“Maybe we should keep that in mind and bring a small stock of semiprecious material back with us if we plan a return visit,” Van Rycke said half to himself. “But go on, Miceal. What do a few not particularly exciting gemstones have to do with murder by rat?”
“They can’t be eaten,” he responded grimly. The Captain marshaled his thoughts. “The prospectors fall into two general types. The most common are those who work at it for a few years, then take the money and use it to complete their education, stake a business start, or finance a trading venture or some personal dream. The rest are the perpetual drifters, not much different from their counterparts throughout the Federation, marginal folk, many of them in their middle years or older, forever talking of striking a big pocket of sunstones and retiring, in luxury but lacking any real purpose or concrete ambition. Some eventually do save a good bit, enough for them to finally leave the work comfortably fixed, but most’re content to mine their claims until their leases expire, sell off the rights, and use most of the credits to pick up another, then blow the better part of whatever remains on a week-long fling in Happy City or one of the other pleasure districts.”
“The prospectors were the targets?” Jasper Weeks inquired.
The Captain nodded. “The drifters, chiefly. The others have plans for their gains and aren’t about to spend or lose much on a binge. If they show up in Happy City at all, it’s with a very small squandering purse.
“Most of the others aren’t vacuum-brains, either. They don’t want to get back-alleyed for flashing a big roll after they’ve been sampling the local wares for a while. They make sure they’ve secured a new lease and have whatever stones or credits they want to keep banked somewhere safe before they start to party.
“There are always the few, though, who insist on a couple of drinks or a smoke at once, as soon as they get their hands on some credits, much to the joy of the unscrupulous. It goes without saying that they usually wind up voluntarily tossing away or being relieved of everything they have on them, whatever their original intentions.
“About twelve years ago, the proprietor of the Red Garnet began to cast about for ways to capitalize on that particular source of income. First off, he assigned employees to try to sniff out vulnerable prospectors at the leasing office or, failing to carry them off there, to trail them to another establishment and lure them back to the Garnet.
“The next problem was to keep them there long enough for them to hand over whatever credits they had. According to Colonel Cohn, most Canucheans want to sample the full spectrum of a pleasure district when they visit one, move from one place to another, stretch out their fun as much as possible. To counter that tendency, he brought his neighbors in on his plan. He knew he would have to do so anyway if he was going to carry it to fruition. They were already in partnership for importing and distributing controlled substances and rigging gambling, so he knew he’d have no trouble convincing or working with them. He kept full control of the operation from the start and gradually introduced its grosser aspects.
“He realized from the outset, of course, that even with gaming he had few legitimate or semi-legitimate means of getting at the stones his victims might be carrying, which in most cases form the principal part of a prospector’s hoard. It’s not permitted to accept them as payment for any goods or services in Happy City, and the police keep the district crawling with spotters to catch any violations of that rule.”
“Drunks can be back-alleyed,” Shannon pointed out.
“Only so many before the authorities begin to establish a pattern. However, if the victims can be made to vanish quickly, quietly, and completely, the operation could conceivably go on indefinitely as long as the conspirators don’t get too greedy or overconfident and move too often or without proper care.”
“Twelve years?” Dane whispered.
“Very nearly.”
“The rats?”
“They were in it almost from the start,” he averred. “The whole cellar of the Red Garnet was given over to them. They were closely caged but had free access via ramps to the alley, having been trained early to avoid the barrier of the fences. Similar guards defended the rest of the building and the other conspirators’ places. They were always well enough fed to keep them willing to remain and accept the confinement. The only times feeding was cut back were the two periods each year when leases came due and prospectors were in town in number.”
Craig was frowning. “That’s still an awful lot of people in on a very black secret. The bosses I accept, but all those underlings? For that span of time?”
“Control was no problem,” Jellico told him grimly, “not with raklick and a couple of the old opiates to tighten the leash, and if anyone seemed likely to rebel after learning a bit too much, well, the rats would have full bellies that night.
“It looks like only the four swill joints were involved, by the way. The erotic houses both appear to be clean.”
He eyed Rael somberly. “You’ll get a Patrol commendation for your part in this and maybe one from Trade as well.
Those rumors of spacers vanishing now and then in Happy City have taken on a new significance in the last several hours.” Particularly for Jan Van Rycke, he thought grimly.
An old Pool comrade of his, a loner, never very successful, had been among those thought to have disappeared in that wretched hole.
She shuddered. “I’ll be content if it’s just all over.”
“Everything but the trials and executions,” he assured her.
“One question, Rael,” Rip Shannon put in. “Would you have been so quick to go to the Patrol if those two agents hadn’t cornered us?”
The Medic looked surprised. “Naturally. I had to report my suspicions to someone. Surplanetary police are usually all right, but an off-worlder can never be sure in a situation like this. On the other hand, corruption’s almost nonexistent in the Stellar Patrol, and some of its agents know how to think. Besides,” she concluded practically, “Teague says it doesn’t hurt any ship to gain the reputation of cooperating with them, as long as she doesn’t play the fool about it, that is.”
“I wonder if you’d be speaking in such glowing terms about the folks in black and silver if you’d shared our recent experience with them,” Alt observed lazily.
“They were only doing their job! Those Company sons who framed you should’ve been sent to the Lunar mines for attempted murder, but to the Patrol, you were suspected pestilence carriers. They had no choice but to act strongly against you.”
“Very magnanimous of you,” Kamil commented with the same sleepy sarcasm, “especially when you can do your judging after the fact from a nice, safe distance.”
Rael placed her hands palm down on the table. She fixed her attention on them. “It’s true that I’ve never had to go through what you did, but I was part of the real thing.”
Her eyes rose once more to briefly meet his before dropping again. Their expression was as somber as the memories she was recalling. “I was still a child at the time. Father had planeted on a pre-mech world and was treating with the inhabitants of one of her chief trading centers when we discovered that some sort of sickness had broken out in the community, in the very section where we were operating, and was slowly but steadily gaining ominous force. We’d been on-world for several days at that point, in daily contact with the inhabitants of the infected region, and our Medic could make no more headway against the disease than could his primitive counterparts. Only one course of action was possible for us, and we took it, even as other spacers trapped in similar situations have in the past. We couldn’t risk carrying an unidentified and as yet incurable, highly contagious, deadly illness back with us into space, so we chose to stay where we were. We couldn’t even remove ourselves from the stricken city for fear of bringing the infection to uncontaminated areas of the planet.”
Her fingers whitened where they met the table. “Whatever our fears at that stage, they paled before the reality that followed. About three hundred thousand people lived and worked in that community when we arrived. Ten months later, one hundred thousand of them were dead, more than eight thousand in a single, awful week. Seven of our crew, including my father, were among them.
“So was our Medic, but he had identified the causative organism, and before he died he gave those people both a cure and a vaccine that stopped the plague as if it had hit a high security wall. The on-worlders realized what we had done for them and recognized that we had chosen both to remain and to work among them despite the proven danger to ourselves. They were grateful, and when Teague took our survivors off-world, it was with the means to buy a fine new ship outright, re-crew with top-rate hands, and fill the holds with prime trade stock.”