The messenger sat down, with an uncomfortable glance to the west.
Best unfolded the paper and read.
From Under-Secretary Bascombe to Samuel Best, with Bascombe’s full title, official address, and all the other usual curlicues, while the “to” line read simply, “Samuel Best, in the field.” No rank, no unit-everyone in the Empire knew that meant he was in Intelligence. And “in the field” was nicely vague, while being completely accurate-they were sitting on the edge of a blackberry field.
Best smiled to himself at the thought that if he’d been working in the cranberry bog down the highway a bit, the address should say “in the bog.” Maybe it should have read “in the rain”-but the rain had stopped.
He was putting it off, he realized. He forced himself to get past the salutations and authorizations and down to the actual orders.
They didn’t take long to read; he stared at them in disbelief.
Was this some kind of joke? He glanced down at the bottom.
“John Bascombe, Under-Secretary of Science for Interdimensional Affairs, by appointment, in service to His Imperial Majesty George VIII.” And the Great Seal, embossed in light blue.
Nobody would put the Emperor’s name and Imperial seal on a joke.
“That’s insane,” he said. He looked up at the messenger. “This is completely insane.”
The messenger, perched uncomfortably on a hillock of wet sand, shrugged.
“Why?” Begley asked. “What do they want us to do?”
Best threw down the letter.
“That idiot Bascombe!” he said. “He’s ordered us to arrest Pellinore Brown!”
* * * *
There were two uniformed spacemen waiting in the clearing.
The last time Wilkins had seen the place, the dead body of Shadow’s giant bat creature had lain across most of the opening, completely covering the useless hulk of I.S.S. Christopher; now much of the monster’s substance had been cut away, or been eaten away by the local wildlife, or had simply rotted. What remained was a rather grisly maze of dried black hide and protruding white bone, with a clear path to Christopher’s main hatch and various other navigable routes in and out of the mass.
The two Imperials were standing near the center of this macabre tangle; one was leaning against a gigantic rib, while the other was fully upright.
Neither of them had noticed Wilkins yet; he had a habit of moving stealthily any time he walked alone across country, and he was good at it. He had seen men die because they’d made a wrong assumption about how dangerous supposedly-friendly terrain was, and he didn’t intend to follow their example.
He didn’t make reckless assumptions about supposedly-friendly people, either. In theory, those two men should be his bosom buddies; in practice, he was out of uniform and they probably weren’t expecting anyone, and might shoot first and ask questions later.
Not that they could shoot him, really; their blasters wouldn’t work here.
They probably weren’t used to that yet-he noticed they both had holstered blasters on their belts. And they were in those easy-to-spot bright purple uniforms, while he was in dull, hard-to-see brown. He had other advantages besides simple surprise.
That damned messenger Simons hadn’t mentioned any guards, though.
He probably assumed Wilkins already knew about them; he hadn’t seemed terribly bright. One didn’t get a messenger job by graduating top of the class, after all.
And all this debate wasn’t getting him anywhere.
He stepped forward, into a pool of sunlight, and called, “Hey!”
The two turned, startled; the one who had been leaning stood up, and the other’s hand fell to his holster flap.
Old habits die hard, Wilkins thought with a smile.
“Hey, yourself,” the former leaner called, relaxing somewhat at the sight of him. “Are you Ron Wilkins, by any chance?”
Wilkins blinked, almost as startled by the question as the guards had been by his shout. “How the hell did you know that?” he called back.
“Telepath said you were coming,” the guard said. “We were sent to escort you home.”
“Telepath?” That made sense. And an escort? As far as he knew, there were two kinds of escorts-honor guards and jailers. Wilkins wondered which kind his escort was supposed to be.
Not that it really mattered; he figured he could manage either way. The Empire knew he was alive now, and they had telepaths tracking him; he wouldn’t be able to escape if they really wanted him. He didn’t have much of a choice about going back.
He stepped forward into the clearing, and let the two soldiers lead him to the ladder.
* * * *
The crew of I.S.S. Ruthless had been dispersed in the course of Operation Spotlight, and then again after Best had tracked them down and consulted them, but Albright had found that two of them, Elmer Soorn and Bill Mervyn, happened to be on Base One. He had the two of them detached from their regular duties and sent to the cold storage lockers, without explanation-and without their sidearms.
Markham met them in the security room.
“You wait here,” he ordered Mervyn. Then he crooked a finger at Soorn. “You come with me.”
Together, the two men stepped past the guards, and Markham led the way through the vault door into the locker where the corpses lay.
“Recognize them?” he asked, pointing to the two bodies that sprawled stiffly on a dissection table.
“What’s this about?” Soorn asked. He glanced at the cadavers-then stopped, and looked more closely.
“Oh,” he said.
“You know them?”
Soorn hesitated. “The little girl…I know who she was, yeah. That’s Mr. Brown’s little girl, from Earth. Rebecca, was it? Something like that.”
“Rachel,” Markham said, his breath puffing out in a cold little cloud. “What about the other?”
“Mister, whoever you are, be serious-look at her! She’s been out in space, hasn’t she? She’s bloody well freeze-dried, barely looks human. And it looks as if her face was smashed in even before she went out the lock.”
“You can’t venture a guess?”
Soorn looked at the larger corpse again.
“I could guess,” he said, “if you promise not to hold me to it.”
“Guess, then.”
“Well, since you’ve got her here with the little girl, I’d guess she might be the girl’s mother, Mrs. Brown.”
“You think she could be?”
Soorn shrugged. “The hair’s right, what’s left of it. If there were any clothing…”
“This is how we found her,” Markham said.
“Last I saw,” Soorn said, “Mrs. Brown was wearing a borrowed uniform-there were probably half a dozen other women who wore them just aboard Princess, though.”
“This one wasn’t wearing anything when she was recovered,” Markham said. “What about the face?”
“The face…” Soorn shuddered. “There’s nothing that makes it impossible, but who could tell?”
Markham nodded.
“I think that’ll do,” he said.
Ten minutes later Mervyn rather queasily confirmed Soorn’s guess that the body was Nancy Brown’s-though he, too, was reluctant to swear to it. He hadn’t known Mrs. Brown well, he insisted, and he, too, pointed out the condition the corpse was in.
Secretary Markham had to admit the body was in bad shape, but he was reasonably certain now that it was the right one. He left the vaults feeling rather pleased with himself.
That lasted until he reached his office and found the telepath waiting to report.
* * * *
“The Empire has recovered your wife’s body,” Gregory reported, “but they’re keeping it, and Rachel’s, under heavy guard; we can’t get at them.”
Pel frowned. “Have you tried bribery?” he said.
Gregory nodded.
This was very annoying; that simulacrum, Felton, must have talked. The Empire knew that he wanted the bodies.