Reetal bent to unlock the entrance door to the indicated suite. "The
way it looks now," she remarked, "the odds are pretty high that you're
not going to keep that appointment."
"Why not?"
"Because shortly after the _Camelot_ docks and something's been
unloaded from her, the _Camelot_ and the Seventh Star Hotel are
scheduled to go _poof!_ together. Along with you, me, and some twelve
thousand other people. And, so far, I haven't been able to think of a
good way to keep it from happening."
Quillan was silent a moment. "Who's scheduling the poof?" he asked.
"Some old acquaintances of ours are among them. Come on in. What
they're doing comes under the heading of destroying the evidence."
* * * * *
She locked the door behind them, said, "Just a moment," went over to
the paneled wall, turned down a tiny silver switch. "Room portal," she
said, nodding at the wall. "It might come in handy. I keep it turned
off most of the time."
"Why are you turning it on now?" Quillan asked.
"One of the Star's stewards is working on this with me. He'll be along
as soon as he can get away. Now I'll give you the whole thing as
briefly as I can. The old acquaintances I mentioned are some boys of
the Brotherhood of Beldon. Movaine's here; he's got Marras Cooms and
Fluel with him, and around thirty of the Brotherhood's top guns. Nome
Lancion's coming in on the _Camelot_ in person tonight to take charge.
Obviously, with all that brass on the job, they're after something
very big. Just what it is, I don't yet know. I've got one clue, but a
rather puzzling one. Tell you about that later. Do you know Velladon?"
"The commodore here?" Quillan nodded. "I've never met him but I know
who he is."
Reetal said, "He's been manager of the Seventh Star Hotel for the past
nine years. He's involved in the Beldon outfit's operation. So is the
chief of the Star's private security force--his name's Ryter--and half
a dozen other Star executives. They've got plenty of firepower, too;
close to half the entire security force, I understand, including all
the officers. That would come to nearly seventy men. There's reason to
believe the rest of the force was disarmed and murdered by them in the
subspace section of the Star about twelve hours ago. They haven't been
seen since then.
"Now, Velladon, aside from his share in whatever they're after, has
another reason for wanting to wipe out the Star in an unexplained
blowup. There I have definite information. Did you know the Mooley
brothers owned the Star?"
"Yes."
"I've been working for the Mooleys the past eight months," Reetal
said, "checking up on employees at Velladon's level for indications of
graft. And it appears the commodore had been robbing them blind here
for at least several years."
"Sort of risky thing to try with the Mooleys, from what I hear,"
Quillan remarked.
"Yes. Very. Velladon had reason to be getting a little desperate about
that. Two men were planted here a month ago. One of them is Sher
Heraga, the steward I told you about. The other man came in as a
bookkeeper. Two weeks ago, Heraga got word out that the bookkeeper had
disappeared. Velladon and Ryter apparently got wise to what he was
trying to do. So the Mooleys sent me here to find out exactly what was
going on before they took action. I arrived four days ago."
She gave a regretful little headshake. "I waited almost a day before
contacting Heraga. It seemed advisable to move very cautiously in the
matter. But that made it a little too late to do anything. Quillan,
for the past three days, the Seventh Star Hotel has been locked up
like a bank vault. And except for ourselves, only the people who are
in on the plot are aware of it."
"The message transmitters are inoperative?" he asked.
Reetal nodded. "The story is that a gravitic storm center in the area
has disrupted transmissions completely for the time being."
"What about incoming ships?"
"Yours was the only one scheduled before the _Camelot_ arrives. It
left again eight hours ago. Nobody here had been let on board. The
guests who wanted to apply for outgoing berths were told there were
none open, that they'd have to wait for the _Camelot_."
She went over to a desk, unlocked a drawer, took out a sheaf of
papers, and handed one of them to Quillan. "That's the layout of the
Star," she said. "This five-level building over by the shell is the
Executive Block. The Brotherhood and the commodore's men moved in
there this morning. The Block is the Star's defense center. It's
raid-proofed, contains the control officers and the transmitter and
armament rooms. About the standard arrangement. While they hold the
Executive Block, they have absolute control of the Star."
"If it's the defense center, it should be practically impossible to do
anything about them there," Quillan agreed. "They could close it up,
and dump the air out of the rest of the Star in a minute, if they had
to. But there must be ... well, what about the lifeboats in the
subspace section--and our pals must have a getaway ship stashed away
somewhere?"
"They have two ships," Reetal said. "A souped-up armed freighter the
Brotherhood came in on, and a large armed yacht which seems to be the
commodore's personal property. Unfortunately, they're both in subspace
locks."
"Why unfortunately?"
"Because they've sealed off subspace. Try portaling down there, and
you'll find yourself looking at a battle-plastic bulkhead. There's no
way of getting either to those ships or to the lifeboats."
Quillan lifted his eyebrows. "And _that_ hasn't caused any comment?
What about the maintenance crews, the warehouse men, the--"
"All the work crews were hauled out of subspace this morning," Reetal
said. "On the quiet, the Star's employees have been told that a gang
of raiders was spotted in the warehouse area, and is at present
cornered there. Naturally, the matter isn't to be mentioned to the
guests, to avoid arousing unnecessary concern. And that explains
everything very neatly. The absence of the security men, and why
subspace is sealed off. Why the Executive Block is under guard, and
can't be entered--and why the technical and office personnel in there
don't come out, and don't communicate out. They've been put on
emergency status, officially."
* * * * *
"Yunk," Quillan said disgustedly after a moment. "This begins to look
like a hopeless situation, doll!"
"True."
"Let's see now--"
Reetal interrupted, "There is one portal still open to subspace.
That's in the Executive Block, of course, and Heraga reports it's
heavily guarded."
"How does he know?"
"The Block's getting its meals from Phalagon House. He floated a diner
in there a few hours ago."
"Well," Quillan said, brightening, "perhaps a deft flavoring of
poison--"
Reetal shook her head. "I checked over the hospital stocks. Not a
thing there that wouldn't be spotted at once. Unless we can clobber
them thoroughly, we can't afford to make them suspicious with a trick
like that."
"Poison would be a bit rough on the office help, too," Quillan
conceded. "They wouldn't be in on the deal."
"No, they're not. They're working under guard."
"Gas ... no, I suppose not. It would take too long to whip up
something that could turn the trick." Quillan glanced at his watch.
"If the _Camelot_ docks at midnight, we've around six and a half hours
left, doll! And I don't find myself coming up with any brilliant
ideas. What have you thought of?"
Reetal hesitated a moment. "Nothing very brilliant either," she said
then. "But there are two things we might try as a last resort."
"Let's hear them."
"I know a number of people registered in the Star at present who'd be
carrying personal weapons. If they were told the facts, I could
probably line up around twenty who'd be willing to make a try to get
into the Executive Block, and take over either the control offices or
the transmitter room. If we got a warning out to the _Camelot_, that
would break up the plot. Of course, it wouldn't necessarily save the
Star."
"No," Quillan said, "but it's worth trying if we can't think of
something better. How would you get them inside?"
"We could crowd twenty men into one of those diner trucks, and Heraga
could take us in."
"What kind of people are your pals?"
"A few smugglers and confidence men I've had connections with. Fairly
good boys for this sort of thing. Then there's an old millionaire
sportsman, with a party of six, waiting to transfer to the _Camelot_
for a safari on Jontarou. Old Philmarron isn't all there, in my
opinion, but he's dead game and loves any kind of a ruckus. We can
count on him and his friends, if they're not too drunk at the moment.
Still ... that's not too many to set against something less than a
hundred professional guns, even though some of them must be down on
the two ships."
"No, not enough." Quillan looked thoughtful. "What's the other idea?"
"Let the cat out of the bag generally. Tell the guests and the
employees out here what's going on, and see if somebody can think of
something that might be done."
He shook his head. "What you'd set off with that would be anywhere
between a riot and a panic. The boys in the Executive Block would
simply give us the breathless treatment. Apparently, they prefer to
have everything looking quiet and normal when the _Camelot_ gets
here--"
"But they don't have to play it that way," Reetal agreed. "We might be
dead for hours before the liner docks. If they keep the landing lock
closed until what they want has been unloaded, nobody on the _Camelot_
would realize what had happened before it was too late."
* * * * *
There was a moment's silence. Then Quillan said, "You mentioned you'd
picked up a clue to what they're after. What was that?"
"Well, that's a curious thing," Reetal said. "On the trip out here, a
young girl name of Solvey Kinmarten attached herself to me. She didn't
want to talk much, but I gathered she was newly married, and that her
husband was on board and was neglecting her. She's an appealing little
thing, and she seemed so forlorn and upset that I adopted her for the
rest of the run. After we arrived, of course, I pretty well forgot
about the Kinmartens and their troubles.
"A few hours ago, Solvey suddenly came bursting into the suite where
I'm registered. She was shaking all over. After I calmed her down a
bit, she spilled out her story. She and her husband, Brock Kinmarten,
are rest wardens. With another man named Eltak, whom Solvey describes
as 'some sort of crazy old coot,' they're assigned to escort two
deluxe private rest cubicles to a very exclusive sanatorium on
Mezmiali. But Brock told Solvey at the beginning of the trip that this
was a very unusual assignment, that he didn't want her even to come
near the cubicles. That wouldn't have bothered her so much, she says,
but on the way here Brock became increasingly irritable and
absent-minded. She knew he was worrying about the cubicles, and she
began to wonder whether they weren't involved in something illegal.
The pay was very high; they're both getting almost twice the regular
warden fee for the job. One day, she found an opportunity to do a
little investigating.
"The cubicles are registered respectively to a Lady Pendrake and a
Major Pendrake. Lady Pendrake appears to be genuine; the cubicle is
unusually large and constructed somewhat differently from the ones
with which Solvey was familiar, but it was clear that it had an
occupant. However, the life indicator on 'Major Pendrake's cubicle
registered zero when she switched it on. If there was something inside
it, it wasn't a living human being.
"That was all she learned at the time, because she was afraid Brock
might catch her in the cubicle room. Here in the Star, the cubicles
were taken to a suite reserved for Lady Pendrake. The other man,
Eltak, stayed in the suite with the cubicles, while the Kinmartens
were given other quarters. However, Brock was still acting oddly and
spending most of his time in the Pendrake suite. So this morning,
Solvey swiped his key to the suite and slipped in when she knew the
two men had left it."
[Illustration]
"She'd barely got there when she heard Brock and Eltak at the door
again. She ran into the next room, and hid in a closet. Suddenly there
was a commotion in the front room, and Solvey realized that men from
the Star's security force had arrived and were arresting Brock and
Eltak. They hauled both of them away, then floated the cubicles out
and on a carrier and took them off too, locking the suite behind them.
"Solvey was in a complete panic, sure that she and Brock had become
involved in some serious breach of the Warden Code. She waited a few
minutes, then slipped out of the Pendrake suite, and looked me up to
see if I couldn't help them. I had Heraga check, and he reported that
the Kinmarten suite was under observation. Evidently, they wanted to
pick up the girl, too. So I tucked her away in one of the suites in
this section, and gave her something to put her to sleep. She's there
now."
* * * * *