"Absolutely, darling," she responded in a deep, businesslike tone. "If you're that worried, call and leave someone."
"No, we'll be gone too long to make that practical. I just have that feeling we're being watched, that's all. I shouldn't like unwanted visitors in there while we were away for so long."
"Oh, relax. It would scare the living daylights out of any silly policeman who tried. Come! I'm anxious to be off!"
Macouri nodded and sighed. "Very well, my dear. I suppose you're right." He turned and entered, followed by his companion, and the door slid silently closed.
Within a minute or two, Murphy could hear the low whine of the engine and feel the vibration even a block and a half down, and the aerobus lifted up and quickly moved off and away into the darkness.
"Darch?" Maslovic asked.
The man at the main panels shrugged. "No problem. They're showing up just fine. Going to be a long trip for them, though. They're heading out over the ocean. We're going to need our own wings to catch them, Chief."
"We'll manage. Broz, you heard Schwartz on that house. Sounds like it's pretty well rigged."
"We'll send the other ferret over now. Our best bet is to go in right away and remotely, even if the systems are all on. The odds are that anything serious that might require their attention or draw their alarms would be better triggered when they're making their trip than after they get where they're going, get settled in, and can call their security computer and maybe friends and associates."
"Fine with me," the sergeant replied. "Let's get moving. I really am curious about that place, and this suits me fine. Captain, grab a chair from the other room and bring it in. This may take a while."
"I got nowhere else to be right now," Murphy replied. "And 'tis curious I am as well about all this business."
"Second ferret's away," Broz called from the back.
Maslovic nodded. "Okay, then. Here we go."
It usually wasn't as easy to get a ferret into an allegedly unoccupied house as this was, but in spite of the junglelike animal life that was all over the city and much of the world for that matter, most of the houses that were tightly built still had weak points to be exploited, from slight warping and settling causing small gaps in the foundation to exhaust ports around the upper stories that were blocked mostly by heavy mesh screens and used by the automated systems to exchange air in otherwise climate controlled environments. It was one of these that proved the way in.
The military ferrets could have cut the screen, but in earlier scouting the operators had discovered two small duct ports where the mesh had come loose and could be easily pushed in to allow entry by something the size and plasticity of the ferrets. While there were some dangers following them down into the house, most notably lasers guided by sensors whose sole purpose was to zap any wildlife that might find similar openings inside, they tended to be of a standard sort for which electronic countermeasures were already in the ferrets along with routines to deploy them. The sensors were easily fooled by the simplest of mechanisms-making them see and focus on some suspicious small moving object away from the ferret and then targeting the lasers there while the ferrets darted by on the opposite side.
"Too easy," Murphy muttered.
Broz, the self-styled Commander of the Ferrets, shrugged. "Not easy at all. Probably cost a bloody fortune. What good's a ferret if it can't get by the simple systems designed to swat cockroaches?"
"Maybe. Still and all, didn't you say the lady was some kind of security expert?"
"Efficiency," Maslovic put in. "You don't set bombs and dogs to kill flies. You put your security where it will best secure what you need to secure. If we'd come in over the walls ourselves or through the doors, I think we'd have quite a mess right now, but the ferrets are not us. They'll have something that can detect them, I suspect, but not yet. Ferrets, after all, can only report, they can't carry out the family jewels."
Ferret One was already pushing through the vents built into a top-floor room and now looked down upon it. A quick scan showed it to be on the right side of the house, third floor, and most likely a bedroom.
An old-fashioned-looking ceiling fan turned just below the ferret, keeping the air moving so that it would not get stuffy or build up smells even if the room were left unoccupied for weeks. The ferret could see the air and sense the movement and feed the information back to the computer a block and a half away for analysis. It betrayed no traps, no hidden passages, nothing like that. It was as it should have been.
Below and against the wall was an enormous four-poster bed, its linens still thrown randomly back, indicating that it had been recently used and not yet serviced by a robotic or human housekeeper. Overall, the place looked pleasant and lived in but contained nothing odd or suspicious even if it did seem to be out of another time and place. The ferret stuck to the wall but registered no serious concern. Whatever traps and sensors there were weren't here.
"You'd think they'd at least have somethin' on the windows," Murphy noted.
"Pastine," Broz explained. "The kind of material used in making transparent windows for spacecraft and camera and sensor covers for space work. Not unbreakable, but what it would take to punch a hole in them would not only alert the household but probably the neighbors a kilometer away. Vacuum welded. You aren't going to go in and out of those."
"And remember, this is the third floor," Maslovic pointed out. "Second floor's more of the same, and the first floor adds a vacuum layer through which pass some of the most accurate sensors made. And if you were really observant, you'd see that the roof overhang and gutter system covered the grounds around the house to a distance of three meters. Anything heavier than two kilos would trip it, so you're not likely to walk up or use a ladder, and if you're on some kind of floating platform, you'll break the sensor webbing for more than five seconds and that will set off the alarm. Anything more sensitive and you'd have alarms going off every time a bug flew by or a heavy rain rolled down too much for the guttering. The ferrets are less than one kilo and were on the building's siding in under five seconds in any event."
"You make me feel like a rank amateur here," the old captain said respectfully.
Maslovic smiled. "Now you know why you should always pay your defense taxes."
With both ferrets now inside, they fanned out, mapping the entire third floor before going down one level. Some nice bedrooms, sumptuous baths, a full spa in the east wing, but nothing threatening nor of interest to them.
A center atrium framed a circular staircase which the ferrets declined to take. There was a small but detectable electrical current in the stair that indicated some connection to the master maintenance and alarm systems. As usual, the walls were much nicer.
"Interesting paintings hung on the atrium walls there," Murphy noted.
"Yes, I agree," Maslovic responded. "Broz, let's see them in turn."
They were huge and ornately framed, yet there was something about them that didn't seem quite right.
"Separated, but a triptych," the old captain said. "Odd. Go in on the one on the left, if you please."
Broz framed it perfectly in the monitor. Although it didn't come through properly on their screen, it was clearly some kind of holographic photo, a scene that in person would seem almost suspended in the framing. It was a violent scene, a landscape of stark barren landscape, volcanic activity along a rift in the back, and with storm-tossed clouds seeming to close in as if ready to engulf the whole scene.