The Patrol-Sergeant took a note from the Yeoman manning the desk outside and brought it to his commander. She glanced at it, then called out permission to enter.

Two men strode into the already crowded room. Rael's spirit lightened at the sight of them. Miceal Jellico and Jan Van Rycke! She had no idea how they came to be here, but she felt a galaxy easier in her mind now that they were. A really good Trade Captain/Cargo-Master team was a force to be reckoned with on any level, even by the ranking officers of the rightly famed Stellar Patrol. Short as her term of service aboard the Solar Queen had been, it was long enough for her to recognize that these two were among the best in the starlanes. Their support would go a long way in bolstering her cause ... if they believed her story.

The Captain came to a stop before the Patrol commander's desk. "Jellico of the Solar Queen," he told her.

"This is Van Rycke, my Cargo-Master."

"Patrol-Colonel Ursula Conn."

Miceal gazed coolly at his junior staff. "What have these four shooting stars managed to stir up this time? Your agent informed us that you're holding them here but that they're not in trouble themselves."

"They're not unless they've dreamed up what they conceive to be an elaborate joke, which," she added hastily, forestalling an outburst of the anger she saw flash in Rael's tired eyes, "I don't believe is the case. They may, on the other hand, be mistaken. - Doctor Cofort, please repeat what you've just told me. I have it all recorded., but I'd prefer to hear it live again myself."

The Medic complied. Although she felt drained and her nerves seemed stretched beyond the snapping point, she was encouraged by that request. It meant Cohn was giving serious consideration to her theory.

She did not take nearly so long this time. There were no interruptions, and her thoughts were fully organized and consolidated.

No one spoke for a few moments after she had finished, then the Patrol-Colonel pressed her hands on her desk as if trying to shove the whole matter away from her. "It doesn't sound any less wild on the second hearing."

Jellico walked over to the chair where Rael was sitting and lay his hands on her shoulders. Strength seemed to flow from him, bracing her so that her shoulders straightened a little. "Whether she's right or navigating clear off the charts," he declared flatly, "given their nature and the logic backing them. Doctor Cofort had no moral or legal option but to report her suspicions."

The older woman sighed. "No more than I have any option except to investigate her allegations." The s.p.a.cer's suggestion was mad, vile, and an on-world police officer might have dismissed it outright as sheer insanity, but the Patrol had its file of atrocities; this would not even make the list of its stellar entries. Considering what misnamed humans had done to their fellows in the past-and not the terribly distant past-it had to be viewed as well within the realm of possibility.

"Then why are you holding us?" Ali demanded. He had picked that up from the Captain's introductory comments, and he recalled too clearly the treatment they had received while under suspicion of being part of a plague ship. It did not sound at all good to him.

"You four are staying out of sight until I've made some preliminary arrangements. I don't want any evidence destroyed before we can get our hands on it. If someone noticed my lads picking you up by that alley, I'd as soon let them imagine it had to do with a cargo or starship question, smuggling perhaps, and forget all about you.

Slight though the chance might be, I can't risk having a member of a conspiracy spot you on the loose, make some sort of connection, and start protecting his fins."

"Why bother calling the Captain if that's the case?"

"Because the Stellar Patrol doesn't make a practice of detaining innocent citizens incommunicado indefinitely!"

The surplanetary transceiver on her desk buzzed for her attention. The Colonel listened for a couple of minutes, then thanked the caller on the other end.

She carefully deactivated it again and turned to those crowding her office. "That was the lab," she reported somberly. "Your evidence seems to be the real thing, Doctor Cofort."

"Bone?"

She nodded. "Human, not long dead, and every part of it is scratched and scored, as if by the action of numerous small, very sharp teeth."

10.

"Not to tell you your business. Colonel," Van Rycke said after an instant of grim silence, "but it might be advisable to pay that alley a visit real soon."

"This very night, Mr. Van Rycke. All of us." She nodded when his brows rose. "I'm deputizing you six. My command's limited in number, and I'll need the others elsewhere. - Keil, get us a leg of rambeef, a fine big one with a long length of exposed bone."

Thorson frowned. "Will it work, Colonel Cohn? They've killed recently, apparently. No matter how nameless their victims, they'd still give themselves away if they did it too frequently. If the rodents are caged . . ."

"We'll give it a try. I'm putting credits down that the fall of a relatively heavy object on or near that step is the signal that calls them. If they respond in sufficient number, we've got a good part of our case. If they don't, all we've lost is a nice piece of meat. We're raiding those swill joints anyway, and the erotic houses as well. If the port rats are there, we'll find them. If we're extremely lucky, we may pick up some doc.u.mentation as well, but I'm not counting on that."

"You'll be able to get warrants so quickly?" Rael asked in surprise. "With so little evidence of any sort?"

"We don't need any. Such niceties don't apply to Happy City and its sister pleasure districts."

She saw the s.p.a.cers' frowns and shrugged. "The Canuchean government doesn't approve of what goes on there. The lawmakers were wise enough to realize that an attempt to bar such activities outright would only result in driving them underground and open the way for a lot more besides. By confining the questionable industries to fixed areas, they can keep control over what does occur.

"Those who work in a pleasure district can, and often do, reap large profits, but they all must sign waivers accepting unannounced and possibly frequent searches of their businesses and residences, which also must be located within the district.

"Actually, not many complain. Most stay only a few years, make their pile, and run, and the legitimate concerns do recognize that the policy helps keep some less scrupulous folk relatively honest. The sale of raklick, crax, and a half dozen other similar poisons, the abuse of minors, grossly rigged gaming, plus all the violence that goes with them would be rampant without strong, unremitting control, to the point that a large part of the current clientele would be frightened off. Needless to say, there's always some of that going on, but it's at least kept in check, especially with the stiff penalties handed out for engaging in any of it."

"None of that's really Patrol work," Van Rycke pointed out. The interstellar force was on Canuche of Halio, one of this part of the Sector's better-developed planets, as a check against smuggling and to provide a.s.sistance to any ships coming into difficulty in the nearby starlanes. They should not have a great deal to do with basically surplanetary affairs.

"No," she agreed, "apart from watching for attempts to import controlled substances. The local police normally take care of Happy City, though we're legally empowered to do so as well. We'll prowl around in a slack period to see that visiting s.p.a.ce hounds don't get into or cause trouble, but that's about the usual extent of our on-world activities. We step in when we're asked, of course, or if we happen to spot something that looks amiss. Otherwise, we leave Canuchean business to the Canucheans."

Halio was well set by the time the flier left headquarters.

Rael Cofort was in the backseat, jammed between Jellico and Thorson. Colonel Cohn and Yeoman Keil Roberts were in the front, the latter at the controls. Their comrades had left some minutes earlier under the Sergeant's command, also in a civilian-type machine, to approach from a different direction. Those who would move in on the swill joints and erotic houses themselves were either already in place or would be so shortly. The s.p.a.cers had seen none of them.

The others were waiting for them, concealed by the deep shadows, when the flier reached its destination a few minutes later. Their vehicle had merely dropped them off a couple of blocks back and returned to headquarters.

Keil frowned. The alley behind all four of the suspect drinking establishments was in total darkness. "We have them on lighting violations anyway," he said in an almost soundless whisper to his commander.

Cohn nodded absently as she and her companions in the rear slipped from the flier. She could, see a little, thanks to the weak illumination provided by the erotic houses farther in. The fences were extended along the whole of the pa.s.sageway, all save those that should divide the s.p.a.ce of each of the suspect buildings from that of the others. So.

Whatever was going on here, and she could not doubt that something fairly extraordinary was, the swill joints were indeed in partnership, or at least actively cooperating with one another.

Music filled the air, blaring from every establishment, drowning out the more readily confined babble of voices.

Nothing moved out here. It was too early yet for the first loads of refuse to be dragged outside for morning pickup and far too soon for drunks to be seeking air or to unload the contents of their abused stomachs. Certainly, she could see no small, moving, furry things . . .

"All right, Mr. Thorson," she whispered, handing him the twenty-two-pound rambeef leg she had been guarding.

"You look like you've got the strongest arm among our junior members, not to mention the greatest height by an inch or two. Hop up that fence and give this a good toss inside."

"No!"

She glanced sharply at the Cargo-Master. "Mr. Van Rycke?"

"Look at that fence!"

The Patrol officer's mouth hardened as she realized what he meant. "Thank you, Mr. Van Rycke," she said quietly.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Thorson. I don't know how much of a charge that thing carries, but if you had been injured or worse, the guilt would've been mine. - Whatever about Doctor Cofort's theory, these sons of Scythian apes are involved in some strange business, and it's neither clean nor small."

She glanced at their vehicle. "Keil, bring the flier over here. He can throw it from the hood."

"I could just fly over and drop it," the Yeoman suggested.

"No. We'd be begging to be seen. Keep outside the fence. We're taking enough of a chance as it is. Nothing vanishes faster than solid evidence."

The machine's body might be that of any civilian craft of the same general type, but its innards were all service standard. It started and moved with barely a whisper, hardly sufficient sound for them to catch although they were instinctively straining to detect the slightest noise. It would not give them away unless someone actually came or looked outside, and if that happened, they were betrayed anyway.

Jellico tensed as if for battle as Dane scrambled onto the rounded hood. The vehicle rose smoothly until it was level with the top of the wall, then hovered there. Thorson cautiously rose to his knees, his s.p.a.cer's balance holding him in place as he prepared to make his cast.

Miceal glanced at the woman beside him. Rael Cofort was standing straight and perfectly still. She seemed utterly alone in this moment of testing, and as he had done in the Patrol-Colonel's office, he placed his hand on her shoulder, this time only one hand. The other grasped the hilt of his blaster.

He could feel the tension in her. In the next few seconds, her story might or might not be verified. That in itself was enough to draw the nerves taut, and if it did prove out, they could conceivably find themselves facing the same dire peril that had claimed the owner of that pitiful sc.r.a.p of gnawed bone and an uncounted number of others before him. She had to be afraid, she who had the power to envision all this. The rest of them were.

No, he thought, he wronged the Medic in that, or wronged her in good part. He had learned something of her by that time. Rael was certain in her own mind of the accuracy of her deductions and had the imagination to appreciate very clearly the potential consequences of forcing this confrontation, but she was also thinking of the victims who had been taken in the trap they were trying to break and of those who would follow if she failed to prove her case tonight.

Dane made his throw. There was a sharp crack as the big bone protruding from the meat struck the pavement beside the step.

Jellico slowly drew his weapon. Like those of the others, it was set at broad beam to slay to provide the greatest possible defense. He glanced once more at Rael and nodded in satisfaction. She, too, had her weapon at ready in her hand.

Determination hardened in him. If the worst happened, if they found themselves facing the horde they had come to detect and could then not fight their way free, he would see to it that this woman met a clean death and then give that same grace to as many more of his companions as he could before being brought down himself. That responsibility, too, lay upon a starship Captain ...

For several interminable seconds, there was no response, then an irregular stain of deeper darkness flowed, flooded, out from the base of the building. A cluttering squeal, as if issuing simultaneously from a hundred thousand small throats, accompanied the charge. In the next moment, the bait was covered.

"Let's have the beams," Ursula commanded in a tone hushed as much by horror as by the need to conceal their presence.

The flier's lights might have penetrated the Federation's worst h.e.l.l. There before them was a mouse-brown sea of writhing, struggling bodies, all snarling and fighting to reach the impossibly inadequate bounty that had summoned them.

A myriad on the outer fringes turned to face the intruders, fixing them with baleful, red-reflecting eyes, cruel fangs exposed in a desire that needed no common tongue to translate.

The outermost rodents came for the humans but stopped again as if at a wall a couple of inches from the fence. There they remained, stymied, access to the rambeef denied by the ma.s.s of their fellows, frustrated in their hunger to claim the greater feast beyond by the well-known power of the fence.

"That explains why it's electrified," Cohn muttered.

She brought the transceiver clutched in her left hand to her lips. "The rats are here," she said tersely to the raiders awaiting her order. "Go on, but in the name of all we revere, be careful when you hit the cellars. These things came out of there. They may go back in, and there might be still more of them waiting down there."

11.

The crew of the Solar Queen crowded into the mess the following morning to hear their Captain's summary of the report he had just received from Ursula Cohn.

"... The Patrol got everything they needed-records and live rats, four-legged and plenty of the biped variety just begging to sing in order to save their own hides, if only to spend the remainder of their days in the galactic pen.

"It was as nasty an operation as I've ever heard described. There's a lot of gem mining on Canuche, apparently, mostly mid-quality amethysts and garnets with an occasional small sunstone thrown in to keep the prospectors dreaming. Everything's minor scale, one or two guys roaming around the mineral country and leasing claims for a couple of years, then coming in with the take. No one ever gets enough to make a larger or more complex operation economically feasible, but the total is a welcome addition to the stocks of the local gem merchants, even without the odd sunstone. The stones facet nicely and can be priced low enough to be readily affordable by the bulk of the laboring people, who form a steady market for them."

"Maybe we should keep that in mind and bring a small stock of semiprecious material back with us if we plan a return visit," Van Rycke said half to himself. "But go on, Miceal. What do a few not particularly exciting gemstones have to do with murder by rat?"

"They can't be eaten," he responded grimly. The Captain marshaled his thoughts. "The prospectors fall into two general types. The most common are those who work at it for a few years, then take the money and use it to complete their education, stake a business start, or finance a trading venture or some personal dream. The rest are the perpetual drifters, not much different from their counterparts throughout the Federation, marginal folk, many of them in their middle years or older, forever talking of striking a big pocket of sunstones and retiring, in luxury but lacking any real purpose or concrete ambition. Some eventually do save a good bit, enough for them to finally leave the work comfortably fixed, but most're content to mine their claims until their leases expire, sell off the rights, and use most of the credits to pick up another, then blow the better part of whatever remains on a week-long fling in Happy City or one of the other pleasure districts."

"The prospectors were the targets?" Jasper Weeks inquired.

The Captain nodded. "The drifters, chiefly. The others have plans for their gains and aren't about to spend or lose much on a binge. If they show up in Happy City at all, it's with a very small squandering purse.

"Most of the others aren't vacuum-brains, either. They don't want to get back-alleyed for flashing a big roll after they've been sampling the local wares for a while. They make sure they've secured a new lease and have whatever stones or credits they want to keep banked somewhere safe before they start to party.

"There are always the few, though, who insist on a couple of drinks or a smoke at once, as soon as they get their hands on some credits, much to the joy of the unscrupulous. It goes without saying that they usually wind up voluntarily tossing away or being relieved of everything they have on them, whatever their original intentions.

"About twelve years ago, the proprietor of the Red Garnet began to cast about for ways to capitalize on that particular source of income. First off, he a.s.signed employees to try to sniff out vulnerable prospectors at the leasing office or, failing to carry them off there, to trail them to another establishment and lure them back to the Garnet.

"The next problem was to keep them there long enough for them to hand over whatever credits they had. According to Colonel Cohn, most Canucheans want to sample the full spectrum of a pleasure district when they visit one, move from one place to another, stretch out their fun as much as possible. To counter that tendency, he brought his neighbors in on his plan. He knew he would have to do so anyway if he was going to carry it to fruition. They were already in partnership for importing and distributing controlled substances and rigging gambling, so he knew he'd have no trouble convincing or working with them. He kept full control of the operation from the start and gradually introduced its grosser aspects.

"He realized from the outset, of course, that even with gaming he had few legitimate or semi-legitimate means of getting at the stones his victims might be carrying, which in most cases form the princ.i.p.al part of a prospector's h.o.a.rd. It's not permitted to accept them as payment for any goods or services in Happy City, and the police keep the district crawling with spotters to catch any violations of that rule."

"Drunks can be back-alleyed," Shannon pointed out.

"Only so many before the authorities begin to establish a pattern. However, if the victims can be made to vanish quickly, quietly, and completely, the operation could conceivably go on indefinitely as long as the conspirators don't get too greedy or overconfident and move too often or without proper care."

"Twelve years?" Dane whispered.

"Very nearly."

"The rats?"

"They were in it almost from the start," he averred. "The whole cellar of the Red Garnet was given over to them. They were closely caged but had free access via ramps to the alley, having been trained early to avoid the barrier of the fences. Similar guards defended the rest of the building and the other conspirators' places. They were always well enough fed to keep them willing to remain and accept the confinement. The only times feeding was cut back were the two periods each year when leases came due and prospectors were in town in number."

Craig was frowning. "That's still an awful lot of people in on a very black secret. The bosses I accept, but all those underlings? For that span of time?"

"Control was no problem," Jellico told him grimly, "not with raklick and a couple of the old opiates to tighten the leash, and if anyone seemed likely to rebel after learning a bit too much, well, the rats would have full bellies that night.

"It looks like only the four swill joints were involved, by the way. The erotic houses both appear to be clean."

He eyed Rael somberly. "You'll get a Patrol commendation for your part in this and maybe one from Trade as well.

Those rumors of s.p.a.cers vanishing now and then in Happy City have taken on a new significance in the last several hours." Particularly for Jan Van Rycke, he thought grimly.

An old Pool comrade of his, a loner, never very successful, had been among those thought to have disappeared in that wretched hole.

She shuddered. "I'll be content if it's just all over."

"Everything but the trials and executions," he a.s.sured her.

"One question, Rael," Rip Shannon put in. "Would you have been so quick to go to the Patrol if those two agents hadn't cornered us?"