"Last night, around 2100 hours, an ambulance responded to a call."
"We have thousands of ambulances. For what?"
"An explosion."
"There are many kinds of explosions. Ship, atomsuit, housing, radiation. I can't help you if you don't help me!"
Haines gave the polyp the file. The being submerged briefly, only the plate-projector, held in one tentacle, above the surface. Then another tentacle wove behind the being to a terminal and began tapping keys.
"Yes. Ambulance GE145 it was. No input on who summoned it. You see what my trouble is? No one seems to care about proper files."
Sten broke in. "Where would this ambulance have been routed to?"
"Thank you, man. At least someone knows the proper question. Since it was sent to a... drinking establishment... unless other data was input, it would have gone to the Tombs."
"The Tombs?"
"Human emergency treatment, nonindustrial." The polyp pulled a square of plas from the counter and touched the edges of it. An outline of the sprawling hospital sprang into life on it. Further tentacling and a single red line wound its way through the corridors.
"You Eire...here. You want to go there. They'll be able to help you. Maybe."
Sten had one final question. "Why is it called the Tombs?"
"Because this is where our—I believe the phrase is down and under—go. And if they weren't before, they are when they get to the Tombs."
"GE145. Weird." The desk intern was puzzled. "No entry on who dispatched it—came from out-hospital. Three DOA's. They're... um, being held for autopsy results, Lieutenant."
"Question, Doctor. Assuming this ambulance had arrived with live victims, what would have happened then?"
"Depends on the injury."
"Blast. Shock. Possible fractures," Sten said.
"Um... that would have gone to—let me check last night's roster... Dr. Knox would have treated them."
"Where is he?"
"Let me see... not on shift today. Pity."
"Would he be in the hospital?"
"No, not at all. Dr. Knox was hardly one of us. He was a volunteer."
"Do you have a contact number on him?" Lisa asked.
"It should be right—no. No, we don't have anything on his sheet. That's unusual."
"Two unusuals, Doctor. I'd like to see your files on this Knox."
"I'm sorry, Lieutenant. But without a proper court order, not even the police—"
Sten's own card was out. "On Imperial Service, Doctor."
The intern's eyes widened. "Certainly... perhaps, back in my office. We'll use the terminal there. Genevieve? Would you take the floor for me?"
Ten minutes later Sten knew they had something. Or rather, by having nothing, they had something.
Knox, dr. john, began the hospital's scanty info card. No such doctor was licensed on Prime World, as Sten quickly learned. Yet somehow a "Dr. Knox" had convinced someone at Soward Hospital—either a person or a computer—that he was legitimate. His listed home address was a recently demolished apartment building. His supposed private clinic was a restaurant, one which had been in existence at that address for almost ten years.
"So this Knox," Sten mused, still staring at the fiche, "shows up from nowhere as a volunteer two weeks ago."
"He was an excellent emergency surgeon, the intern said. "I prepped some patients for him."
"What did he look like?"
"Tall," the intern said hesitantly. "One eighty-five, one ninety centimeters. Slender build, almost endomorphic. Seventy kilograms estimated weight. Eyes... I don't remember. He was very proud of his hair. Gray it was. Natural, he swore. Wore it mane-style."
"Not bad," Haines said. "You ever think of being a cop?"
"In this job I sometimes think I am one."
"You said he was 'hardly one of you.' Did you mean just because he was a volunteer?" Sten asked.
"No. Uh—you see, we don't exactly get Imperial-class medicos here. The pay. The conditions. The patients. So when we get a volunteer as good as Dr. Knox, well..." And the intern interrupted himself: "His room!"
"Knox had a room?"
"Of course. All of us do—our shifts are two-day marathons."
"Where would it be?"
"I'll get a floor chart."
"Very private sort, this Knox," Lisa said. "His room card specifies no mechanical or personal cleaning wanted. Maybe we'll get something."
Sten suspected they would get nothing, and if they got as thorough a nothing as he feared...
"Four thirteen."
Lisa took the passcard from the back of the room file.
"Hang on. And stay back from the door."
Millimeter by millimeter, Sten checked the jamb around the slide-door's edges. He found it just above the floor—a barely visible gray hair stretched across the doorjamb.
"We need an evidence team," Sten said. "Your best. But there won't be a bomb inside. I want this room sealed until the evidence team goes through it."
Lisa started to get angry, then snapped a salute.
"Yes, sir. Captain, sir. Anything else?"
"Aw drakh," Sten swore. "Sorry. Didn't mean to sound like, like—"
"A cop?"
"A cop." Sten grinned.
The room was ballooned, then gently opened. Finally, the tech team went in.
The three spindars—one adult and two adolescents—were not what Sten had thought expert forensic specialists would look like. As soon as the room was unsealed and the adult lumbered into the bedroom, the two adolescents rolled out of its pouch and began scurrying about with doll-size instruments and meters taken from the pack strapped to the adult's pouch.
The adult spindar was about two meters in any direction and scaled like a pangolin. It surveyed the scuttlings of its two offspring with what might have been mild approval, rebuttoned the instrument pack with a prehensile subarm, scratched its belly thoughtfully, and sat down on its rear legs in the center of the room. The being chuffed three times experimentally, then introduced itself as Technician Bernard Spilsbury. Spindars having names unpronounceable to any being without both primary and secondary voice boxes, they found human names a useful conceit—names selected from within whatever field the spindar worked in.
"Highly unusual," it chuffed. "Very highly unusual. Recollect only one case like that. My esteemed colleague Halperin handled that one. Most interesting. Would you be interested in hearing about it while my young proteges continue?"
Sten looked at Haines. She shrugged, and Sten got the idea that once a spindar started, nothing short of high explosives could shut him up.
"Out on one of the pioneer worlds it was. Disremember at the moment which one. Pair of miners it was. Got into some unseemly squabble about claims or stakegrubs or whatever miners bicker about.
"First miner waited until his mate got into a suit, then shot him in the face. Stuffed the corpus into the drive, suit and all."
One young spindar held up a minidisplay to his parent. Columns of figures, unintelligible to Sten, reeled past.
The young one chittered, and the older one rumbled.
"Even more so," the spindar said. "If you'll excuse me?" His forearm dug larger instruments from the pack, then he waddled to the bed, half stood, and began running a pickup across it. "Curiouser and curiouser."
"Speaking of curious," Haines said quietly to Sten. "You wondered about that tac squad? I think I'll check on just why they were assigned to that area.
"I owe you a beer, Captain."
They smiled at each other.
Before Sten could say anything, the spindar was back beside him. "That took care of one sort of evidence, of course."
"You found something?"
"No, no. I meant the miner. To continue, he then dumped the ship's atmosphere and disposed of all of his mate's belongings and went peaceably on his way.