He pulled the case of food out of the flitter, shouldered it, and turned toward the delivery port of the villa. Men were moving in the garden, patrollers’ uniforms very much in evidence. Their attention appeared to be centered on a small structure half hidden by an artificial grouping of plume trees, a structure as architecturally different from the villa it accompanied as the fussel was from a bob-chit. In place of shell-post walls, translucent, this was a solid block of stone, cut and set with precision, but also giving the impression of a primitive erection from some prespace-flight civilization thousands of years removed in time from the larger house.
A man came out of its doorway, and Troy stopped short. Just as the invisible touch of exploration had alerted him in the warehouse, so now did a feeling within him answer a new, voiceless cry for help. The sensation of terror and, beyond that terror, the breath- less need to convey some vital information struck into his mind almost as a physical blow. And without conscious thinking he answered that plea with an unvoiced query in return: “What—where—how—?”
The man who had come from the stone-walled garden house twisted and made a grab into the air as some- thing wriggled from his clutch and sprang into the nearest plume tree. Only an agitation of foliage marked its path from there to the villa—or was it toward Troy? A tree branch bobbed and from it a small body flung itself in a crazy leap through the air.
Troy put down the box just in time to take the shock of that weight landing on his shoulder. A prehensile tail curled about his neck, small legs clutched him frenziedly, and he put up an arm to enfold a small, trembling, softly furred animal. A round, broad head butted against him, as if the creature were trying to ball into a refuge. Troy stroked the thick yellow- brown fur soothingly.
“Kill—“ No one had spoken that word aloud; it flashed into his mind, and with it a wavering, oddly shaped picture of a man crumpled in a chair. Troy shook his head and the picture was gone. But the fear in the animal in his arms remained alive and strong.
“Danger—“ Yes, that got across. Danger not only for the creature he held, but for others—men—
The man who had lost this animal was hurrying forward, and two of the patrollers also made their way purposefully toward Troy. In that same moment he knew that he intended to protect the thing he held, even against the weight of Korwar’s law.
“Sooooo—“ He made the same soothing sound Kyger had used with the cats, stroking the furred back gently. The butting of the head against his chest was now not so violent. And Troy tried to establish a contact promising protection and aid. What he was doing, or why and how he could do it, did not matter now—that he was able to establish the contact did.
“Who are you?”
Troy settled the still-shivering animal more firmly into the hollow between shoulder and arm and looked with very little favor at his questioner. “Horan.” He pointed with his chin at the flitter, with the shop name clearly lettered on its body. “From Kyger’s.”
One of the patrollers cleared his throat and then spoke with a deferential note that suggested the importance of the civilian interrogating Troy. “That’s the animal and bird importer, Gentle Homo. I believe that the Sattor Commander purchased this thing there—“
The man he addressed was harsh-faced, flat-eyed. He stared at Troy as if he presented some very elemental problem that could be speedily solved—not particularly to the problem’s advantage.
“What are you doing here?”
Troy touched with the toe of his boot the box he had just set down. “Delivery, Gentle Homo. Special food for the Commander’s pet.”
The flat-eyed man looked to the second patroller and that individual nodded. “It was referenced for today, Gentle Homo. Special imported food for the— the—“ He hesitated over the unfamiliar name before he offered it. “The kinkajou.”
“The what?” his superior demanded.. “What kind of an outlandish, other-sun thing—?”
“It is Terran, Gentle Homo,” his second underling answered with a small flash of importance. “Very rare. The Sattor Commander was quite excited about it.”
“Kinkajou—Terran—“ The officer advanced a step or two as he tried to see more of the animal clinging to Troy. “But what was it doing rummaging through the Sattor Commander’s desk if it is just an animal? Do you have an answer for that?”
“Danger!” Troy did not need that flash of warning from the creature in his arms. It was plain to read in the whole stance of the man before him.
“Many animals are very curious, Gentle Homo.” Troy sought to divert the officer. “Do not Korwarian kattans open any package they can lay claws upon?”
The voluble patroller was nodding assent to that. And Troy pushed a little further. “Animals also imitate the actions of men with whom they are closely associated, Gentle Homo. The kinkajou may have been following the routine of the Sattor Commander. What else could it be? Surely it would not be doing so for a purpose—“ But, Troy guessed now, that must have been what the creature was doing when caught. Did this officer have more exact knowledge of that fact?
“Possible,” the other conceded. “Just to make sure that there shall be no more such mischief, you will take this kinkajou with you and return it to Kyger. He shall be responsible for it until the investigation into the Sattor Commander’s death is completed. Tell him the Commandant of the West Sector orders it.”
“It is done, Gentle Homo.”
Troy tried to put the kinkajou into the flitter first, before he replaced the box. But the animal refused to loose its hold upon him. In addition, rising above the fear it conveyed to him, there was again that urgency, an urgency that was clearly connected with the stone house in the garden. The kinkajou wanted him to return it to that building until it finished some task, protecting it meanwhile from his own kind. But to that he dared not agree. For the first time the animal gave tongue, uttering sharp, chittering cries, as if so it could enforce the volume of their silent communication*
“Get aloft!”
The Commandant had gone back to the garden house, and the patrollers moved in on Troy. He had no wish to have them turn ugly. Somehow he managed to tip the box back into the flitter, the kinkajou protesting the retreat bitterly—though Troy noted it made no attempt to leave him.
Once they were aloft again, the animal quieted down, apparently accepting defeat. Seated in Troy’s lap, its tail curled about one of his arms as if for reassurance and support, it surveyed the world of the sky through which they flew with what might have been taken for intelligent interest. But it made no more attempts to reason with him. When the flitter set down in the court of Kyger’s establishment, the kinkajou moved to the cabin door, patted it with front paws, and looked to Troy entreat- ingly, every line of its rounded body expressing eagerness to be free. He caught at the prehensile tail, having no wish to see the creature escape by one of its spectacular leaps. Leaving the flyer and grasping his indignant captive firmly, Troy went toward his employer’s office.
Kyger appeared at the corridor door, and when he saw the squirming animal in Troy’s hold, he halted nearly in midstep. Again Troy caught that spark of unease which he had detected in the meeting between the ex-spacer and Rerne.
“What happened?” Kyger’s tone was as usual. He stepped back into his office and Troy accepted the tacit invitation to enter. The escape attempts of the kinkajou were at an end again. Once more the animal pushed against Horan’s chest as if in mute plea for protection. But the mental contact had utterly ceased.
Swiftly and tersely, as a serviceman giving a report to a superior officer, Troy outlined what had happened at the Di villa. But he made no mention of the odd contact with the Kinajou. He had early learned in the hard school of the Dipple that knowledge could be both a weapon and a defense, and something aa nebulous and beyond reason as his odd mental meeting with two different species of Terran life he preferred to keep to himself—at least until he knew Kyger better.
Kyger made no move to separate the clinging animal from Horan but sat down in the eazi-rest. His fingers rubbed up and down the scar seam from his ear.
“That’s a valuable specimen,” he remarked mildly when Troy had done. “You were right to bring it back here. Curious as a ffolth sand borer. There was no reason for the law to upset it to the point of hysteria! Put it in the empty end cage in the animal room, give it some water and a few quagger nuts, and leave it alone.”