“Why?”
“If it’s hungry,” Baldy explained simply, “I’d sooner it wrapped itself around a few chunks of sea beef, an’ not around me.”
Quillan punched him encouragingly in the shoulder. “Baldy,” he said, “in your own way, you have had an idea! But we won’t leave the meat box open. When Kinmarten wakes up, I want him to show me how to bait this cubicle with a piece of sea beef, so it’ll snap shut if the Hlat goes inside. Meanwhile it won’t hurt if it gets a little hungry.”
“That,” said Baldy, “isn’t the way I feel about it.”
“There must be around a hundred and fifty people in the Executive Block at present,” Quillan said. “Look at it that way! Even if the thing keeps stuffing away, your odds are pretty good, Baldy.”
Baldy shuddered.
* * *
Aside from a dark bruise high on his forehead, Brock Kinmarten showed no direct effects of having been knocked out. However, his face was strained and his voice not entirely steady. It was obvious that the young rest warden had never been in a similarly unnerving situation before. But he was making a valiant effort not to appear frightened and, at the same time, to indicate that he would co-operate to the best of his ability with his captors.
He’d regained consciousness by the time Quillan and Perk returned to the fourth level, and Quillan suggested bringing him to Marras Cooms’ private quarters for questioning. The Brotherhood chief agreed; he was primarily interested in finding out how the Hlat-control device functioned.
Kinmarten shook his head. He knew nothing about the instrument, he said, except that it was called a Hlat-talker. It was very unfortunate that Eltak had been shot, because Eltak undoubtedly could have told them all they wanted to know about it. If what he had told Kinmarten was true, Eltak had been directly involved in the development of the device.
“Was he some Federation scientist?” Cooms asked, fiddling absently with the mysterious cylindrical object.
“No, sir,” the young man said. “But—again if what he told me was the truth—he was the man who actually discovered these Hlats. At least, he was the first man to discover them who wasn’t immediately killed by them.”
Cooms glanced thoughtfully at Quillan, then asked, “And where was that?”
Kinmarten shook his head again. “He didn’t tell me. And I didn’t really want to know. I was anxious to get our convoy to its destination, and then to be relieved of the assignment. I . . . well, I’ve been trained to act as Rest Warden to human beings, after all, not to monstrosities!” He produced an uncertain smile, glancing from one to the other of his interrogators. The smile promptly faded out again.
“You’ve no idea at all then about the place they came from?” Cooms asked expressionlessly.
“Oh, yes,” Kinmarten said hastily. “Eltak talked a great deal about the Hlats, and actually—except for its location—gave me a fairly good picture of what the planet must be like. For one thing, it’s an uncolonized world, of course. It must be terratype or very nearly so, because Eltak lived there for fifteen years with apparently only a minimum of equipment. The Hlats are confined to a single large island. He discovered them by accident and—”
“What was he doing there?”
“Well, sir, he came from Hyles-Frisian. He was a crim . . . he’d been engaged in some form of piracy, and when the authorities began looking for him, he decided it would be best to get clean out of the Hub. He cracked up his ship on this world and couldn’t leave again. When he discovered the Hlats and realized their peculiar ability, he kept out of their way and observed them. He found out they had a means of communicating with each other, and that he could duplicate it. That stopped them from harming him, and eventually, he said, he was using them like hunting dogs. They were accustomed to co-operating with one another, because when there was some animal around that was too large for one of them to handle, they would attack it in a group . . .”
He went on for another minute or two on the subject. The Hlats—the word meant “rock lion” in one of the Hyles-Frisian dialects, describing a carnivorous animal which had some superficial resemblance to the creatures Eltak had happened on—frequented the seacoast and submerged themselves in sand, rocks and debris, whipping up out of it to seize some food animal, and taking it down with them again to devour it at leisure.
Quillan interrupted, “You heard what happened to the man it attacked on the fifth level?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why would the thing have left him half outside the wall as it did?”
Kinmarten said that it must simply have been moving too fast. It could slip into and out of solid substances without a pause itself, but it needed a little time to restructure an object it was carrying in the same manner. No more time, however, than two or three seconds—depending more on the nature of the object than on its size, according to Eltak.
“It can restructure anything in that manner?” Quillan asked.
Kinmarten hesitated. “Well, sir, I don’t know. I suppose there might be limitations on its ability. Eltak told me the one we were escorting had been the subject of extensive experimentation during the past year, and that the results are very satisfactory.”
“Suppose it carries a living man through a wall. Will the man still be alive when he comes out on the other side, assuming the Hlat doesn’t kill him deliberately?”
“Yes, sir. The process itself wouldn’t hurt him.”
* * *
Quillan glanced at Cooms. “You know,” he said, “we might be letting Yaco off too cheaply!”
Cooms raised an eyebrow warningly, and Quillan grinned. “Our friend will be learning about Yaco soon enough. Why did Eltak tell the creature to attack, Kinmarten?”
“Sir, I don’t know,” Kinmarten said. “He was a man of rather violent habits. My impression, however, was that he was simply attempting to obtain a hostage.”
“How did he get off that island with the Hlat?”
“A University League explorer was investigating the planet. Eltak contacted them and obtained the guarantee of a full pardon and a large cash settlement in return for what he could tell them about the Hlats. They took him and this one specimen along for experimentation.”
“What about the Hlats on the Camelot?”
“Eltak said those had been quite recently trapped on the island.”
Cooms ran his fingers over the cylinder, producing a rapid series of squeaks and whistles. “That’s one thing Yaco may not like,” he observed. “They won’t have a monopoly on the thing.”
Quillan shook his head. “Their scientists don’t have to work through red tape like the U-League. By the time the news breaks—if the Federation ever intends to break it—Yaco will have at least a five-year start on everyone else. That’s all an outfit like that needs.” He looked at Kinmarten. “Any little thing you haven’t thought to tell us, friend?” he inquired pleasantly.
A thin film of sweat showed suddenly on Kinmarten’s forehead.
“No, sir,” he said. “I’ve really told you everything I know. I—”
“Might try him under dope,” Cooms said absently.
“Uh-uh!” Quillan said. “I want him wide awake to help me bait the cubicle for the thing. Has Velladon shown any indication of becoming willing to co-operate in hunting it?”
Cooms gestured with his head. “Ask Fluel! I sent him down to try to patch things up with the commodore. He just showed up again.”
Quillan glanced around. The Duke was lounging in the doorway. He grinned slightly, said, “Velladon’s still sore at us. But he’ll talk to Quillan. Kinmarten here . . . did he tell you his wife’s on the Star?”
Brock Kinmarten went utterly white. Cooms looked at him, said softly, “No, that must have slipped his mind.”
Fluel said, “Yeah. Well, she is. And Ryter says they’ll have her picked up inside half an hour. When they bring her in, we really should check on how candid Kinmarten’s been about everything.”
The rest warden said in a voice that shook uncontrollably, “Gentlemen, my wife knows absolutely nothing about these matters! I swear it! She—”
Quillan stood up. “Well, I’ll go see if I can’t get Velladon in a better mood. Are you keeping that Hlat-talker, Cooms?”
Cooms smiled. “I am.”
“Marras figures,” the Duke’s flat voice explained, “that if the thing comes into the room and he squeaks at it a few times, he won’t get hurt.”
“That’s possible,” Cooms said, un-ruffled. “At any rate, I intend to hang on to it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t play around with those buttons too much,” Quillan observed.
“Why not?”
“You might get lucky and tap out some pattern that spells `Come to chow’ in the Hlat’s vocabulary.”
3
There were considerably more men in evidence on Level Two than on the fourth, and fewer signs of nervousness. The Star men had been told of the Hlat’s escape from its cubicle, but weren’t taking it too seriously. Quillan was conducted to the commodore and favored with an alarmingly toothy grin. Ryter, the security chief, joined them a few seconds later. Apparently, Velladon had summoned him.