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explain." She detached the small hand mike and gave it to me.
"Bob, this is Asahel Frost. Eve's brother."
"Dan! Long time no see! Welcome back to Cravat "
"Not Daniel Frost. I'm Asahel. The other brother.
That one."
Silence, then: "Oh."
Even in the uttermost corner of the galaxy, my name was mud.
"I'm working for Rampart Starcorp now, Bob. Vice President for Special
Projects. My current, extremely special project involves my sister Eve. Tell
me, did she come here to Cravat?"
Another portentous chunk of empty air. When he finally spoke, the words
tumbled out, as though in relief. "Yes, she was here. She came about four
weeks ago, no warning, in an express
freighter from Tyrins. Regularly scheduled supply ship. Sometimes they take a
few passengers.
She was disguised as a middle-aged woman, unrecognizable. The ship's crew had
no notion who she was. Neither did Delphine and I.
When Eve showed up at our apartment in Dome and peeled off the makeup, you
could have knocked us over with a feather! We never dreamed "
"Just tell me what happened."
"She wanted survival gear, requisite inoculations, and a hoppercraft. Said she
was concerned about the Haluk body I'd stumbled across near Pickle Pothole.
Wanted to find out if enough tissue residue remained for a DNA sample. I
thought it was possible. Only about five months had gone by. The tes-tudinal
Haluk morph is pretty well armored. Unless a really large scavenger showed up
. .."
"And you just gave Eve what she asked for?" I didn't bother to conceal my
disapproval. "Let her go off alone into your Green Hell?"
"I
tried to talk her out of it! First I offered to send one of my field crews to
fetch the tissue sample. She told me it was a highly confidential matter. She
was the only one who knew exactly what was needed. That got me curious. You
know wondering whether Haluk chrysalids might be the source of some great new
antibiotic, or some such thing. I offered to go for the sample myself. She
said no. I warned her what a dangerous area Pickle was, said I couldn't accept
responsibility for letting her go out there on her own. She got all in a
tizz-wozz then, damn near chewed my ears off. Said she was perfectly capable
of handling it. You know what a temper
Eve's got. I finally gave in."
"Why didn't you report her disappearance?"
His reply was almost a shout. "Because she didn't disappear, goddammit! Before
Eve left for the hopper pad, she made me and Del swear not to tell anybody
about her being on Cravat. So we promised. Three days later the hopper she'd
borrowed turned up at Cravat Starport. I figured she got what she came for,
then went back to Tyrins."
My heart took a dive. Was it possible that my sister had left Cravat after
all? "Did her hopper have a fully programmable autopilot? Could it have been
sent to the starport from some outlying location?"
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"It was a Garrison-Laguna, fully equipped. You can program one of those
jobbies to dance
Swan Lake.
But why would Eve send her ship away?" When I didn't respond, he said, "You
think somebody else did? Who?"
"Just tell me what happened after you received notice from Rampart Central
ExSec that Eve was missing."
"But I never did! What we got was a missing-person advisory about a woman of
Eve Frost's general description. A Jane Doe, no name given. Picture looked
something like Eve, but the resemblance wasn't striking. No fuckin' way!"
He seemed to be protesting too much, and I would have pressed him further. But
Matt put a warning hand on my shoulder and proceeded to calm his ruffled
feathers. "I agree with you, Bob.
The picture sent out from Rampart Central was deliberately generic. Zared
Frost was trying to avoid a media sensation, having ExSec keep Eve's
disappearance under wraps. He thought she might have dropped out of sight
temporarily for personal reasons. How did your Cravat Planetary
Security Force deal with the advisory?"
"Publicized it in the usual way. No special emphasis. I first saw it on the
evening news. So did my wife. I admit Del was more concerned than I was. The
missing woman might have been Eve, might just as easily have been somebody
else. For chrissake it just seemed impossible that an important Rampart exec
could be the subject of a Jane Doe missing-person report! But Del wasn't
satisfied. She nagged me until I put in a subspace call to Eve's office on
Tyrins. The secretary said Eve would get back to me. He implied that she was
there! I never did hear from her. But she's a busy woman, and since I hadn't
stated the nature of my business. .."
"You just put the whole thing out of your mind."
"I tried to," he admitted unhappily. "Del wouldn't let it rest. She pushed me
to get in touch with Ollie Schneider. But I
promised
Eve, and you know how she is "
I heaved a sigh, or maybe just tossed it lightly aside. "Never mind, Bob. I do
know." I
instructed him to wait half an hour, then home in on the buoy's signal and
pick us up.
* * *
In theory, an inoculated human being can walk about on an S-2 planet bare-bod
and survive the experience. Based on the holovid I'd just seen, any
theoretician who tried it on Cravat would be rash, verging on the imbecilic.
So we put on Class 2 envirosuits, extremely tough and lightweight hooded
coveralls of
"breathable" fabric with glove and boot extensions. An integral backpack
ventilation system filtered out noxious sulfur compounds, smog particu-lates,
deleterious microorganisms, spores, pollen, and excess humidity. Positive
pressure from the ventilator kept purified air constantly flowing out of the
hood's front opening, and a frame around the wearer's face provided an
additional invisible ion shield against invasive small airborne life and rain.
Retractable nightsight goggles with an IR option were mounted on a headset
that also had an intercom unit. A flip-down visor was useful if you
encountered any of the really dire conditions Cravat sometimes vouchsafed acid
hail, flocks of kamikaze hat pin bugs, even moderate amounts of fire and
brimstone in the solfatara lands.
The outfits were reasonably comfortable to move around in. Even swimming was
possible with the visor sealed shut and deployment of a snorkel gadget that
pulled out of the ventpack. As in space armor, you ate and drank through
sipper ports although the choice of groceries and beverages was a lot broader,
since you could carry any number of different ration pouches in your backpack.
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It was easy enough to take a leak through the suit's pee-pipe. Defecation was [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]