Crisis On Doona

by Anne McCaffrey

  “You can look at my records. You’ll find there was no insertion that night, Todd!” Newry turned to Hrriss, hands open to emphasize his innocence and disbelief.

  “Oh, I believe we’ll find no blips on the security satellites. That I do believe, Newry,” Todd said, and then smiled. “Ever heard of a man named Askell Klonski?”

  Newry shook his head, his reaction genuine.

  “Or maybe you knew him better as Lesder Boronov?”

  The change in Linc Newry was dramatic despite the man’s attempt to cover that momentary lapse.

  Seeing that Newry was rattled, Todd sat on the edge of the desk, folding his arms on his chest, his gaze never leaving Newry’s face.

  “Boronov is a genius with security systems. How’d he fix Doona’s? D’you use a code so the satellite recorders blank? Or maybe just a convenient function key that isn’t supposed to be programmed at all? Ah, yes, so it is a function key!” He twisted so he could reach the console that Newry had pushed to one side of the desk, making circles with his index finger over the ranks of spare keys. “Now ... eeny meeny tipsy teeny ...” he said in a singsong voice.

  “Enough!” Newry cried, sinking dispiritedly back into his chair and burying his anguished face in his hands. “How’d you know about Boronov?”

  “Amazing the things you can learn when you’ve been falsely accused, Newry. So what’s your story? Martinson in on this with you?”

  Newry shook his head from side to side. “No, he never knew a thing about it. He’s too damned honest. And he gets paid what he’s worth.”

  “Spacedep pays well,” Todd said, his voice now a soothing, coaxing one.

  Newry looked up at him, his expression sour. “Not at my level. And nothing to make up for hours of sitting here night after night, day after day, doing double shifts when Martinson’s away. I’d only two more years to go. What I got for pressing a key now and then would be far more than that ridiculous pension Spacedep pays you. I wanted enough to buy into Doona. I saw my chance and I took it. And I was nearly there. So nearly there!” He buried his face in his hands again and his shoulders began to shake.

  Todd looked away from the broken man, moved by contempt as well as pity.

  “Who is the rustler, Newry?” Hrriss asked.

  “You haven’t figured it all out, then, have you?” Newry’s muffled voice was bitter.

  “Cooperation could mitigate your guilt,” Hrriss added gently. “You can repair some of the damage you have caused.”

  Newry kept shaking his head in the cradle of his hands. “You’re so smart, Reeve, you should know who it is.”

  Todd racked his brain. Who “it” is? Newry couldn’t mean Landreau. He meant someone much nearer, someone who knew enough about the management of their ranch and ... “Mark Aden?” He could scarcely believe that the young assistant manager whom he had so admired as a youngster could have turned against the people who had trusted him and encouraged him to learn as much as he could so he’d be able to start up his own spread on Doona. “Why would Mark turn on us? Dad paid him well. He gave him excellent references when he said he wanted to leave us. No one really wanted him to leave.”

  “That’s not the way he told it,” Newry said, his voice blurred by his hands. “That sister of yours thought herself too good for a ranch manager.”

  “Inessa?” Todd remembered that his sister had been infatuated with Mark Aden at one point, although she hadn’t been unduly upset when Mark had suddenly decided to leave. But Todd did remember that Mark had a vindictive streak in him: he never forgot a grudge and he’d wait months to pay back an imagined slight that anyone else would have forgotten. Only Mark Aden would have been vindictive enough to sow ssersa in pastures used by horses. “He manages the rustling operation by himself? He didn’t have the kind of money that would buy him any kind of a space vehicle. Certainly not one large enough to make rustling pay.”

  “Did he not perhaps have assistance from those who have been adding to your pension fund?” Hrriss asked Newry, pulling on his shoulders to make him look up.

  Slowly Newry raised his head, and then his eyes began to widen, his whole face brightened, and a smile of unexpected salvation parted his lips.

  “Todd Reeve?” a stern voice said.

  In a swift move, Todd was off the desk and looking into the shadows beyond the console, trying to locate the newcomer.

  Rogitel emerged from the darkness, Todd’s father behind him, Spacedep marines flanking him.

  “You are always found in the most incriminating situations. Harassing a Spacedep employee, were you?” Rogitel let out a patient sigh. “You will come with me. Now.”

  “With you, Commander? Dad?”

  Todd stared at the lack of expression on his father’s face. “But Dad ...” Todd began before taking his cue. “Linc was explaining to us how the security satellites record incoming and outgoing traffic.” It might sound lame but it covered the surreptitious sign he made to Hrriss. Just let Hrriss get free. “Weren’t you, Linc?” And let Linc prefer to keep silent about the last few moments in front of one of his Spacedep superiors. Commander Rogitel dealt harshly with failures ... and probably drastically with informers.

  “That’s right, Commander,” Newry said in a drawl that almost disguised the tremors in his voice.

  “Let’s go, Reeve,” Rogitel said, motioning to one of the marines. “You have to report in an hour to the transport station.” He caught sight of Hrriss, edging farther into the shadows. “You! You’ve no business in a Spacedep installation. Out of here!”

  Todd had the satisfaction of hearing Hrriss’s low and menacing growl as he swung around the marines and out the door.

  Ken shot Rogitel a furious glare for his uncalled-for incivility to the Hrruban, but the commander paid no notice as he took his place in front of the detail.

  “I’ve some things for you in the one bag we were allowed,” Ken murmured to his son. “I don’t think we’ll be gone long for all the precipitousness of our departure. “

  “What’s up, then?”

  “We’re to appear before a panel of the Amalgamated Worlds in their Terran offices.”

  Todd was seething to tell his father what he and Hrriss had got out of Newry. More pieces had fallen into place, pieces he never would have considered as part of the conspiracy. And yet they fit!

  They had no chance to talk on the way to the Treaty Island, not with Rogitel looking so smug and well pleased with himself. At the grid, though, Todd began to worry. The Treaty Controller and two strange male Hrrubans wearing sidearms awaited their arrival.

  “Send them to Earth,” Rogitel ordered the grid operator.

  The Hrruban glanced nervously at the Treaty Controller, who nodded, and the Hrruban had no option but to manipulate the controls. Todd watched the bright room around him dissolve and vanish. In a moment, the features of their destination started to coalesce around him. He could see the posts of the transport station becoming solid at the four corners of the grid, and the blank walls of a corridor beyond them.

  As soon as the Reeves had fully materialized, they were attacked from behind.

  IN HIGH SPIRITS, Ali Kiachif tapped at the door of the Reeve residence. He and the other two men had debarked so hastily from the White Lightning they were still in shipsuits.

  “Now, this will just take a minute,” the Codep captain assured his two companions. “Hello-oo?” he called out, and rapped with his knuckles on the window. “Reeve, are you home? Ah, hello, Patricia. Surprised to see me so soon? Rank has its privileges, I always say. I brought someone by for your husband to meet. May I introduce Dr. Walter Tylanio? He’s the best laser expert in the whole galaxy. What he don’t know about ’em, no one does, if you see what I mean. Martinson you know.” The tall, bearded man behind Kiachif bowed.

  “How do you do?” Pat asked. Her daughter Inessa and Kelly were crowde
d behind her in the doorway. The merchant tipped them a little wink. Their faces fell when they didn’t see the figures they expected.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Reeve,” Martinson said impatiently. “Kiachif, I have to get back to my office.”

  “Patience, patience,” Kiachif said chidingly. “Surely you can give the man one moment to crow over all of you who thought so ill of him. Honi soit qui mal y pense, if you know what I mean.”

  “Neither Todd nor Ken is here, Captain,” Pat said, her anxiety increasing because she thought it just possible that the captain might know where they were. “They were supposed to see an Amalgamated Worlds panel.”

  Kiachif clicked his tongue. “That’s bad luck. I guessed he’d want to see my smiling face, soon’s my expert here had a chance to unreel that doctored log tape that was on the Albatross.”

  “Come in, come in,” Kelly said, usurping Pat’s prerogative, but Hrriss had told her and Nrrna all about Newry. And if this expert was so good, maybe he could figure out which function key controlled the security satellite bypass and how Klonski-Boronov had managed to scramble supposedly tamperproof chips.

  “Martinson here,” Kiachif said, stepping lightly inside and peering about as if he hoped Ken and Todd were only hiding in their own home, “wouldn’t let me bring the tape to Tylanio, so I brought the mountain to the prophet.” He caught Kelly’s grin. “Well, I alter to suit m’purpose, girl, if you get my drift. Martinson kept his word of honor like the fine upstanding man he is, and the log was never out of his sight for a moment. So we have returned with the news and Martinson maybe has returned to Doona a wiser man.”

  “What did you find, Dr. Tylanio?” Pat asked, absently gesturing for them to be seated. She signalled for Inessa to get refreshments.

  “To give you the tall, small, and all of it,” Kiachif said, still dominating the conversation, “the log was some messed with,” Dr. Tylanio, who apparently took no umbrage from Kiachif’s ebullience, nodded agreement.

  Martinson cleared his throat and shot a quelling look at Kiachif. “Let the expert explain, Captain. I thought that’s why you insisted he return with us.”

  “The tapes had clearly been extensively altered, Mrs. Reeve,” Dr. Tylanio said. He had a pleasant tenor voice and spoke in the measured phrases of a born lecturer. “It was apparent from the tape that it was not recording anything on its homeward-bound journey: certainly not when they paused outside the Hrrilnorr system. Internal recordings were being taped. I would guess that the VU and transmitter had been tampered with.”

  “But that doesn’t prove it was altered by an outsider,” Martinson said, obviously unsettled by Tylanio’s report.

  “It does to me,” Kiachif said, accepting a glass from Inessa. “And there’s more. Oh, how I wish Todd and Ken were here right now. Walt says the box was only diddled once. That puts paid to that Spacedep stringy bean’s charge that the boys had been wiping the memory clean every time they were ex-Doona while committing all those piracies and smugglings.”

  “That’s right, Mrs. Reeve,” Tylanio said. “The alteration could only have been made before or after their latest mission. Since the ship was sealed, that would mean it would have to have been done before. The inserted material was masterfully done, very carefully filmed to present such a single continuous record of multiple warp jumps and atmospheric insertions and launches. The most masterful piece of logging I’ve ever seen.”

  “But couldn’t it have been substituted for the real log?” Kelly asked diffidently, for they had figured out how such a switch could have been made.

  “Now, how could that possibly have been done, young woman?” Martinson demanded, irate. “I was present the entire time. I saw Commander Rogitel remove the log box myself, package it very carefully, and carry it off the ship. No one could have substituted this ... this ...”

  Kiachif was waving a finger under Martinson’s nose. “That lassie has made a very good point, Martinson, so don’t get hot under your collar, which you aren’t wearing, but you’re getting riled.”

  “Commander Rogitel...” Martinson began again with greater indignation, but Kiachif’s crow of exultation totally disconcerted him.

  “I wouldn’t trust an Amalgamated Bond, sealed, signed, secured, if that Spacedep stringy bean gave it me. Ah, no,” Kiachif said. “I’ll bet my White Lightning herself that that’s when a switch occurred. Found the real log, lassie?”

  Kelly shook her head. “We only figured out how and when the other day.” She wanted desperately to get Dr. Tylanio and Kiachif to herself to tell them about Newry, which she couldn’t quite do in front of Martinson. For all that she knew Martinson was respected and seemed straight as a die, she wasn’t going to take any chances. Especially as he seemed to think Commander Rogitel was such an upright type.

  “So when d’you expect your men back, Patricia?” Kiachif asked easily.

  “I don’t know, Ali,” she said, and began to wring her hands. “They should have been back the next day. And now there’s this awful rumor that they never appeared before the panel at all. That they’ve ... they’ve skipped out of an untenable situation.” Pat blurted the slander out and then began to weep. Kelly put her arm around her protectively.

  “Never!” Kiachif said in a voice that would have been heard from stem to stern of the White Lightning through closed safety hatches.

  “Commander Rogitel escorted them,” Kelly said in a caustic voice, her eyes on the captain. “With marines. I heard,” and while she couldn’t mention Madam Dupuis, she was certainly the most reliable source, “that two strange and armed Hrrubans took over from the marines when they got on the grid.”

  “Did they, now?” Kiachif’s eyes went wide. “Now, that’s a nasty turn-up. And I’ll tell you one thing.” He swerved toward Martinson, his long stained finger almost in the man’s nostrils. “I don’t want to hear one more word from anyone that Ken Reeve, or Todd, skipped out of any obligation—to Doona, to Amalgamated Worlds, even to ol’ Terra! You see that gets put about right smart, Martinson. I’ve known Ken Reeve a quarter century. He’s run at a lot of stuff I’d never be caught charging, but he’s done it and won out over odds that would have pipped plenty on this planet. If he didn’t show up when and where he was supposed to, then he was prevented, if you understand me. Now, you dry those tears, Patricia Reeve, and stand up proud for your man and that fine son of yours,” he said, somewhat awkwardly but kindly patting her shoulder. “Your man is a fighter. Your boy, too. They’ll be back, sure enough, before you’ve any more time to miss them.”

  “Thank you, Ali,” Pat said gratefully. “You know him in ways I don’t. You’ve given me new hope. And so have you, Dr. Tylanio. You were so good to come all this way for us.”

  The laser expert took an envelope from his pocket. “This is a copy of my report, signed and sworn to by an accredited Amalgamated Worlds notary. Your son and your husband will doubtless find this useful. I will, of course, be happy to testify in person to the authenticity of my investigations.” Tylanio handed it to Pat and bowed. With Martinson at his side, he left the room.

  “You see, signed, sealed, and sworn to. Proof positive of no perjury, Patricia,” Kiachif said in a low voice. He gave her one more squeeze and started for the door.

  With the pretext of courtesy, Kelly followed him, touching his arm and bending close to his ear. “I gotta see you, Captain, and preferably before that expert leaves the planet.” Kiachif gave an almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgment, not so much as altering his stride as he continued on out of the house. Then she turned back to Pat, Inessa and Robin comforting her, and said in her normal tone, “I’d better get on home now but I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  She clattered down the steps, whipped Calypso’s reins free from the rail as the men piled into the flitter. As it took off, it wallowed from side to side and she grinned. Trust Kiachif. Which she did.

  * * *

>   Kelly had been looking over the last charges against the boys that still had to be cleared before Treaty Renewal Day. And the valuables and interdictables they were supposed to have stolen and secreted on the Albie would be the hardest part. Having Dr. Tylanio’s proof that the log tape had been altered, or even a carefully edited one substituted, was a real relief. If only they could somehow prove that Commander Rogitel had switched the doctored tape for the genuine log record ... He’d had more opportunity than anyone else. And reason.

  But if the tapes of alleged visits to collect valuable artifacts, including the Byzanian Glow Stone, were adjudged a simulation, then they hadn’t been where they were accused of stealing things. They hadn’t stolen anything. As Todd and Hrriss maintained, all that junk had been planted on the Albatross and that had to have been done while the Albie was on the pad at Hrretha. Rogitel had been there.

  But where were Todd and his father? Thank goodness, Captain Ali had soothed Patricia Reeve on that score. Maybe the word that they were detained would get out and Robin wouldn’t be sporting black eyes for defending the family honor. She knew Hrriss was lying low. Which was smart of him. Rogitel might not have considered the young Hrruban dangerous when he shooed him out of the Launch Center, but Newry knew different. Why hadn’t Todd come out with an accusation right then? In front of the marines. Surely they could be made to testify ... or could they?

  A tiny noise penetrated her cogitations. Looking up from her desk, she nearly fell off her chair at the face grinning outside her window.

  “You scared me to death, Captain Ali,” she whispered hoarsely at him.

  “Your manner did suggest a need for caution, lassie.”

  It wasn’t the first time Kelly had crawled through that window, and taking the captain’s hand, she ran with him to the deep shadows of the barn where no one was likely to look for them.

  “You hit the nail on the head with Klonski, you know,” she said, “though I daren’t even get in touch with Inspector DeVeer right now.”