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Chapter 6

Take a personalized finger-ring type transceiver and plant it in some place where it cannot easily be seen but from where it can pick up normal, or even whispered, conversation—and you have a quite effective bug. Have a receiver-cum-recorder tuned to the frequency of the transceiver, continuously monitoring—and you're in business. Take a Corporal of Marines who has done a few courses in electronics and who has been ordered by his superior officer to be alert for bugging—and you're not in business for long.

Sonya, accompanying Grimes and Williams on Daily Rounds, had managed to plant two of her special finger-rings, one of them among the glittering flowers and fruit of the Eblis jewel cactus that was the pride and joy of the Marines' mess deck—they regarded the thing as a sort of mascot—and the other in a ventilation duct in Dalzell's cabin. A couple of recorders, locked in the Commodore's filing cabinet, completed the assembly.

Grimes, Williams, Mayhew and Sonya listened rather guiltily to the results of the first (and only) day's monitoring.

Male voice: Hey, boys! Old Spiky's sprouted a new jewel!

Another voice: How did you find it, Corp?

First voice: Easy. The bloody thing's radiatin' like a bastard. The Major thought that there might be somethin' like this left lyin' around. For once he was right.

Another voice: Ain't no flies on the Major. Can I have a look at it, Corp? Thanks. Oh, here's a thing, an' a very pretty-thing, an' who's the owner of this pretty thing?

Another voice: Need you ask? The bleedin' Duchess, that's who. Mrs. snooty ex-Federation Survey Service Grimes.

Another voice: Careful. She's not so "ex." She's still a Commander on their Reserve List . . .

First voice: An' so bleedin' what? I'll spell it out to you. One—we're members of the Marine Corps of the Confederacy . . .

Voices: We're the worst curse of the Universe
We're the toughest ever seen,
And we proudly bear the title of A Confederate Marine!

First voice: Pipe down, you bastards. Let me finish. One—we're members of the Marine Corps of the Confederacy. Two—the Federation ain't liable to happen for another trillion years or so.

Another voice: An' neither's the Confederacy, Corp.

First voice: But we're here, ain't we? Gimme that ring back, Timms. I'm takin' it to the Major. Thanks. But first . . . Ah. That's fixed you.

There was nothing more on that tape but a continuous faint crackling. The other recorder at first played back only the small sounds that a man would make alone in his quarters. There was the clink of glass on glass and the noise of liquid being poured. There was a sigh of satisfaction. There was an almost tuneless humming. Then there was the sharp rapping of knuckles on plastic-covered metal.

Major: Come in, come in. Oh, it's you, Corporal.

Corporal: Yessir. I found this, sir. Mixed up in Old Spiky, it was.

Major: Is it working?

Corporal: It was working, sir.

Major: Oh. Oh, oh. And I always thought, until now, that the Commodore was an officer and a gentleman. This shakes my faith in human nature. First of all, that bloody commissioned tea-cup reader, and now this.

Corporal: Careful, sir.

Major: You mean . . . ?

Corporal: Yes, sir.

Major: Why the hell didn't you say so before?

And that was all, save for minor scrapings and scufflings that told of a search being made. It was not a long one; presumably the Corporal had some sort of detecting equipment. And then the second transceiver went dead.

Sonya sighed, "Oh, well. It was a good try."

"A try, anyhow," said Grimes.

"An' you'd better not try again," warned Williams. "Come to that, it'll be as well if you don't come with us again on Rounds—not in Marine country, anyhow. Those bastard's be quite capable of rigging a booby trap, just out o' spite. Somethin' that'd look like a perfectly normal shipboard accident." He laughed. "There's an old saying. Listeners never hear good o' themselves! We learned the truth of that!"

"We also learned," said Mayhew, "that our brown boys aren't as smart as they think they are. If they were really bright they wouldn't have let us know that they'd found the bugs." Then he muttered something, in a hurt voice, about "commissioned tea-cup readers."

"But we're no forrarder," said Grimes glumly.

And you can say that again, he told himself. In the old days, the good old days of wooden ships and sail, the Marines had been the most trusted and most trustworthy personnel aboard a vessel, being berthed between the quarterdeck and the seamen's mess decks, a sea-borne police force, ever on guard against mutiny.

But now . . .

Then the Commodore allowed himself a faint smile. After all, a certain Corporal Churchill had been among the Bounty mutineers.

"What are you grinning about?" demanded Sonya.

"Nothing," he said. "Nothing at all, Mrs. Bligh."

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Framed