"It just isn't like Uncle Isadore." I was trying to search out, myself,
what it was that struck me as incongruous. "It's out of character."
"It's out of character for _anybody_ to die," Rene said. "But I've seen
a lot of them dead."
"I mean at least he would have died outside."
"Oh, for Pete's sake! Why outside? You think he took rat poison?"
I went around to the other side of the spaceship, mostly to get away
from Rene for a moment. I'm only a studs and neck clasp man and Rene
had twenty years' experience on alien planets. So he was right, of
course, about the evidence. There was no getting around it. Still....
I circled back around to where Rene was smoking his first cigarette
since we left Earth. His face was a mask of sunbaked wrinkles pointing
down to the cigarette smack in the middle of his mouth.
"Uncle Izzy wouldn't die like an ordinary mortal," I said. "He'd have
a brass band. Or we'd find his body lying in a bed of roses with a big
lily in his hand. Or he might even disappear into thin air. But not
_this_." I waved a hand toward the dead ship.
"Look," Rene said. "My job was to find your Uncle Isadore. I've found
him. We can't get inside that ship with anything short of a matter
reducer, which I _don't_ happen to have along since they weigh several
tons. You'll have to take my word for it that his body's in there. Now
let's go home." He managed to talk without moving the cigarette at all.
* * * * *
"You said a week," I reminded Rene.
"I said if I didn't find him in a week, then he wasn't there. I've
found him. I'm sorry if he was your favorite uncle or something."
"As a matter of fact, I never liked him. He was--frivolous. He never
had a job. He thought life was a big game."
"Then how come he got so rich?"
"He always won."
"Not this time, brother! But if he's not your favorite uncle, why all
this concern? You can take my word for it he's dead and you've done
your duty."
"There are two things that bother me. One is curiosity. I just
don't believe Uncle Izzy died in an ordinary fashion locked up in a
spaceship. You don't know him, so you wouldn't understand. The other
thing I'm concerned about is--well, his will."
Rene barked a couple of times. I had learned this indicated laughter.
"I figured what you were really after was his money."
Under my yellow overskin, I could feel myself coloring. That wasn't
at all the point. I'd mortgaged Mother's bonds to finance this trip,
confident that Uncle Izzy would make it good when we found him. If I
couldn't get Mother's bonds out of hock, she'd have to live out her
life in a Comfort Park. I shuddered at the thought. Uncle Isadore must
have known that when he radared for help. He must have provided some
way....
"You said a week and we're staying a week," I told Rene as
authoritatively as I could manage. "You haven't actually _showed_
me Uncle Izzy's--er--corpus delicti, so I have you on a legal
technicality." I didn't know whether or not this was true, but it
sounded good.
"All right, we'll stay." Rene spat the sentence out onto the ground.
"But if you think I'm going to do any more looking, take another guess."
He tramped back into his own ship, leaving the outside port and the
pressure chamber open.
If only Uncle Izzy had done that!
I went over his ship inch by inch, feeling with my hands, to be sure
there was no extra door that might be opened. Rene would have laughed,
but I was beginning to build up antibodies against Rene's laughter.