“Which leaves,” Quillan said, “one way it could have happened.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Will those men keep quiet?”
“If I tell them to.”
“Then play it like this. Two guards have vanished. The Hlat obviously did it. The thing’s deadly. That’ll keep every man in the group on the alert every instant from now on. But we don’t say Velladon has vanished. He’s outside in the Star at the moment, taking care of something.”
Ryter licked his lips. “What does that buy us?”
“If the Brotherhood’s responsible for this—”
“I don’t take much stock in coincidences,” Ryter said.
“Neither do I. But the Hlat’s an animal; it can’t tell them it’s carried out the job. If they don’t realize we suspect them, it gives us some advantage. For the moment, we just carry on as planned, and get rid of the Hlat in one way or another as the first step. The thing’s three times as dangerous as anyone suspected—except, apparently, the Brotherhood. Get the life-detectors over here as soon as you can, and slap a space-armor guard on the fifth level.”
Ryter hesitated, nodded. “All right.”
“Another thing,” Quillan said, “Cooms may have the old trick in mind of working from the top down. If he can take you out along with a few other key men, he might have this outfit demoralized to the point of making up for the difference in the number of guns—especially if the Hlat’s still on his team. You’d better keep a handful of the best boys you have around here glued to your back from now on.”
Ryter smiled bleakly. “Don’t worry. I intend to. What about you?”
“I don’t think they’re planning on giving me any personal attention at the moment. My organization is outside, not here. And it would look odd to the Brotherhood if I started dragging a few Star guards around with me at this point.”
Ryter shrugged. “Suit yourself. It’s your funeral if you’ve guessed wrong.”
* * *
“There was nothing,” Quillan told Marras Cooms, “that you could actually put a finger on. It was just that I got a very definite impression that the commodore and Ryter may have something up their sleeves. Velladon’s looking too self-satisfied to suit me.”
The Brotherhood chief gnawed his lower lip reflectively. He seemed thoughtful, not too disturbed. Cooms might be thoroughly afraid of the escaped Hlat, but he wouldn’t have reached his present position in Nome Lancion’s organization if he had been easily frightened by what other men were planning.
He said, “I warned Movaine that if Velladon learned we’d checked out the Hlat, he wasn’t going to like it.”
“He doesn’t,” Quillan said. “He regards it as something pretty close to an attempted double cross.”
Cooms grinned briefly. “It was.”
“Of course. The question is, what can he do about it? He’s got you outgunned two to one, but if he’s thinking of jumping you before Lancion gets here, he stands to lose more men than he can afford to without endangering the entire operation for himself.”
Cooms was silent a few seconds. “There’s an unpleasant possibility which didn’t occur to me until a short while ago,” he said then. “The fact is that Velladon actually may have us outgunned here by something like four to one. If that’s the case, he can afford to lose quite a few men. In fact, he’d prefer to.”
Quillan frowned. “Four to one? How’s that?”
Cooms said, “The commodore told us he intended to let only around half of the Seventh Star’s security force in on the Hlat deal. The other half was supposed to have been dumped out of one of the subspace section’s locks early today, without benefit of suits. We had no reason to disbelieve him. Velladon naturally would want to cut down the number of men who got in on the split with him to as many as he actually needed. But if he’s been thinking about eliminating us from the game, those other men may still be alive and armed.”
Quillan grunted. “I see. You know, that could explain something that looked a little odd to me.”
“What was that?” Cooms asked.
Quillan said, “After they discovered down there that two of their guards were missing and decided the Hlat must have been on their level, I tried to get hold of the commodore again. Ryter told me Velladon won’t be available for a while, that he’s outside in the Star, taking care of something there. I wondered what could be important enough to get Velladon to leave the Executive Block at present, but—”
“Brother, I’m way ahead of you!” Cooms said. His expression hardened. “That doesn’t look good. But at least he can’t bring in reinforcements without tipping us off. We’ve got our own guards down with theirs at the entrance.”
Quillan gave him a glance, then nodded at the wall beyond them. “That’s a portal over there, Marras. How many of them on this level?”
“Three or four. Why? The outportals have been plugged, man! Sealed off. Fluel checked them over when we moved in.”
“Sure they’re sealed.” Quillan stood up, went to the portal, stood looking at the panel beside it a moment, then pressed on it here and there, and removed it. “Come over here, friend. I suppose portal work’s been out of your line. I’ll show you how fast a thing like that can get un-plugged!”
He slid a pocketbook-sized tool kit out of his belt, snapped it open. About a minute later, the lifeless VACANT sign above the portal flickered twice, then acquired a steady white glow.
“Portal in operation,” Quillan announced. “I’ll seal it off again now. But that should give you the idea.”
Cooms’ tongue flicked over his lips. “Could somebody portal through to this level from the Star while the exits are sealed here?”
“If the mechanisms have been set for that purpose, the portals can be opened again at any time from the Star side. The Duke’s an engineer of sorts, isn’t he? Let him check on it. He should have been thinking of the point himself, as far as that goes. Anyway, Velladon can bring in as many men as he likes to his own level without using the main entrance.” He considered. “I didn’t see anything to indicate that he’s started doing it—”
Marras Cooms shrugged irritably. “That means nothing! It would be easy enough to keep half a hundred men hidden away on any of the lower levels.”
“I suppose that’s right. Well, if the commodore intends to play rough, you should have some warning anyway.”
“What kind of warning?”
“There’s Kinmarten and that Hlat-talking gadget, for example,” Quillan pointed out. “Velladon would want both of those in his possession and out of the way where they can’t get hurt before he starts any shooting.”
Cooms looked at him for a few seconds. “Ryter,” he said then, “sent half a dozen men up here for Kinmarten just after you got back! Velladon’s supposed to deliver the Hlats’ attendants to Yaco, so I let them have Kinmarten.” He paused. “They asked for the Hlat-talker, too.”
Quillan grunted. “Did you give them that?”
“No.”
“Well,” Quillan said after a moment, “that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re in for trouble with the Star group. But it does mean, I think, that we’d better stay ready for it!” He stood up. “I’ll get back down there and go on with the motions of getting the hunt for the Hlat organized. Velladon would sooner see the thing get caught, too, of course, so he shouldn’t try to interfere with that. If I spot anything that looks suspicious, I’ll get the word to you.”
* * *
“I never,” said Orca, unconsciously echoing Baldy Perk, “saw anything like it!” The commodore’s chunky little gunman was ashen-faced. The circle of Star men standing around him hardly looked happier. Most of them were staring down at the empty lower section of a suit of space armor which appeared to have been separated with a neat diagonal slice from its upper part.
“Let’s get it straight,” Ryter said, a little unsteadily. “You say this half of the suit was lying against the wall like that?”
“Not exactly,” Quillan told him. “When we got up to the fifth level the suit was stuck against the wall—like that—about eight feet above the floor. That was in the big room where the cubicles are. When Kinmarten and Orca and I finally got the suit worked away from the wall, I expected frankly that we’d find half the body of the guard still inside. But he’d vanished.”
Ryter cleared his throat. “Apparently,” he said, “the creature drew the upper section of the suit into the wall by whatever means it uses, then stopped applying the transforming process to the metal, and simply moved on with the upper part of the suit and the man.”
Quillan nodded. “That’s what it looks like.”
“But he had two grenades!” Orca burst out. “He had sprayguns! How could it get him that way?”