The Hub: Dangerous Territory by James H. Schmitz

She sent a final glance around the room. Everything was as ready as she could make it. She licked her lips lightly, twisted a tiny knob on her control belt, shifted her fingers a quarter-inch, turned down a switch. Her eyes went back to the view in Dr. Hishkan’s office.

Dr. Hishkan, Volcheme, and Galester were alone in it at the moment. Three of Volcheme’s men waited with Tornull, the Depot manager, in the hall outside of Danestar’s room; the remaining three had been sent to join the search for Wergard. The craggy lump of the asteroid which wasn’t an asteroid stood in one corner. Several of its sections had been opened, and Galester was making a careful examination of a number of instruments he’d removed from them.

Dr. Hishkan, showing signs of nervousness, evidently had protested that this was an unnecessary delay because Galester was now saying to Volcheme, “Perhaps he doesn’t understand that when our clients pay for this specimen, they’re buying the exclusive privilege of studying it and making use of what they learn.”

“Naturally I understand that!” Dr. Hishkan snapped.

“Then,” Galester went on, “I think we should have an explanation for the fact that copies have been made of several of these subassemblies.”

“Copies?” Dr. Hishkan’s eyes went wide with amazed suspicion. “Ridiculous! I—”

“You’re certain?” Volcheme interrupted.

“Absolutely,” Galester told him. “There’s measurable duplo radiation coming from four of the devices I’ve checked so far. There’s no point in denying that, Doctor. We simply want to know why you made the duplicates and what you’ve done with them.”

“Excuse me!” Danestar said crisply as Dr. Hishkan began to splutter an indignant denial. “I can explain the matter. The duplos are here.”

In the office, a brief silence followed her announcement. Eyes switched right and left, then, as if obeying a common impulse, swung suddenly around to the wall screen in which Danestar’s image had appeared.

Dr. Hishkan gasped, “Why—why that’s—”

“Miss Gems, the communications technician, no doubt,” Volcheme said dryly.

“Of course, it is,” Danestar said. “Volcheme, I’ve listened to this discussion. You put yourself in a jam by coming here. But, under the circumstances, we can make a deal.”

The smuggler studied her. He was a lean, blond man, no longer young, with a hard, wise face. He smiled briefly, said, “A deal I’ll like?”

“If you like an out. That’s what you’re being offered.”

Dr. Hishkan’s eyes had swiveled with growing incredulity between the screen and Volcheme’s face. He said angrily, “What nonsense is this? Have her picked up and brought here at once! We must find out what—”

“I suggest,” Volcheme interrupted gently, “you let me handle the matter. Miss Gems, I assume your primary purpose here is to obtain evidence against Dr. Hishkan?”

“Yes,” said Danestar.

“You and your associate—Mr. Wergard—are U-League detectives?”

She shook her head.

“No such luck, Volcheme! We’re private agency, full-privilege, Federation charter.”

“I suspected it.” Volcheme’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a grimace of hostility. “You show the attributes of the breed. Do I know the agency?”

“Kyth Interstellar.”

He was silent a moment, said, “I see. . . . Is Mr. Wergard available for negotiations?”

“No. You’ll talk to me.”

“That will be satisfactory. You realize, of course, that I don’t propose to buy your deal blind. . . . ”

“You aren’t expected to,” Danestar said.

“Then let’s get the preliminaries out of the way.” The smuggler’s face was bleak and watchful. “I have men guarding your room. Unlock the door for them.”

“Of course.” Danestar turned toward the door’s lock control in the wall on her left. Volcheme pulled a speaker from his pocket.

They understood each other perfectly. One of the last things a man of Volcheme’s sort cared to do was get a major private detective agency on his neck. It was a mistake, frequently a fatal one. As a matter of principle and good business, the agencies didn’t get off again.

But if he saw a chance to go free with the loot, leaving no witnesses to point a finger at him, he’d take it. Danestar would remain personally safe so long as Volcheme’s men didn’t catch up with Wergard. After that, she’d be safe only if she kept the smuggler convinced he was in a trap from which there was no escape. Within a few hours he would be in such a trap, but he wasn’t in it at present. Her arrangements were designed to keep him from discovering that.

The door clicked open and four men came quickly and cautiously into the room. Three of them were smugglers; the fourth was Tornull, the U-League depot manager. The one who’d entered first stayed at the door, pointing a gun at Danestar. Volcheme’s other two men separated, moved toward her watchfully from right and left. They were competent professionals who had just heard that Danestar was also one. The gun aimed at her from the door wasn’t there for display.

“As a start, Decrain,” Volcheme’s voice said from the screen, “have Miss Gems give you the control belt she’s wearing.”

Danestar unsnapped the belt, making no unnecessary motions, and handed it to the big man named Decrain. They were pulling her teeth, or thought they were, which was sensible from their point of view and made no immediate difference from hers; the belt could be of no use at present. Decrain drew out a chair, told her to sit down and keep her hands in sight. She complied, and the man with the gun came up and stood eight feet to her left. Decrain and his companion began a quick, expert search of her living quarters with detectors. Tornull, Dr. Hishkan’s accomplice in amateur crime, watched them, now and then giving Danestar and her guard a puzzled look which indicated the girl didn’t appear very dangerous to him and that he couldn’t understand why they were taking such elaborate precautions with her.

Within six minutes, Decrain discovered as much as Danestar had wanted them to find of her equipment and records. Whenever the detector beams approached the rest of it, other beams reached out gently and blended with them until they’d slid without a quiver past the shielded areas. The collection of gadgetry Decrain laid out on Danestar’s worktable was impressive and exotic enough to still suspicions, as she had expected. When he announced yet another discovery, Galester observed thoughtfully from the screen, “That’s a dangerously powerful anti-interrogation drug you use, Miss Gems!”

“It is,” Danestar acknowledged. “But it’s dependable. I’m conditioned to it.”

“How much have you taken?”

“My limit. A ten-hour dose . . . sixty-five units.”

She was telling the truth—her developed ability to absorb massive dosages of quizproof without permanent ill effects had pulled her out of more than one difficult situation. But a third of the amount she’d mentioned was considered potentially lethal. Decrain studied her dubiously a moment as if pondering the degree of her humanity. Decrain appeared to be a stolid type, but the uncovering of successive batteries of spidery instruments unlike anything he had encountered in his professional career had caused him mental discomfort; and when he brought Danestar’s set of gimmicked wigs—to which the green one she’d been wearing was now added—out of a shrinkcase and watched them unfold on the table, he’d seemed shaken.

“You’ll be brought over here now, Miss Gems,” Volcheme said, his face sour. “We want a relaxed atmosphere for our discussion, so Decrain will search you thoroughly first. As far as possible, he’ll be a gentleman about it, of course,”

“I’m sure he will be,” Danestar said agreeably. “Because if he isn’t, his hide becomes part of the deal.”

The muscles along Decrain’s jaw tightened, but he continued packaging the sections of Danestar’s instruments Galester wanted to examine without comment. Tornull began to laugh, caught sight of the big man’s expression, and sobered abruptly, looking startled.

The semi-material composite body of the goyal flowed below the solid surface of the world of Mezmiali toward the Unclassified Specimens Depot, swerving from its course occasionally to avoid the confusing turbulences of radiation about the larger cities. Its myriad units hummed with coordinating communal impulses of direction and purpose.

Before this, in all its thousand years of existence, the goyal had known only the planets of the Pit, murkily lit by stars which swam like patches of glowing fog in the dark. Once those worlds had supported the civilization of an inventive race which called itself the Builders.

The Builders developed spaceships capable of sliding unharmed through the cosmic dust at a speed above that of light, and a location system to guide them infallibly through the formless gloom where ordinary communication methods were useless. Eventually they reached the edges of the Pit . . . and shrank back. They had assumed the dust cloud stretched on to the end of the universe, were appalled when they realized it was limited, seemed suspended in some awesome, gleaming, impossibly open void.

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