped to glare at him; she raised one velvet-sheathed forepaw as if to strike at him through the mesh, her tail lashing hard against the side of the cage. But he ignored her.

He was looking, first, for physical evidence: for blood, for missing chunks of fur, for any sign of an altercation—but there was none. Visual inspection revealed nothing at all untoward about the cats' appearance. However, desultory readings with a pocket scanner did seem to indicate some registration of pain. He flipped on the big cage scanners and checked those, too.

Now, that
was
unusual.
Something
was wrong. Granted, no one really knew very much about Lehr cats, and Mather himself claimed no particular medical expertise, but no seemingly healthy creature ought to be radiating that kind of pain without some accompanying injury or illness.

But there was more to the wrongness than that. It had nothing to do with anything he could see, but Mather was increasingly aware that something was not quite right about the area itself—the cages, or perhaps even the hold.

Puzzled, he tried extending his senses slightly, to see whether he could detect anything psychically unusual. Something was out there to be read, but he could not seem to zero in on it. The sheer decibel level in the hold made it hard to concentrate. He slipped the headset back over his ears, but that only seemed to make matters worse, so far as his sketchily reliable psi abilities were concerned.

Very well. He shut down mentally and sighed. He was simply going to have to do this the hard way.

Casually he glanced over his shoulder at the Rangers. Perelli was busy logging something in his shift report, his two partners were watching the security guards still waiting outside, and the rest must be ensconced with Wing and Webb in the security room. He could see the dark green lump of someone lying in one of the hammocks the Rangers had strung at one end of the room so they could sleep during off-duty hours without leaving the premises. If Mather was careful, he should have things over and done before anyone was the wiser.

Slowly he made his way around the cages again, this time studying the room, rather than the cats, until he found a place he liked, where he could stand in the window of a stanchion without being closely observed, from either the door or the office. He pulled the headset around his neck again—he would simply have to put up with the auditory distraction until he could block it out—then leaned his shoulders and back against the bulkhead and let his head tip back, locking his knees to brace himself against the bulkhead. His hands fell loosely to his sides as he cleared his mind and took the three deep breaths that would—he hoped—trigger deep psi sensitivity. It would have been easier with the right medication to ease the transition, but he had done it cold before. (He had also come up blind, under the best of circumstances.) He never knew for certain whether it would work, but this time it did.