impossible for anyone to lie under its influence. It also had a fifty percent mortality rate,
which was why it was on the proscribed list. Mere possession of it was a capital offense.
Yvette gave him a frozen smile. “I’m glad you said that; I dislike admitting to a felony.
Now then, I can administer what I have in this hyposprayer to you, or you can talk
voluntarily. The choice is entirely up to you. Which will it be?.
“You can put it away. I’ll talk,” the man said, cradling his right wrist tenderly with his other
hand. “I never wanted any trouble, honest. I’m just trying to do a job.
“Is attacking innocent women in their staterooms part of your job?” Yvette sneered. “Let
me have the whole story. Who are you and what’s your connection with Dak Lehman?.
“My name’s Myerson. My partners and I are with Cosmos Investigations.
“A detective?” This unexpected news made Yvette knit her brow in perplexity. “Can you
prove that?.
“My ID card’s in my jacket pocket.” He started to reach for it with his left hand, but
Yvette waved his gun at him and he froze in mid-motion.
“I’ll get it,” she said, and reached into his pocket for his wallet. Sure enough, she found
the identification card, together with photo and retinal pattern, stating that Rolf Myerson
was a licensed investigative agent under the laws of the planet Largo. This was a
development she did not like at all.
“I still don’t see where it says you have the right to break and enter.
“Do you have that right?” Myerson glared at her.
“I have the gun,” Yvette said coolly, “which at the moment gives me the right. I’m not
here to argue ethics. I want to know why you were after Dak Lehman.
“His wife hired us to look after him. She . . .” “Wife? He said nothing to me about any
wife.” “Some married men neglect details like that. They were going to be divorced
anyway. The two of them own equal shares in the computer firm, though he was the
nominal head of the corporation. Gospozha Lehman heard a few rumors that her
husband was coming to Vesa to have a secret meeting with someone and sell corporate
secrets that would have made her stock in the company worthless. So she hired us to
keep an eye on her husband and make sure that no such deals took place.
“But wouldn’t he have been cutting his own throat? If the corporate stock became
worthless, wouldn’t that ruin him as well?.
“He had managed to accumulate, under a variety of other names, a large portfolio of
holdings. We thought he felt he could afford to make this spiteful gesture.” “Does he hate
his wife that much?.
“In the initial divorce proceedings he’s accused her of numerous infidelities. She hasn’t
denied any of them, so far as I know.” Myerson’s voice was fiat; Gospozha Lehman may
have bought his time and services, but not his loyalty.
Yvette considered this latest development. Despite the fact that she’d been unprepared
for it, it did seem to make a good deal of sense. Myerson’s men had always been
primarily concerned with Dak; they had not paid any attention to Yvette until she started
seeing the man they were following. Even then, they followed a very cautious approach,
trying merely to scare her off when they were afraid she might be getting too close to
Dak. She remembered how easily they could have killed her in her suite if they had
wanted to do so.
And she remembered all the little discrepancies in Dak’s behavior. When she had asked
him about other women in his life he had skated neatly around the question-and she had
known then he was covering something up. Again, all the little false starts and hesitations
in their conversations, as though there were some secret he wanted to tell her but was
afraid to reveal. Having a wife -a mean, vindictive, unfaithful woman-back on Largo could
very well have been preying on his conscience as he charmed a lovely widow aboard the
Empress Irene.
The more she thought about it, the more she realized that Myerson’s story was probably
the truth. Damn! she thought. I was so hoping he’d turn out to be one of the killers. I
would have loved to bash his brains out against a wall.
“What’s happened to Gospodin Lehman now?” she asked, trying to keep her voice as
even and emotionless as before. “Why did he leave his hotel?.
“You know as much about that as I do. The last we know, Lansky saw him boarding a jit
with a friend he met in one of the casinos. Lansky overheard something about a private
party, but he didn’t know where it was. He tried following, but these damned jits are so
elusive that he lost him. Then this morning we find that he vanished last night completely,
taking all his worldly possessions with him-which means I’ll lose out on my fee for this
deal. Gospozha Lehman’ll never pay us for losing him.
He looked straight into Yvette’s face. “If you ask me, I think we’ve both been bummed. I
think he made his contact and vanished into the night, literally, leaving you and me both
holding the bag.
“Yeah,” Yvette said cynically. “But I think you and your two friends had better get off
Vesa fast, on the next ship to anywhere. I have your stunner, now, and I know how to
use it. Next time I see any of your ugly faces, I will. You can take that as a promise.”
She tucked the hyposprayer back into the heel of her shoe, turned and walked out of the
hotel room. Within seconds she was in an elevator tube going down to the seventh level.
If Myerson should decide to come looking for her, be would expect her to go up to the
lobby.
The hallway on the seventh floor was an exact duplicate of that on the fourth. Tucking the
detective’s stungun inside her purse, Yvette paced up and down the carpeted hall, much
as she’d seen her brother do any number of times in the past. Jules always said he
thought better on his feet, but after trying it for a while Yvette came to the conclusion that
it only tired out the legs without aiding the brain. Finally she sat crosslegged on the floor
and leaned back against the wall.
Myerson’s theory would have been a logical one, if that was all there was to the
situation. But Yvette knew there was more than that. Dak’s disappearance fit too closely
into the pattern that had already been established over the past twenty years. A person
comes to Vesa, then suddenly vanishes without leaving. All worldly possessions vanish
with him. Of course, Dak Lehman could have bought a ticket under an assumed name if
he felt that he was being followed . . . but again, this disappearance matched too well
with all the others. They couldn’t all have been selling corporate secrets.
Yvette sighed. She bad been hoping so much that Myerson and company had been with
the killers; it would have solved a lot of problems and given her new leads. She would tell
the Head about Myerson when she got back and his license would be revoked for
unethical conduct, but for now she was right back at the start again. Dak was gone, she
was untouched, and there was not the faintest clue as to who was responsible for what
was happening.
Absolutely nothing.
CHAPTER 9
The Not-So-Great Escape
Jules did not return to his hotel room following his narrow escape from the warehouse.
To do so, he knew, would be tantamount to suicide. The Chandakhari he had worked
with would have recognized him in the melee, and it would be a simple matter for them to
check his work records and discover his address. He mentally wrote off that room as a
loss; nothing of any great importance was kept there, and they would find no clues to his
real identity if they searched it. All his crucial supplies were kept in a public locker at the
spaceport terminal.
He was able to hail a passing jit as he raced out of the warehouse, and vanished into one
of the traffic tunnels before any of the people chasing him had even emerged from the
building. For the moment he was safe, but he could continue to be so only as long as he
kept a couple of jumps ahead of the opposition. Leaning back in his seat, he let the
gentle swaying motion of the jit relax his body, which was still tense from the surges of
adrenalin. Once he had calmed the physical part of him he turned to the mental.
Georges duChamps would have to disappear, there was no question about it. He hated
having to desert Laz Fizcono when the foreman was already shorthanded, but his duty to