Crisis On Doona Part 28

. . 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?" Kiachifs 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 lot of stuff I'd never be caught charging, but he" done it and won out over odds that would have pipped plenty on this planet. If he didn't show u when and where he was supposed to, then he wa prevented, if you understand me. Now, you d those tears, Patricia Reeve, and stand up proud foi 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'!] be back, sure enough, before you've any more time to miss them."

"Thank you, All,' Pat said gratefully.

"You kno him in ways I don't. You've given me new hope And so have you, Dr. Tylanio. You were so goc': to come all this way for us." The laser expert took an envelope from hi pocket. "This is a copy of my report, signed anc sworn to by an accredited Amalgamated Wofid'.

notary. Your son and your husband will doubtle find this useful.

I will, of course, be happy to testif in person to the authenticity of my investigations.

Tylanio handed it to Pat and bowed. With Martin son at his side, he left the room.

"You see, signed, sealed, and sworn to. Pro& positive of no perjury, Patricia,' Kiachif said in low voice. He gave her one more squeeze an started for the door.

With the pretext of courtesy, Kelly followed him touching his arm and bending close to his ear.

gotta see you, Captain, and preferably before that expert leaves the planet." Kiachif gave an almos 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 subst.i.tuted, 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? Than goodness, Captain All had soothed Patricia Reev on that score. Maybe the word that they weri detained would get out and Robin wouldn't hi sporting black eyes for defending the family honor She knew Hrriss was lying low. Which was smart 0 him. Rogitel might not have considered the youn Hrruban dangerous when he shooed him out of th Launch Center, but Newry knew different. Wh; hadn't Todd come out with an accusation righ then? In front of the marines. Surely they could hi made to testify - - or could they?

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

You scared me to death, Captain All,' sh' whispered hoa.r.s.ely at him.

"Your manner did suggest a need for caution la.s.sie." It wasn't the first time Kelly had crawled througi that window, and taking the captain's hand, she ra with him to the deep shadows of the barn where ni one was likely to look for them.

"You hit the nail on the head with Klonski, yo know,' she said, "though I daren't even get in touc] with Inspector DeVeer right now."

"And which nailhead would that be, la.s.sie Kiachif asked. "Though Tylanio agrees privatel with me that the work on the tape is exactly the SOT of thing Klonski would do so well."

"You also said he was a genius at fixing securit systems." Kiachif nodded, his eyes glinting in th dark. "And Dalkey's records show he got paid several huge hunks of credit. I think some of it went to pay for him hobbling Doona's security satellites." "Oh-ho-ho! I've been away too long."

"You have.

Todd and Hrriss found payments to a Doonan account . and it belongs to Lincoln Newry."

"Martinson's a.s.sistant?" The whites of Kiachifs eyes, for once, Kelly noted, without bloodshot cobwebs, were visible in the shadow. "No wonder you wouldn't speak out in his presence. Does Patricia know?" Kelly shook her head. "She's got enough to fret over right now. "Sides, I didn't think it would cheer her up."

"Not a mite nor a moment, if her men are missing. Go on.

"Hrriss said Todd broke Newry down into admitting that he'd been letting the rustlers in and out of Doona, only when he was on duty.

The ship Todd saw the other night was probably registering on Unc's screens while he was denying an atmospheric insertion. "But the beacons "Klonski's fixed them. Hrriss said there's an unprogrammed function key on the launch board that interferes with satellite recording. Furthermore, Linc Newry can authorize export doc.u.mentation . like for Reeve freeze-marked livestock going off-planet to unknown destinations.

And the rustler is Mark Aden."

"That young lad? Hmmm, isn't often someone fools All Kiachif." The captain frowned. "The nerve of him, making me transport rustled animals! And all that scud about making a new life."

"Apparently he's made a very profitable one, Kelly said drolly. "At the Reeves' expense."

"But they always treated him well.

He even said so "Inessa didn't,' Kelly said. "She had a flirt with him but she gave up on him because he aiway' wanted her to get her father to help him get a ranch of his own. He was a funny guy, never forgave hasty word or a silly joke on him. Hrriss thinks he" the one seeded the ssersa. Todd found a half-empt sack of it by the corral he found. It'd be just the sort of rotten trick Mark Aden would do, to make Inessa sorry she ditched him."

"Fascinating, la.s.sie, fascinating.

I think Dr. Tyla mo has one more job before I return him to the quiet rectangles of his hall of learning." And between one breath and another, Captain All Kiachif disappeared. That night Kelly slept well for the first time since Todd and Ken had beer hauled off to Earth.

The very next morning, Kelly had a call from <" frantic="">

"Kelly, they are hunting Hrriss." The girl w sputtering so badly that Kelly at first didn't under stand the import of her words.

"Hunting? Hrriss?"

"The Treaty Controller has demanded his presence immediately on the Island. He sent four 0 the Third Speaker's special force for Arriss. "So where's Hrriss?"

"He has made himself scarce. Hrrestan told him that is what he must do. Oh, Kelly, I am so frightened. "Don't be,' Kelly said as firmly as she could. "I've got official confirmation that the Albie log tape was a fraud. Tampered with, fixed, altered. And that means that neither Todd nor Hrriss was where they're charged with being, so they couldn't have stolen those things. And illegal possession of those artifacts is really the last charge against them. And we'll soon have proof, too, of what Todd and Hrriss discovered talking to Linc Newry."

"But what good does all this proof do when Zodd is missing and Hrriss is, too?"

"A good point that, Nrrna,' Kelly said. "You just keep your cool, friend. It's up to us now." She stopped by the Reeves', just in the crazy hope that Todd and his father had returned home.

They hadn't and the gloom that hung over the ranch house was depressing. Kelly did ask to have a copy of Dr. Tylanio's doc.u.ment.

"To keep with all the rest of the evidence, Mrs. Reeve,' she said in an offhanded manner.

"You've got all these mysterious sources, Kelly,' Inessa accused Kelly, her face and eyes showing the strain that affected the entire family. "Why can't you find out about Dad and Todd?" Kelly suppressed her annoyance with the girl whose flirtation with Mark Aden was having such a long-range effect. Then, generously, Kelly reminded herself that Inessa had been just a kid at the time. Perhaps this would all sort itself out and Inessa would never realize that her childish infatuation was part of this dreadful affair.

Kelly left for Nrrna's house in First Village. She had all the proof they had so painstakingly gathered, including Hrriss's summary of Newry's disclosures. Surely that was enough! Surely Nrrna would see how terribly urgent it was that they stop messing with underlings and go to the top!

"Go to Hrruba? To First Speaker?" Nrrna's voice broke into a startled squeak and Kelly shushed her.

On her way into First Village, Kelly'd noticed some strangely accoutred Hrrubans milling around the clearing in the center: the biggest specimens of their species she'd ever seen. Deciding they were not in First Village for census taking, she ducked around, taking a narrow little track to the fencedin pasture where the village horses grazed. Unsaddling Calypso, Kelly turned her out and lugging saddle and the bulging pouches, finally reached Nrrna's house, entering by the back flap.

"We should have gone to First Speaker in the beginning, as Todd wanted to,' she said, a trifle annoyed with Nrrna's timidity.

"Oh, Kelly, no! I dare not!" Nrrna said. "It is absolutely forbidden to convey Hayumans to Hrruba."

"Now! But Todd's been there and he thought seeing Hrruna was his best chance." - "Todd went to Hrruba before the Treaty wa written and the Treaty has a clause utteri prohibiting visits from Hayumans. Todd was held in high honor by the Council of Speakers. .

Kelly flicked her eyebrows up in disgust. "Was held."

"He is honorable. He would say that he must obey that prohibition."

"Yes, but no one has specifically prohibited me and, where Todd is concerned, honor can go out the window for all the good it's done him lately!' Kelly scowled fiercely. "Look, both Todd and his father are missing.

Some nasty minds say they've done a flit because there's too much evidence against them." Nrrna was shaking her head now in staunch disagreement.

"Right. So something's happened to them. And it's up to you and me to get them released. Before the Treaty gets signed. So we go to Hrruba and sort things out."

"We can't do that."

"why not? You know how to work the grid controls. You sent me to Earth."

"But that was different,' Nrrna replied, aghast at Kelly's daring plan. "You are of Terran stock. It is not forbidden under the Treaty for you to travel to your homeworld. It would be as impossible for me to send you to Hrruba as it would be for me to go to Earth."

"You'd be with me. I'd be your guest, as Todd was the guest of Hrrestan and Mrrva twenty-odd years ago. And it's for the same important reason.

To save both our planets." She paused, watching Nrrna shake her head, her eyes mournfully big as she struggled with her principles-her honor. "This is the time to dare all. All for one and one for all." Nrrria smiled wanly at Kelly's joke, but it took two hours of solid persuasion to get the Hrruban to see that Kelly's daring plan was the only option open. Kelly ruefully insisted that this scheme also went against everything she had been brought up to believe sacred and binding. But sometimes one had to make exceptions. As Hrrestan and Mrrva, and Hrrula, had made an exception of the six-year-old Todd.

Nrrna still experienced pangs of deep guilt over telling Dalkey when the medical shipment was being sent out.

"This is the time for stouthearted females to save their menfolk, Nrrna. Or didn't you see those Hrruban heavies prowling around the village center?"

"what?"

"Go have a look,' Kelly said. "They're Third Speaker's or I don't know my Hrruban insignias.

And they're armed." As a terrified Nrrna sidled cautiously out the back flap, Kelly decided that if this wouldn't persuade the female, she'd have to think of some other plan. Only nothing, absolutely nothing, would come to mind.

when Nrrna returned, she was shivering and the fur along her entire stripe stood up.

"They are very powerful males. They are dangerous. They look for Hrriss." She took Kelly by the hand. "We must go to First Speaker.

Such males should not be on Rrala. They should not be in our village." There wasn't time to wait until dark, for the males might take to searching the houses and Kelly didn't think they'd like finding a Hayuman in a Hrruban village right then. She covered her bright hair with an edge of a sleeping fur and wrapped herself in Nrrna's big winter cloak, the all-important dossier clutched to her chest with one arm.

"We don't have to go to the Treaty Island grid to get to Hrruba, do we?" Kelly asked, suddenly realizing that her mad scheme had a few large holes in it.

"No, we can reach Hrruba from here,' Nrrna rea.s.sured her. For once the little female had made up her mind, she was capable of as much cool resolution as Kelly. "Until the Island grid was established, all shipping and travel were done through the village grids. It is only to satisfy the Controller of what is being sent in and out of Rrala that all goods now go first to the Island."

"Where are we likely to find the First Speaker?"

"First we will go to the Executive Cube which houses the Speakers' chambers. Someone there will direct us to First Speaker Hrruna." Nrrna was pressing the appropriate codes into the transport controls. She gestured for Kelly to step up onto the grid. "If they do not arrest us first.

Their first bit of good luck was that they arrived late in the Hrruban night. No one was immediately visible, although they heard the rumble of several voices issuing from a side corridor. Together they raced down the nearest aisle until they spotted a curtained alcove.

They dove behind this and sank to the floor, their knees c.o.c.ked so that they would not disturb the fall of the draperies.

when light began to filter through the sootcovered window, Nrrna carefully crept out to find out where she might find the First Speaker's quarters. She returned to Kelly, who had been fearful of discovery, that at any moment, a functionary would arrive to pull back the curtains.

"The Council is not in session today,' Nrrna whispered to Kelly.

"The First Speaker has expressed a wish to be alone in his retreat." Kelly's hopes crashed about her. Nrrna gave her hand a little pat, her eyes gleaming. "The chief of the Council chamber told me how beautiful was the First Speaker's retreat and I do not think he realized that he also told me exactly where it is. We must go swiftly while there are not too many using the slidewalks." Then she wrinkled her nose. "Even in that cloak, Kelly, you do not stand or walk or even smell like a Hrruban."

"It's too late to worry about a minor detail like that,' Kelly said, nervousness making her snappish.

"What about me limping and crouching over like I'm ancient or hurt?" "That is a very good idea, Kelly, and Nrrna nodded approvingly.

"I am your dutiful daughter, taking you to see the beauties of the countryside.

It is fortuitous that the fur you took is a white pelt.

Here." Nrrna made some rapid adjustments with her delicate hands, and, although Kelly felt she was more in danger of suffocation than discovery, she let Nrrna's strong hands guide her as she settled into a limping gait which she felt suggested advanced age and decrepitude.

With corridors and aisles separating blocklike buildings many levels deep, Hrruba was not unlike Earth, which surprised Kelly, though she managed only a few glimpses behind the folds of the pelt.

They rode a slow-moving beltway to a remote section of the capital city of Hrruba. Around them, Hrruban workers, clad in tool belts or robes to denote profession and status, pa.s.sed them on every side. The only differences between the Human workers of Earth and the Hrrubans were the preponderance of bright colors in the latter's dress, the inborn grace with which they moved, and the scent. Scent, not smell, for although it was just as strong as the odors of Earth's pa.s.sages, it was different.

"Do not speak if anyone b.u.mps you,' Nrrna whispered. "Your Hrruban is good, but your accent would inform anyone that you are from a colony." "I couldn't talk if I wanted to. Is it much farther?" Kelly murmured. Her right hip was protesting the unnatural gait, and she ached to stretch her back up.

Nrrna peered at the lettering on the block they were pa.s.sing, and her pupils contracted to slits in the strong light. "Not very far. We are nearing the pa.s.sageway. We must get off as soon as we see a lift.

First Speaker lives on the top floor." Hrruna's retreat was in a well-soundproofed block of the Hrruban residential complex. To the surprise of both Kelly and Nrrna, no one guarded the entrance or any of the lifts. Though only one, Nrrna discovered, went as far as the twenty-second story. When the lift stopped, the door slid back and, to their utter consternation, the First Speaker faced them. Later Kelly would remember that a green light blinked above the lift, informing the First Speaker that someone was coming to his retreat.

"By the first mother, what brings such a lovely young one to the door of such an old man? Is this your mother who comes to entreat me?

Or to protect her cub?" He beckoned them to leave the protection of the lift.

Once they had moved on into the first of the boxlike rooms that comprised the retreat, Kelly opened her hood. Hrruna's eyes widened with surprise and the barest trace of amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Not an aged and grieving mother, but a redheaded Hayuman. I have heard that such hair color is possible but never have I seen it." His wise eyes twinkled at her.

what surprised her most was his voice, clear and musical, and young! She could not believe that the greatest Hrruban of all would sound so young. She had met some of the other Speakers who came to New Home Weeks or other celebrations of importance on Rrala, but First rarely left Hrruba.

He had been old when the Treaty was first signed, but, in the intervening years, he seemed to have changed little from his image in the old tapes. His mane was as white as snow, and the fur on his face and chest was faded, too, making a striking setting for the characteristic bright green eyes of his kind.