Dick was still trying to figure out who and what these people were, when something finally clicked. He looked up at the Gray Man. “You’re from TriStar, aren’t you?” he asked.
If the Gray Man was startled by this, he didn’t show it. “Yes,” the man replied, gun-muzzle never wavering. “How did you figure that out?”
“BioTech never ships with anyone other than TriStar if they can help it,” Dick said flatly. “I wondered why they had hired a tramp-freighter to bring out their cats; it didn’t seem like them, but then I thought maybe that was all they could get.”
“You’re clever, White,” the Gray Man replied, expressionlessly. “Too clever for your own good, maybe. We might just have to make you disappear. You and the Makumba woman; she’ll probably know some of us as soon as she wakes up, and we don’t have the time or the equipment to brain-wipe you.”
Dick felt a chill going down his back, as the men at the door finished installing the field and left, quickly. “BioTech is going to wonder if one of their designated handlers just vanishes. And without me, you’re never going to get SKitty back; BioTech isn’t going to care for that, either. They might start asking questions that you can’t answer.”
The Gray Man stared at him for a long moment; his expression did not vary in the least, but at least he didn’t make any move to shoot. “I’ll think about it,” he said finally. He might have said more, but there was a shout from the corridor outside.
“The cat!” someone yelled, and the Gray Man was out of the door before Dick could blink. Unfortunately, he paused long enough to trigger the tangle-field before he ran off in pursuit of what could only have been SKitty.
Dick slumped down into the chair, and buried his face in his hands, but not in despair. He was thinking furiously.
TriStar didn’t like getting cut out of the negotiations; what they can’t get legally, they’ll get any way they can. Probably they intend to use us as hostages against Vena’s good behavior, getting her to put them up as the new negotiators. I solved the problem of getting the cats for them; now there’s no reason they couldn’t just step in. But that can’t go on forever, sooner or later Vena is going to get to a com unit or send some kind of message offworld. So what would these people do then?
TriStar had a reputation as being ruthless, and he’d heard from Erica that it was justified. So how do you get rid of an entire crew of a spaceship and the Terran Consul? And maybe the crews of the other two ships into the bargain?
Well, there was always one answer to that, especially on a newly-opened world. Plague.
The chill threaded his backbone again as he realized just what a good answer that was. These TriStar goons could use sickness as the excuse for why the CatsEye people weren’t in evidence. A rumor of plague might well drive the other two ships offworld before they came down with it. The TriStar people could even claim to be taking care of the Brightwing’s crew.
Then, after a couple of weeks, they all succumb to the disease, the Terran Consul with them. . . .
It was a story that would work, not only with the Terran authorities, but with the Lacu’un. The Fence was a very effective barrier to help from the natives; the Lacu’un would not cross it to find out the truth, even if they were suspicious.
I have to get to a com set, he thought desperately. His own usefulness would last only so long as it took them to trap SKitty and find some way of caging her. No one else, so far as he knew, could hear her thoughts. All they needed to do would be to catch her and ship her back to BioTech, with the message that the designated handler was dead of plague and the cat had become unmanageable. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
A soft hiss made him look up, and he strangled a cry of mingled joy and apprehension. It was SKitty! She was right outside the door, and she seemed to be trying to do something with the tangle-field generator.
SKitty! he thought at her as hard as he could. SKitty, you have to get away from here, they’re trying to catch you— There was no way SKitty was going to be able to deal with those controls; they were deliberately made difficult to handle, just precisely because shipscats were known to be curious. And how could she know what complicated series of things to do to take down the field anyway?
But SKitty ignored him, using her stubby raccoon-like hands on the controls of the generator and hissing in frustration when the controls would not cooperate.
Finally, with a muffled yowl of triumph, she managed to twist the dial into the “off” position and the field went down. Dick was out the door in a moment, but SKitty was uncharacteristically running off ahead of him instead of waiting for him. Not that he minded! She was safer on the ground in case someone spotted him and stunned him; she was small and quick, and if they caught him again, she would still have a chance to hide and get away. But there was something odd about her bounding run; as if her body was a little longer than usual. And her tail seemed to be a lot longer than he remembered—
Never mind that, get moving! he scolded himself, trying to recall where they’d set up all the coms and if any of them were translight. SKitty whisked ahead of him, around a corner; when he caught up with her, she was already at work on the tangle-field generator in front of another door.
Practice must have made perfect; she got the field down just before he reached the doorway, and shot down the hall like a streak of black lightning. Dick stopped; inside was someone lying down on a cot, arm over her dark mahogany head. Erica!
“Erica!” he hissed at her. She sat bolt upright, wincing as she did so, and he felt a twinge of sympathy. A stun-migraine was no picnic.
She saw who was at the door, saw at the same moment that there was no tangle-field shimmer between them, and was on her feet and out in a fraction of a second. “How?” she demanded, scanning the corridor and finding it as curiously empty as Dick had.
“SKitty took the generator offline,” he said. “She got yours, too, and she headed off that way—” He pointed towards the heart of the building. “Do you remember where the translight coms are?”
“Eyeah,” she said. “In the basement, if we can get there. That’s the emergency unit and I don’t think they know we’ve got it.”
She cocked her head to one side, as if she had suddenly heard something. He strained his ears—and there was a clamor, off in the distance beyond the walls of the building. It sounded as if several people were chasing something. But it couldn’t have been SKitty; she was still in the building.
“It sounds like they’re busy,” Erica said, and grinned. “Let’s go while we have the chance!”
But before they reached the basement com room, they were joined by most of the crew of the Brightwing, some of whom had armed themselves with whatever might serve as a weapon. All of them told the same story, about how the shipscat had taken down their tangle-fields and fled. Once in the basement of the building—after scattering the multiple nests of kreshta that had moved right in—the Com Officer took over while the rest of them found whatever they could to make a barricade and Dick related what he had learned and what his surmises were. Power controls were all down here; there would be no way short of blowing the building up for the TriStar goons to cut power to the com. Now all they needed was time—time to get their message out, and wait for the Patrol to answer.
But time just might be in very short supply, Dick told himself as he grabbed a sheet of reflective insulation to use as a crude stun-shield. And as if in answer to that, just as the Com Officer got the link warmed up and began to send, Erica called out from the staircase.
“Front and center—here they come!”
Dick slumped down so that the tiny medic could reach his head to bandage it. He knew he looked like he’d been through a war, but either the feeling of elated triumph or the medic’s drugs or both prevented him from really feeling any of his injuries. In the end, it had come down to the crudest of hand-to-hand combat on the staircase, as the Com Officer resent the message as many times as he could and the rest of them held off
the TriStar bullies. He could only thank the Spirits of Space that they had no weapons stronger than stunners—or at least, they hadn’t wanted to use them down in the basement where so many circuits lay bare. Eventually, of course, they had been overwhelmed, but by then it was too late. The Com Officer had gotten a reply from the Patrol. Help was on the way. Faced with the collapse of their plan, the TriStar people had done the only wise thing. They had retreated.
With them, they had taken all evidence that they were from TriStar; there was no way of proving who and what they were, unless the Patrol corvette now on the way in could intercept them and capture them. Contrary to what the Gray Man had thought, Erica had recognized none of her captors.
But right now, none of that mattered. What did matter was that they had come through this—and that SKitty had finally reappeared as soon as the TriStar ship blasted out, to take her accustomed place on Dick’s shoulders, purring for all she was worth and interfering with the medic’s work.
“Dick—” Vena called from the door to the medic’s office, “I found your—”
Dick looked up. Vena was cradling SKitty in her arms.
But SKitty was already on his shoulders.
She must have looked just as stunned as he did, but he recovered first, doing a double-take. His SKitty was the one on her usual perch—Vena’s SKitty was a little thinner, a little taller—
And most definitely had a lot longer tail!
:Is Prrreet,: SKitty said with satisfaction. :Handsome, no? Is bred for being Patrol-cat, war-cat.:
“Vena, what’s the tattoo inside that cat’s ear?” he asked, urgently. She checked.
“FX-003,” she said, “and a serial number. But the X designation is for experimental, isn’t it?”
“Uh—yeah.” He got up, ignoring the medic, and came to look at the new cat. Vena’s stranger also had much more human-like hands than his SKitty; suddenly the mystery of how the cat had managed to manipulate the tangle-field controls was solved.
Shoot, he might even have been trained to do that!
:Yes,: SKitty said simply. :I go play catch-me-stupid, he open human-cages. He hear of me on station, come to see me, be mate. I think I keep him.:
Dick closed his eyes for a moment. Somewhere, there was a frantic BioTech station trying to figure out where one of their experimentals had gone. He should turn the cat over to them!
:No,: SKitty said positively. :No look. Is deaf one ear; is pet. Run away, find me.:
“He uh—must have come in as an extra with that shipment,” Dick improvised quickly. “I found an extra invoice, I just thought they’d made a mistake. He’s deaf in one ear, that’s why they washed him out. I uh—I suppose Brightwing could keep him.”
“I was kind of hoping I could—” Vena began, and flushed, lowering her eyes. “I suppose I still could . . . after this, the embassy is going to have to have a full staff with Patrol guards and a real Consul. They won’t need me anymore.”
Dick began to grin, as he realized what Vena was saying. “Well, he will need a handler. And I have all I can do to take care of this SKitty.”
:Courting?: SKitty asked slyly, reaching out to lick one of Prrreet’s ears.
This time Dick did not bother to deny it.
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A Tail of Two SKittys s-2 Page 2