Kill Station (23 page)

Joss snorted. "I measured it at five hundred thousand C, or thereabouts. Trouble was, the hull sensors aren't built to handle that kind of thing. The estimate might have been low."

"Low," Evan breathed.
Diw. .
. . "That's hotter than the inside of most stars," he said.

"Just about all of them," said Joss. "The slightest contact would have boiled our hull off. Vacuum is a pretty effective insulator, but don't ever let one of those things touch you. It doesn't require anything like a direct hit, on man or vessel."

Evan shook his head. "How are they
doing
that?"

"Pocket fusion, probably," Joss said. "But that's technology for you. Wouldn't the Space Forces just love those?"

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"Not sure the Government would let them have them," Evan said softly. "Might give them ideas, might it not?"

"Somebody has ideas already. Evan, who
are
these people?"

Evan shook his head.

"It's not drugs," Joss said. "No one out here has the kind of money to attract the drag trade. What other kind of people have enough money to buy weapons like that? And how many other ships equipped like that are running around out here?"

Evan looked at Joss and thought for a moment. "One might make inquiries," he said, "through the SP, to see which of the big companies have sold weapons of this sort to whom recently."

Joss sighed. "They'll fight it," he said. "Dammit, most of them are based on Earth, out of our jurisdiction, and SP

subpoena powers won't work."

"They have offices," Evan said, his eyes glinting, "on the Moon. They might have copies in their computers of some of the records. Joss, we have to start somewhere-assuming that other methods of inquiry," and he frowned at Joss,

"don't pan out."

Joss frowned back for a second. Then his expression lightened. "It'd given Lucretia something to do besides complain about our expense account, wouldn't it?"

Evan was stricken at the thought that he hadn't even looked at his data pad for a couple of days now. He sat there in shock.
Can he be right?
he thought.
And
is
she affecting my ability to function?

And oh, good God, how can I function
without
her?

"There's this, too," Joss said. "Even if the weapons manufacturers on the Moon have the records we're after, you know perfectly well that the end-use certificates will have been tampered with. We won't be left with any clear idea of who the braided lasers were really sold to, or where they went. They'll certainly have covered their tracks that well."

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"But it will be a start," Evan said. "All we know at the moment is that someone out this way is doing something clandestine—and expensive, to judge by the presence of the weapon, if nothing else. And what do they want with weapons like that? What are they planning?"

Joss tapped briefly at the command console as a light came on indicating the Willans approach beacon. "And we can't drag our feet about this, either," Joss said as he worked. "They've run across us, now, getting close to whatever they're doing out there. Someone will try to cover it up."

"Or cover
us
up," Evan said, "six feet deep or so."

Joss nodded. "The sooner the better," he said. "Willans approach control, this is SP vessel
Nosey.
Is the airlock clear?"

"All clear, Mister Sop Honey," Cecile said. "Come on in."

"Cecile, do you
ever
sleep?" Joss said.

"Depends on who asks me." .

"Later, Cecile. We've got fish to fry. Is George back in?"

"Yup. Came in in a bit of a hurry."

"I just bet he did," Joss said, keeping his tone light; but Evan could see his face, and wasn't sure the tone would stay light when Joss found George. "Okay. Call Noel, will you, and tell him we need to see him in his office in ten minutes?''

"No sooner said than done. Willans out."

THEY
FOUND HIM
IN HIS
OFFICE, ON
TIME, AND

looking agitated. This suited Evan well enough for the time being; he was feeling rather agitated himself.

"Are you two all right?" Noel demanded, leaving off sorting through yet another pile of paper, and hurrying over to them. "George was just in here in kind of a state."

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"I don't doubt it," Joss said, "since somebody with a nuclear laser just tried to put salt on his tail. And ours."

"A what??"

Joss told him. Noel sank down to sit on one of the piles of paper on his desk, and never even noticed.

"My God," he said, "Joss, you do know that his ship isn't armed?"

"I was hoping so. Never mind that, then. But Noel, someone on this station is feeding information to the people who have been causing your disappearances."

"What?"

"I have been collecting radar signatures of the ships that went missing," Joss said. "Your approach control has them on file in the computers as part of the docking management and recognition systems. The ship that attacked us exactly matches the radar signature of one of the ships that was reported missing a month and a half ago, and is
not
in your salvage pile. At least, to the best of my knowledge. I want that pile torn apart, Noel, so that I can go through my little list and cross off ships I know I don't have to worry about. Because apparently others of them are going to turn up to haunt us."

Noel nodded. "Right away."

"This evening at the latest. And there's the matter of finding out just who here is passing out information to the people who were shooting at us. And how they're doing it. And if possible, why. And there's someone I want to find." He described the skinny, scarred man who had been tampering with the ship that morning. "This is the lad who tried to do me in the other day in the salvage pile. He has about five friends who very conveniently helped him get away from me. They were organized. The sabotage was planned, and well planned. What they did to our ship, or would have done, would have killed us very dead. And doubtless solved all their problems for the moment. But I
like
being a problem.'' Joss grinned in a manner that suggested to Evan that he was getting ready to be more of one, somewhere else.

"Anyway, I want that man found and arrested. Pass the word around that there's a five thou-SPACE COPS
169

sand credit reward from the SP, payable immediately." Joss smiled slightly, as Evan inwardly cringed at the thought of what Lucretia was likely to say. Noel's eyes bugged a little. "Five thousand?" "I should think that would provoke some action," Evan said, "and action would seem to be something we need." "Right," Joss said. "Oh, and a one thousand credit bonus if the perp is brought in before eighteen hundred tonight. We may not be here when he's brought in, but we'll get to him as soon as we can. You work on him and soften him up in the meantime. Let him know that we're considering extended law in his case." Evan glanced up in approval. "Extended law" meant that a sop was ready to serve as judge, jury, and executioner to prevent a loss of order in a jurisdictional area. It was not invoked too often, but once an SP court had confirmed the correctness of the action, no other court had any power of appeal against what had been done. "Let's see; what else?" He thought for a moment. "That should do it for a moment. One thing, though, Noel—" "Anything."

"Why the hell are all the golf carts painted pink?" Noel stared at him for a moment, then laughed. "Oh! It's tradition.

Willans is a Swiss name, it turns out. The founding family came from Basel. In Basel City, they used to have a stock of city bicycles. Anybody could use them. If you needed to ride somewhere, you picked up a bike from one of several depots, or just off the street, wherever you liked. When you were done with it, you left it for someone else to take.

They were all painted pink. When the Willanses came here, they did the same thing with the carts, that's all."

Joss shook his head. "All right," he said. "Evan?" "I think we need to go ask some people some questions," Evan said to Noel. "If you should chance to see Mell Fontenay, I'd appreciate it if you'd tell her we're looking for her." "Will do,"

Noel said.

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EVAN LED THE WAY. HE KNEW IT WELL ENOUGH

by now, the twisty path through the corridors into the Old Town, where the ceilings grew lower, and the walls closer together, and the air got cool as the path sloped downward, letting them know they were tunneling into the rock. It was actually a very small area, relatively speaking, not more than half a mile across or so, but the tunnels twisted and curved, servicing the places where natural pockets in the stone had made it easy to cut cubic out of them.

"Down there," Evan said, "around the corner."

Joss nodded, his face expressionless. They came to Mell's door, an old-fashioned one, with a knob and a metal lock. Evan lifted his hand to knock.

Needlessly; the door was open.

"Mell?" Evan said, and looked in.

"Where is she?" someone screamed from inside, and a body hurtled out the door and hit Evan about chest-high. Normally he would have gone right over, but at the moment he was still wearing his suit—

community relations be damned,
he had thought on getting out of the ship— and with the bracing from the built-in servos, the effect was rather the same as if George had jumped straight at a brick wall. For it was George. He bounced, stood there staggered for a moment, and then jumped at Evan again.

This time Evan caught him, as gently as possible, and held him away. George struggled in his grip, but it was of course completely useless. "Damn it all," George shouted, "this is your fault! Where is she?"

Evan shook George, not hard, then put him down hurriedly; there was something embarrassing about holding so strong and angry a man helpless, like a child. "Hush now, George," he said. "We don't know where she is, either. We were just coming to look for her. What's happened here?"

George glared at Evan, gestured angrily at the room,

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and turned his back on him. Evan stepped in and looked around.

"Oh, heaven," he said, and drew a long breath at the look of the place. Just yesterday it had been as cool and handsome a set of rooms as one could hope for: the furniture and decorations all very simple, elegant, plain, mostly white, with some pieces of real antique Danish Modern that must have cost a great deal of Mell's savings and went spectacularly well with the rough stone walls. But now half the furniture in the sitting room was overturned, some of it broken, drawers and cupboards thrown open and their contents scattered on the floor with books, dishes, clothing. In the next room, the bedroom, the place had been ransacked in the same way. How neat it had all been just yesterday, how calm and dim in the candlelight, with the big Amerindian tapestry over the bed glowing orange and cream and brown. But now the tapestry was pulled down and the bedcovers were flung away.

"No sign of forced entry," Joss said from behind him, and the clinical sound of his voice brought Evan down from the crescendo of fear that was beginning to build in him. "She must have known whoever it was who tore the place up, and let him in."

At that, Evan looked at George, and George looked at Evan. "You two stop it," Joss said sharply.

"Neither of you would have had the opportunity, or the time. Evan has been with me, and as for you, George, you didn't do it, because I watched your radar trace all the way back in and you barely landed five minutes ahead of us. Now, who
would
do a thing like this?"

George shook his head. "No one would have," he cried, "if she hadn't been seeing
you!"

Evan went ashen.

"Whether that's true or not," Joss said, "it's not helping us. And George, I hate to say it, but at the moment we're dealing with things that are a little more important than one disappearance—though they're almost certainly connected. I just hope that by solving one, we can solve
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the other. Now listen to me." Joss grabbed George and steadied him. "You think about who around here might have lots of money to spend on guns like the one that almost burned your ass off. And when you have some answers, come back and talk to us. We'll be here for awhile. But for pity's sake, man, don't radio us anything on an open channel."

Joss headed into the bedroom, had a quick look around and came back shaking his head. "Trashed," he said, "that's all. No shots fired that I can see, no blood."

Evan had flipped down one of the analysis plates in his helm and was looking around for traces of chemicals and bright infrared traces, but there was nothing to be found. "A struggle," he said, "and then someone dragged her off. Several someones, it would have had to be, knowing Mell."

Joss nodded. "My friends from this morning, possibly. Damn! I want that man found." He stalked around the room one more time, looking at things. "Someone she knew," he said softly. "But she must have known everybody in this place."

George nodded. "Just about."

"Wonderful," Evan said. "That leaves us only everyone on the station to talk to."

. "Well, we have some hints, anyway," Joss said. George looked at him blankly, which was possibly what Joss had in mind. "Evan, let's get back to
Nosey;
we have some nosing to do. George—don't leave town."

Joss headed out. Evan went after him, giving George what was meant to be a sympathetic look as he went. He wasn't sure how sympathetic it looked to George, since the man scowled and turned away.

Evan's insides were one huge scowl of anger and fear themselves, but he kept the feeling out of his face and headed after Joss, to work.

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"TWO AND A HALF GODDAM HOURS," JOSS SAID