“Oof!” The air expelled from Jacob’s lungs as the chief engineer’s weight fell on him. His teeth jarred as he took the full force through his stiffened left arm. Somehow he kept them both from collapsing into the doorway, but the mirror fell out of his hand and onto the floor with a tiny clink.
Donaldson slid backward into the dimness, breath-tag heavily — pathetically trying to be quiet. Jacob smiled wryly. Anyone who hadn’t heard that debacle had to be deaf.
“Who… who’s there?”
Jacob stood and brushed himself off deliberately. He cast a brief, disdainful glance at Chief Donaldson, who sat glumly and avoided Jacob’s eyes.
Quick footsteps receded in the outer room. Jacob stepped out into the doorway.
“Wait a minute, Millie.”
Dr. Martine froze midstep at the door. Her shoulders hunched as she turned slowly, her face a mask of fear until she recognized Jacob. Then her dark, patrician features washed deep red.
“What the hell are you doing here!”
“Watching you, Millie. An enjoyable pastime usually, but now especially interesting.”
“You were spying on me!” she gasped.
Jacob walked forward, hoping Donaldson would have enough sense to stay hidden. “Not just you, dear. On everybody. Something is fishy on Mercury, all right. Everyone’s whistling a different tuna, and they’re all red herrings! I have a feeling you know more than you’re telling.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Martine said coldly. “But that’s not surprising. You’re not rational and you need help…” She started to back away.
“Perhaps,” Jacob nodded seriously. “But maybe you will need help explaining your presence here today.”
Martine stiffened. “I got my key from Dwayne Kepler. What about you?”
“Did you get the key with his knowledge?”
Martine blushed and didn’t answer.
“There are several data spools missing from the collection taken last dive… all covering the period when Bubbacub did his trick with the Lethani relic. You wouldn’t happen to know where they are, would you?”
Martine stared at Jacob.
“You’re kidding! But who… ? No…” she shook her head slowly, confused.
“Did you take them?”
“No!”
“Then who did?”
“I don’t know. How should I know? What business have you. questioning…”
“I could call Helene deSilva right now,” Jacob rumbled ominously. “I could have just arrived to find this door open with you inside and the key with your prints on it in your pouch. She’d search and find the spools missing and there you’d be. You’ve been covering for someone and I have some independent evidence who. If you don’t come out with all you know right now, I swear you’re going to take the fall, with or without your friend. You know as well as I that the crew at this base is just itching for someone to burn.”
Martine wavered. Her hand went to her head.
“I don’t… I don’t know…”
Jacob maneuvered her into a chair. Then he closed and locked the door.
Hey, take it easy, a part of him said. He closed his eyes for a moment and counted to ten. Slowly, a brutal itch in Jacob’s hands ebbed.
Martine held her face in her hands. Jacob caught a glimpse of Donaldson, peeking around the darkroom door. He jerked his hand and the chief engineer’s head darted out of sight.
Jacob pulled open the filing cabinet the woman had been examining.
Aha. Here it is.
He picked up the steno-camera and carried it back to the bench,-plugged the readout jack into one of the viewers and turned both machines on.
Most of the material was quite uninteresting, LaRoque’s notes on events between the landing on Mercury and the morning that he took the camera to the Sunship Cavern, just before the fateful tour of Jeffrey’s ship. Jacob ignored the audio portion. LaRoque tended to be even more wordy in leaving notes to himself than he was in his published prose. But suddenly the character of the visual portion changed, just after a panorama shot of the exterior of the Sunship.
For a moment he was puzzled as the pictures moved past. Then he laughed out loud.
Millie Martine was so surprised by this that she raised her red eyes from her misery. Jacob nodded to her genially.
“Did you know what you were fetching down here?”
“Yes,” her voice was husky. She nodded slowly. “I wanted to get Peter’s camera back to him so he could write up his story. I thought that after the Solarians had been so cruel to him… using him so…”
“He’s still in confinement, isn’t he?”
“Yes. They figured it’s safest that way. The Solarians manipulated him once before, you see. They could do it again.”
“And whose idea was it to return his camera?”
“His, of course. He wanted the recordings and I didn’t think it would hurt…”
“To let him get his hands on a weapon?”
“No! The stunner would be put out of comm… commission. Bubb…” Her eyes widened and her voice trailed off.
“Go ahead and say it. I already know.”
Martine lowered her gaze.
“Bubbacub said he’d meet me at Peter’s quarters and put the stunner out of commission, as a favor and to prove he had no hard feelings.”
Jacob sighed. “That tears it,” he muttered.
“What… ?”
“Let me see your hands.” He motioned peremptorily when she hesitated. The long slender fingers trembled as he examined them.
“What is it?”
Jacob ignored her. He paced slowly up and back down the narrow room.
The symmetry of the trap appealed to him. If it carried through there wouldn’t be a human left on Mercury with an unsullied reputation. He couldn’t have done better himself. The only question now was, when was it supposed to be sprung?
He turned and looked back at the darkroom entrance. Again, Donaldson’s head flicked back out of sight.
“It’s all right. Chief. Come on out. You’re going to have to help Dr. Martine clean this place of her fingerprints.”
Martine gasped as the portly chief engineer emerged, smiling sheepishly.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
Instead of answering, Jacob picked up the voice-phone by the inner door and dialed.
“Hello, Fagin? Yes. I’m ready for a ‘parlor scene’ now. Oh yeah… ? Well, don’t be so sure yet. It will depend on how lucky I can get in the next few minutes.
“Would you please invite the core group down to LaRoque’s detention quarters for a meeting in five minutes? Yes, right away, and please insist. Don’t bother with Dr. Martine, she’s right here.”
Martine looked up from wiping the handle of a filing cabinet, amazed by the tone of Jacob Demwa’s voice.
“That’s right,” Jacob went on. “And please invite Bubbacub first and Kepler as well. Get them moving the way we both know you can. I’ll have to run as it is. Yeah, thanks.”
“So now what?” Donaldson said on their way out the door.
“Now you two apprentices graduate to first-class burglarhood. And you’ve got to make it snappy. Dr. Kepler will be leaving his rooms shortly and you’d better not be too long following him to the meeting.”
Martine stopped in her tracks. “You’re kidding. You don’t seriously expect me to help ransack Dwayne’s apartment!”
“Why not?” Donaldson growled. “You’ve been giving him rat poison! You stole his keys to break into the Photo Lab.”
Martine’s nostrils flared. “I have not been giving him rat poison! Who told you that?”
Jacob sighed. “Warfarin. It was used as a rat poison in the old days. Before the rats got immune to it and nearly everything else.”