“Nothing about mutants?”
“No, sir. Perfectly ordinary listing. It had all the proper notations, and the Norax people themselves sent a tech with the cage. He set it up and brought in the food and a diet list for Mura.”
“He set up the cage,” repeated Jellico thoughtfully. The captain raised his hand and set it against the wall above the cage. “Did he pick this particular spot?”
Dane tried to remember. The tech had come on board with two men carrying the cage. Had he picked the place? No, not exactly, and Mura had the answer.
“No, sir. I said here—easier to keep an eye on the animals. But I don’t understand. The female—she had a month yet to go. The kits were to be born on Trewsworld.”
Captain Jellico slapped the bulkhead behind the cage almost as if he were testing its solid substance.
“Treasure hold below right here,” he said. But Dane could see no connection between that and the weird behavior of a pair of brachs—other than that this whole voyage was one mystery after another.
Jellico did not explain. Instead, he hunkered down and asked Mura to explain the details of the fastening. Then Ya came to set up the improvised snooper, which, to Dane’s mystification, the captain insisted be concealed from the inhabitant of the cage so that, when the brach awoke, he would not know he was under observation, as if the animal was now a criminal suspect.
All arranged to his satisfaction, Jellico gave a final order to leave the animal alone and for all of them to keep away as much as possible from the cage. Dane, after giving a last look at the peacefully sleeping creature, which, even now, he could hardly believe tried to beam him with his own weapon, went back to his cabin, stretched on his bunk, and tried vainly to make sense of what had happened. He had been through crises before on the Queen, but never had there been so inexplicable a series of happenings. Animals that acted with intelligence, a dead man wearing his face, the alien woman—it was as fantastic as a tridee story tape.
Video—what did the captain expect to pick up by the snooper? What of Mura’s suggestion that the brach had been conditioned to attack a man? That such a thing was possible was not beyond the bounds of possibility.
Dane rolled off the bunk and went to look up the record of the brach shipment. It was very straightforward, just as he remembered—two brachs, male and female, consigned from the Norax lab on Xecho to the Simplex Ag station on Trewsworld. He had every permit filled out correctly, and unless someone had spent a fortune for forgeries, it was as it should be.
Nevertheless, he pulled out that tape and ran it through for duplication. He had just finished when the com gave an alerting whistle.
“Screen,” came Jellico’s voice. Dane reached up and triggered the small video screen.
4.TROUBLE FLIGHT
The short corridor and the brach cage flashed into view. The brach was on its feet, its head turning from side to side as if in search of something. Then, showing more intense emotion than Dane would have thought possible for those notoriously amiable creatures, it flung itself at the door of the cage, grasped bar and netting with its paws, and shook them vigorously, as if by that exertion it could tear its way to liberty.
However, its frenzy did not last long. After a moment or two of battering, it squatted back on its haunches, its gaze fixed on the immovable barrier. Its attitude was, Dane thought, if he did not know that was impossible, that of an intelligent consideration of the situation, a pause to plan.
It approached the barrier opening again, inserted one paw as far as it could through the open spaces, and explored by touch the new fastening. In those seconds of watching, Dane was converted to the idea he had dismissed so summarily after he had gone over the records a second time. The brach had controlled its first reactions of fear or rage or both and was now exploring the possibility of again mastering the locks that held it prisoner.
Mutant? But if so, the Norax people had defaulted on their permissions, and they were too well established a foundation to try anything of the sort. Also, if these had come from the Norax lab, there was no reason why the techs there should not know they were super-super brains of their species. It left one possible explanation: that, in spite of the records, these were not Norax animals but part of a carefully planned deception, as elaborately set up as the intrusion of the dead stranger. The brach and him—was that the combination they should investigate?
Having run its paws over the fastening and been frustrated by the lock there, the brach squatted very still, staring straight at the door that cut it off from freedom. Then, as if it had made up its mind, it turned resolutely to the back of the cage and, using the nose horn, pried up a portion of the soft covering over the floor, thick and padded, devised to protect the animals against ship acceleration and hyper jump. It disclosed a place where one of the wires had been rooted up and broken off. Pick-lock—this was where it had gotten the pick-lock!
Dane watched in fascination. Was it going to try the same thing again? Apparently so, for it strained and pushed the nose horn into the already frayed hole, jerking its head up and down to wear away the stubborn wire. It worked steadily, with a concentration and determination Dane had heretofore equated only with his own scale of life.
At last it had broken off a longer section of the wire. Was that by chance, or did it actually understand that the present lock was farther from its reach than the one it had mastered and that it needed more wire to touch it?
Approaching the door again, it poked the wire through, strove to manipulate the new locking bar, and immediately dropped the wire, leaping away with an upward toss of its head as if both alarmed and hurt. Dane knew that it had received a mild shock rigged to prevent just such action.
Again it squatted, drawn in tightly, shaking its paw. Then, holding it tight to its chest, it extended a pale tongue and licked the clawed digits as if to soothe them, though Dane knew that the shock was mild, for a warning, and would not hurt. They had certainly now seen enough to know they were dealing with no ordinary brach.
“Captain!” The com gave out Tau’s call. “Sick bay if you please!”
What now? Dane got up. Tau had called for the captain, but if there was some difficulty about the female brach, it was his responsibility, she being part of the cargo under his nominal control. He was going, too.
Jellico was already in the sick bay as Dane came to the door. But neither he nor the medic looked up as the assistant cargo master joined them. They were gazing down rather at an improvised nest in which lay the female brach, inert, so that for an anxious moment or two Dane thought she was dead. There were two small bundles of fur lifting small heads high. Though their eyes were closed, their noses were sniffing as if they were trying to scent some necessary odor.
Dane had seen two very young kits at the lab on Xecho when he had gone to make the arrangements for shipping the pair, but he had not seen them this young. Still, compared with the adult brach they were now nosing, there was something odd about them.
“Mutants?” Was Jellico asking that question of himself or of Tau. “They—well, maybe just after birth they—”
“See here.” Tau turned, not to the squirming kits but to a box set at one end of the nest. There was a dial on its surface, and there a needle swung back and forth. “Radiation, radiation. And I can’t swear to their being mutants, but it is plain that they do differ from their mother in some ways. There is a bigger brain casing— and they are remarkably alert and active for just-born kits. I’m no vet, and I don’t know too much except the general information, but I’d say that they are very well developed for premature births, and they are off their general species pattern.”