“Forgot… hey, watch it!”
He’d reached out towards the voice without thinking, touched something. Then Goth suddenly stood there, two feet farther away, rubbing her forehead and frowning.
“Nearly put out my eye with your thumb!” she announced indignantly.
“But what … since when…”
“Oh, no-shape! Special kind of shape-change, that’s all. Just learned it this sleep period so I forgot to switch off when I came in. I was…” She put her hands on her hips. “Captain, I found out where that thing Hulik saw is hiding!”
“Huh?” The captain came out of the chair, hand darting to the desk drawer where he kept the gun. “It is on the ship?”
Goth nodded, eyes gleaming. “In Yango’s cabin!”
“Great Patham! Was Yango…”
“Don’t worry about him. He was in there with it just now. Talking to it. I was listening at the door.” Goth glanced down at herself, patted her flanks. “No-shape’s pretty handy once you get used to not seeing you around anywhere!”
“Now wait,” said the captain helplessly. “Did you just say Yango was talking to the creature?”
“And it to Yango,” Goth nodded. “Snarly sort of thing! No kind of talk I know. Yango knows it, though. “
He stared at her. “Goth, you’re sure he has that animal in his stateroom with him?”
“Well, sure I’m sure! He opened the door a crack once to look out. “ Goth put her hands out on either side of her. “I was that far from him.”
“That was dangerous! The creature might have caught your scent.”
“No-shape, no-sound, no-scent!” Goth said complacently. “Had them all going, Captain. I wasn’t there. Got a look through the door at a bit of the thing. Big, and brown fur. Saw part of a leg, too. Odd sort of leg-”
“Odd?”
“Kind of like a bug’s leg. Got that shaggy fur all over it, though. Couldn’t really see much.” She looked at him. “What are we going to do?”
“If Laes Yango’s talking to it, he’s got some kind of control over it. We’d better handle this by ourselves and right now, while we know the thing’s still in the stateroom.”
“It won’t go out by the door for a while,” Goth said.
“Why not?”
“Doorlock won’t turn till we get there. Pulled a bit of steel inside it. So it’s stuck.”
“Very good!” When Laes Yango’s shipment of hyperelectronic equipment had been brought on board, he’d insisted on having one very large crate of particularly valuable items placed in his stateroom instead of the storage. “Remember that big box he has in there?” the captain asked.
Goth looked dubious. “I don’t think it’s big enough for that thing to climb into”
“Something with a body as large as that of a horse’s… No, I guess not. It was just a thought.” He pocketed the gun. “Let’s go find out what it is and what Yango thinks he’s doing with it.” He looked down at her. “This might get rough. We’ll sort of play it by ear.”
Goth nodded, grinned briefly.
“And I go no-shape, eh?”
“Plus the rest of it,” said the captain. “But don’t do anything to make Laes Yango think he’s arguing with a witch, unless it looks absolutely necessary.”
“Saving that up.” Goth nodded.
“Exactly. We might still have to pull a few real surprises of our own before this trip’s over. You’ll clear the doorlock as soon as we get there-“
“Right,” said Goth and vanished. He kept his ears cocked for any indication of her presence on the way to Laes Yango’s stateroom, but caught nothing. The no-sound effect seemed as complete as the visual blankout. As he came quietly up to the door, her fingers gave the side of his hand a quick ghostly squeeze and were gone.
He stood listening, ear close to the panel. He heard no voice sounds, but there were other faint sounds. Footsteps crossed the stateroom twice from different directions, brisk human footsteps, not some animal tread. Yango was moving about. Then came a moderately heavy thump, a metallic clank. After a few moments, two more thumps…. Then everything remained still.
The captain waited a minute, activated the door speaker.
He’d expected either a dead silence or some indication of startled, stealthy activity from the stateroom after the buzzer sounded. Instead, Laes Yango’s voice inquired calmly, “Yes? Who is it?”
“Captain Aron,” replied the captain. “May I come in, Mr. Yango?”
“Certainly, sir…. One moment, please. I believe the door is locked.”
Footsteps crossed the stateroom again, approaching the door. Yango hadn’t sounded in the least like a man who had something to hide. Those thumps? Thoughtfully, the captain moved back a little, slid a hand into his gun pocket, left it there.
The door swung open, showing enough of the stateroom to make it immediately clear that no large, strange beast stood waiting inside. The trader smiled a small, cold smile at him from beyond the door. “Come in, sir. Come in…”
The captain went in, drew the door shut behind him. A light was on over a table against the wall on the left; various papers lay about the table. The big packing crate rather crowded the far end of the room, but nothing approaching the bulk of a horse could possibly have been concealed in that. “I trust I’m not disturbing you,” the captain said.
“Not at all, Captain Aron.” Laes Yango nodded at the table, smiled deprecatingly. “Paper work … It seems a businessman never quite catches up with that. What was on your mind, sir? “
“A matter of ship security,” the captain told him, casually drawing the gun from his pocket, holding it pointed at the floor between them. The trader’s gaze shifted to the gun, then up to the captain’s face. He looked mildly puzzled, perhaps a little startled.
“Ship security?” he repeated.
“Yes,” said the captain. He lifted the gun muzzle an inch or two. “Would you hand me your gun, Mr. Yango? Carefully, please!”
The trader stared at him a moment. Then his smile returned. “Ah, well,” he said softly. “You have the advantage of me, sir! The gun, of course, if you feel that’s necessary!” His hand went slowly under his jacket, slowly brought out a gun, barrel held between thumb and finger, extended it to the captain. “Here you are, sir!”
The captain placed the gun in his left coat pocket.
“Thank you,” he said. He indicated the packing crate. “You told me, I believe, Mr. Yango, that you had some very valuable and delicate hyperelectronic equipment in that box.”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“I see you have it locked,” said the captain. “I’ll have to take a look inside. Would you unlock it, please?”
Laes Yango chewed his lip thoughtfully. “You insist on that?” he inquired.
“I’m afraid I do,” said the captain.
“Very well, sir. I know the law, on a risk run any question of ship security overrides all other considerations, at the captain’s discretion. I shall open the lock, though not without protest against this invasion of my business privacy.”
“I’m sorry,” said the captain. “Open it, please.”
He waited while the trader produced two sizable keys, inserted them in turn into a lock on the case, twisted them back and forth in a practiced series of motions and withdrew them. Then Yango stepped back from the case. Its top section was swinging slowly open, snapped into position, leaving the interior of the case exposed. The captain moved up, half his attention on the trader, until he could glance into it….
“It looked like a big, folded robe made of animal fur, long, coarse brown fur, streaked here and there with black tiger markings. The Captain reached cautiously into the case, poked the fur, then grasped the hide through it and lifted. It came up with a kind of heavy, resilient looseness… He let it down again. The whole box might be filled with the stuff.
“This,” he asked Yango, “is valuable hyperelectronic equipment?”
Yango nodded. “Indeed it is, sir! Indeed, it is! Extremely valuable, almost priceless. Very old and in perfect condition. A disassembled Sheem robot…. The great artist who created it died over three hundred years ago.”
“A disassembled Sheem robot,” said the captain. “I see… Have you had it assembled recently, Mr. Yango? “
“That is possible,” Yango said stiffly.
The captain took hold of one end of the thick fold of furred material, drew it back… The head lay just beneath it, bedded in more brown fur.
It didn’t appear to be a head so much as the flattened out bristly mask of one… But the eyes looked alive.
Hulik do Eldel had described them accurately, a row of five smallish, round eyes of fiery yellow. They stared up out of the case at the ceiling of the stateroom. Near the other end of the head was a wide dark mouth-slit. A double pair of curved black tusks was thrust out at the sides of the mouth. It was a big head, big enough to go with a horse-sized body. And a thoroughly hideous one.