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5

There was no trouble in Dr. Sutton's office, but somebody did become desperate. Herrick got a call from a storehouse clerk about unusual activity in the area. Supply Chief Willis, assisted by a man identified as Merriman, an aerial surveyor, was engaged in dumping unopened cases into the disposal; and Willis had ordered other storehouse personnel out of the structure. Herrick went there hurriedly with two security men. They met the two on the way out, and Willis and Merriman retreated into the disposal room. When Herrick's group forced its way through the door, the two stood before the activated disposal screen. Merriman was white-faced. Willis was grinning.

"Merriman would have surrendered," Herrick reported to Crowell. "But he didn't get the chance. Willis shoved him into the screen, then waved his hand at us and walked into the screen himself. We didn't have time to stop him."

There'd been two brief flashes of light, and the men were gone. Considerable speculation followed as to what Willis had been getting rid of, and why he'd preferred to murder an associate and kill himself to letting either be interrogated. Dr. Bates suggested that some of the cases might have contained biological agents. Experimental food crops and livestock, brought in to determine whether major projects on Kulkoor could become partly self-supporting, had been seriously affected by toxins of bacterial type, which hadn't yet been located in native life forms. The carriers could have been developed elsewhere, released here, to give further weight to arguments in favor of establishing a complete system of swimmer domes on Kulkoor. Laboratory-created diseases could have been scheduled to strike personnel next. Willis was in a position to conceal the fact that such materials had been delivered to the Base; and Merriman could have distributed them outside while appearing to be going about his work.

Crowell wasn't giving much attention to theories. Having started the initial investigation, it was essential to carry it through as quickly as possible, identify those involved in the conspiracy and get them out of action. Details and proof could wait. By mid-afternoon, he'd finished checking out all personnel on the Base and those flown in from outlying stations for the purpose. He wound up with eight prisoners—fewer than he'd expected. The crew of the sentinel ship remained to be investigated. There'd been no communication between ship and Base in the interval.

Ilken inquired, "Be legal to take Betheny and those other two up to the ship and freeze them?"

"It should be legal in the circumstances," Crowell said. "I could call it another form of detention. But I'll keep her down here. If she has other moves to make, I'd rather she makes them as soon as possible. The ship might become our lifeline. I wouldn't feel easy about having Betheny on it even in a frozen state."

"Think somebody might decide to let her wake up?"

Crowell shrugged. "You saw the effect she's had on our Base administration in the few days she's been around. She's here because she carries an overcharge of the universalis appeal. We'd better not take chances with it."

He appointed Hansen to act as Cencom's representative in his absence, contacted Captain Bymer and told him to send down the landing shuttle to take material evidence of the attack by the spaceskiffs on board for storage. He didn't mention that he and Ilken also would arrive on the shuttle.

* * *

The body of the spaceskiff pilot was taken to the sentinel ship's freezer and placed in a compartment. Leaving the section with Captain Bymer and Ilken, Crowell said, "Captain, there's a chance that some members of your crew have notions about taking over the ship. We've brought the means of identifying them with us. How would you suggest going about it without tipping them off?"

Bymer studied him a moment, said, "Let's go to the instrument room."

They went there, and Bymer dismissed the two men on duty. After they'd left, he said coldly, "The instrument room controls the ship, and I've now sealed it. Please tell me specifically what you suspect."

"Since we talked last," Crowell said, "we've uncovered evidence of a swimmer conspiracy on the Base. It's not a minor matter—the Public Servant is involved. We've nabbed the conspirators and cleared the rest of the Base personnel. You'll understand that we must start here by clearing you."

Captain Bymer's face reddened slowly. He said, "I have no objection to that."

Ilken took the interrogator out of its case and placed it on a table.

"Thank you, Captain," Crowell said presently. "You're not a swimmer conspirator—but you certainly have people on board who are. Your area scanners were in operation at the time my car was attacked by the spaceskiffs, weren't they?"

"They're in continuous automatic operation while we're at station," Bymer acknowledged. He hesitated. "You feel the ship that dispatched the skiffs should have been recorded?"

"Yes." Crowell described the details which made it seem the ship must have been in space approximately above the point of ambush. Bymer nodded. His expression was now grim. "After your call, I checked the tapes supposedly covering that time period," he said. "They showed nothing. But tapes can be replaced. Lieutenant Jones was monitoring the scanning devices at the time. He was alone in the instrument room:"

"Who assigned him to the duty?"

"First Officer Henderson." Bymer added, "Henderson's served with me for over four years."

"Well," Crowell said, "we'd better start with those two."

Lieutenant Alfred Jones was an apple-cheeked young man whose face remained respectfully puzzled as he listened to the disconnected string of words coming from a small instrument. The instrument disclosed to Crowell that the lieutenant reacted strongly to eight of those words. Without looking up, Crowell observed, "Good enough!"

Lieutenant Jones closed his eyes and slumped down on the table between them. Standing eight feet behind Jones, Captain Bymer shut off a small device and put it in his pocket. Together, he and Crowell carried the unconscious young man into an adjoining room and left him lying on the floor.

Summoned to the instrument room, First Officer Henderson strolled in smiling and pointing a gun at Bymer and Crowell. Then he dropped the gun with a gasp, looked down white-faced at the Mailliard tarsh transfixing his wrist, and fainted.

"Under the circumstances," Crowell remarked, as Ilken came forward from the door of the other room, "we'd better check out the ship's surgeon next . . ."

There were no further problems. The Second Engineer and two of the remaining members of Captain Bymer's crew reacted positively to the swimmer test. They, the First Officer and Lieutenant Jones went into the personnel freezer. So did the eight prisoners Crowell then had brought up from the Base in the shuttle.

"There's a strong probability," he said to Bymer, "that a swimmer group is hidden out somewhere on Kulkoor, waiting for instructions from Betheny. Without her cooperation, we're not likely to locate them until they make a move. But if we can put the swimmer ship out of commission, the planetside's group's activities will be sharply restricted. What do you think of our chances of finding the ship?"

Captain Bymer said, "You're assuming it's remained in the Kulkoor System?" The computer technicians had restructured the scanning tape sections Lieutenant Jones had deleted from the record. The raider, clearly visible for a full twenty-five minutes before vanishing behind the curve of the planet, had been identified as the vessel which brought Betheny and her retinue to Kulkoor four days before.

"Definitely," said Crowell. "Getting Lieutenant Tegeler and myself killed was simply to be one step in an overall plan designed to put the Swimmer League in effective control of the Kulkoor Project. Whatever that plan was, the ship has a role in it. They've no way of knowing yet that we've taken countermeasures and have Betheny isolated, so they're somewhere within maximum transmitter range, ready to pick up orders. But that's still a great deal of space to go hunting around in at random."

Captain Bymer blinked reflectively.

"We shouldn't have to hunt for them at random . . ."

He explained. The swimmer ship wasn't likely to be drifting in open space while it waited. The Kulkoor System was a dirty one—masses of debris circling the sun between and beyond the four planets. The edges of such a meteoric cloud were the place to look for the raider; and there were a number of large ones currently not far from Kulkoor. They could use the ship computers to determine the most promising spots to start looking.

Crowell got in touch with Guy Hansen on the Base. "We'll have a better chance to sneak up on them if we maintain transmitter silence," he said. "It may take a couple of days. You needn't mention why we're maintaining silence. Call us only if you think there's a genuine emergency building up. We'll respond then, and be available shortly thereafter."

 

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