“Didn’t they? Can you think of a better way to remove an embarrassment?”
“Perhaps not.” Shimming took a roll of white tablets from a drawer and began to suck one, rolling it about his mouth as though tasting a rare wine. “All the same, Dorcie Langer could have blackballed you.”
“She ought to be put away for trying to kill me.”
“We have no proof of that, Dennis. She says she locked the door on an intruder, which is what any normal woman might have done in the same circumstances.”
“Normal?” Hobart winced and gingerly pressed both palms to his cheeks. “The frost animals are more normal than she is.”
“Could be. Have you thought about how we must appear to them? Perhaps we’re the real frost animals.”
Hobart nodded, waiting for the pain in his face to subside. The creatures from Sirius VII no longer seemed quite so enigmatic since it had been established that they were life-oriented, reacting as positively as they could against any form of killing. It was due to that facet of their nature that he was still alive – because eighteen years earlier they had attacked Nolan Langer. Nobody would ever know the precise details of what had happened that night, but it seemed that Langer had lured Craven into the freezer house to kill him, and that the frost animals had attacked their owner during the crime. The colonel had not been forestalled – he was good at killing – but he had been obliged to seek medical treatment for frostbite.
And it had been Shimming’s belated discovery of this fact, hidden in a computerized medical report, which had set him wondering about the veracity of the long-dead colonel’s deposition. It chastened Hobart to realize he had been allowed to get away from his hotel, and that he had actually been under long-range surveillance right up to the moment he entered the freezer house, even though the final outcome had been in his favour.
“I ought to thank you,” he said, getting to his feet. “If it hadn’t been for you…”
“Forget it.” Shimming extended his hand. “I’ve had the pleasure of putting a couple of department politicians in their places. Come back and see me any time.”
“Thanks.” Hobart shook hands and paused awkwardly. “I’d like to come back, but they’ve assigned me to the Langer Maple – on the Sigma Draconis run – which means…”
“A three-or four-year round trip for you, but forty years for me on Earth. I’ll most likely be dead when you get back.”
“I wasn’t going to put it like that.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Shimming laughed, almost brutally, and for an instant his eyes resembled those of Dorcie Langer – suspicious, resentful, hostile. “If I’m not worried about it, why should you be?” Hobart nodded, his sense of alienation complete, then turned and left the office, already wondering how he was going to get through the month that lay ahead before he could rejoin his own kind and take flight among the stars.