“Ah, he’s too imaginative,” Quillan said, taking a swallow of his drink. “I never heard of the Hlats before I got here. As I told you, I’m on an entirely different kind of job at the moment. I had to make up some kind of story to get an in with the boys, that’s all.”
“So you’re not going to knock those two weasels off?”
“No such intentions. I don’t mind them sweating about it till the Feds arrive, but that’s it.”
“What about Boltan and Hagready?”
“What about them? I did happen to know that if anyone started asking questions about those two, he’d learn that neither had been near his regular beat for close to a month.”
“I’ll bet!” Reetal said cryptically.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Hm-m-m,” she said. “Bad News Quillan! A really tough boy, for sure. You know, I didn’t believe for an instant that you were after the Hlats—”
“Why not?”
Reetal said, “I’ve been on a couple of operations with you, and you’d be surprised how much I’ve picked up about you from time to time on the side. Swiping a shipment of odd animals and selling them to Yaco, that could be Bad News, in character. Selling a couple of hundred human beings—like Brock and Solvey Kinmarten—to go along with the animals to an outfit like Yaco would not be in character.”
“So I have a heart of gold,” Quillan said.
“So you fell all over your own big feet about half a minute ago!” Reetal told him. “Bad News Quillan—with no interest whatsoever in the Hlats—still couldn’t afford to let Ryter live to talk about him to the Feds, big boy!”
Quillan looked reflective for a moment. “Dirty trick!” he observed. “For that, you might freshen up my glass.”
* * *
Reetal took both glasses over to the liquor cabinet, freshened them up, and settled down on the armrest of the chair again. “So there we’re back to the embarrassing little problem,” she said.
“Ryter?”
“No, idiot. We both know that Ryter is headed for Rehabilitation. Fifteen years or so of it, at a guess. The problem is little Reetal who has now learned a good deal more than she was ever intended to learn. Does she head for Rehabilitation, too?”
Quillan took a swallow of his drink and set the glass down again. “Are you suggesting,” he inquired, “that I might be, excuse the expression, a cop?”
Reetal patted his head. “Bad News Quillan! Let’s look back at his record. What do we find? A shambles, mainly. Smashed-up organizations, outfits, gangs. Top-level crooks with suddenly vacant expressions and unexplained holes in their heads. Why go on? The name is awfully well earned! And nobody realizing anything because the ones who do realize it suddenly . . . well, where are Boltan and Hagready at the moment?”
Quillan sighed. “Since you keep bringing it up—Hagready played it smart, so he’s in Rehabilitation. Be cute if Ryter ran into him there some day. Pappy Boltan didn’t want to play it smart. I’m not enough of a philosopher to make a guess at where he might be at present. But I knew he wouldn’t be talking.”
“All right,” Reetal said, “we’ve got that straight. Bad News is Intelligence of some kind. Federation maybe, or maybe one of the services. It doesn’t matter, really, I suppose. Now, what about me?”
He reached out and tapped his glass with a fingertip. “That about you, doll. You filled it. I’m drinking it. I may not think quite as fast as you do, but I still think. Would I take a drink from a somewhat lawless and very clever lady who really believed I had her lined up for Rehabilitation? Or who’d be at all likely to blab out something that would ruin an old pal’s reputation?”
Reetal ran her fingers through his hair again. “I noticed the deal with the drink,” she said. “I guess I just wanted to hear you say it. You don’t tell on me, I don’t tell on you. Is that it?”
“That’s it,” Quillan said. “What Ryter and Orca want to tell the Feds doesn’t matter. It stops there; the Feds will have the word on me before they arrive. By the way, did you go wake up the Kinmartens yet?”
“Not yet,” Reetal said. “Too busy getting the office help soothed down and back to work.”
“Well, let’s finish these drinks and go do that, then. The little doll’s almost bound to be asleep by now, but she might still be sitting there biting nervously at her pretty knuckles.”
* * *
Major Heslet Quillan, of Space Scout Intelligence, was looking unhappy. “We’re still searching for them everywhere,” he explained to Klayung, “but it’s a virtual certainty that the Hlat got them shortly before it was trapped.”
Klayung, a stringy, white-haired old gentleman, was an operator of the Psychology Service, in charge of the shipment of Hlats the Camelot had brought in. He and Quillan were waiting in the vestibule of the Seventh Star’s rest cubicle vaults for Lady Pendrake’s cubicle to be brought over from the Executive Block.
Klayung said reflectively, “Couldn’t the criminals with whom you were dealing here have hidden the couple away somewhere?”
Quillan shook his head. “There’s no way they could have located them so quickly. I made half a dozen portal switches when I was taking Kinmarten to the suite. It would take something with a Hlat’s abilities to follow me over that route and stay undetected. And it must be an unusually cunning animal to decide to stay out of sight until I’d led it where it wanted to go.”
“Oh, they’re intelligent enough,” Klayung agreed absently. “Their average basic I.Q. is probably higher than that of human beings. A somewhat different type of mentality, of course. Well, when the cubicle arrives, I’ll question the Hlat and we’ll find out.”
Quillan looked at him. “Those control devices make it possible to hold two-way conversations with the things?”
“Not exactly,” Klayung said. “You see, major, the government authorities who were concerned with the discovery of the Hlats realized it would be almost impossible to keep some information about them from getting out. The specimen which was here on the Star has been stationed at various scientific institutions for the past year; a rather large number of people were involved in investigating it and experimenting with it. In consequence, several little legends about them have been deliberately built up. The legends aren’t entirely truthful, so they help to keep the actual facts about the Hlats satisfactorily vague.”
“The Hlat-talker is such a legend. Actually, the device does nothing. The Hlats respond to telepathic stimuli, both among themselves and from other beings, eventually begin to correlate such stimuli with the meanings of human speech.”
“Then you—” Quillan began.
“Yes. Eltak, their discoverer, was a fairly good natural telepath. If he hadn’t been abysmally lazy, he might have been very good at it. I carry a variety of the Service’s psionic knickknacks about with me, which gets me somewhat comparable results.”
He broke off as the vestibule portal dilated widely. Lady Pendrake’s cubicle floated through, directed by two gravity crane operators behind it. Klayung stood up.
“Set it there for the present, please,” he directed the operators. “We may call for you later if it needs to be moved again.”
He waited until the portal had closed behind the men before walking over to the cubicle. He examined the settings and readings at some length.
“Hm-m-m, yes,” he said, straightening finally. His expression became absent for a few seconds; then he went on. “I’m beginning to grasp the situation, I believe. Let me tell you a few things about the Hlats, major. For one, they form quite pronounced likes and dislikes. Eltak, for example, would have been described by most of his fellow men as a rather offensive person. But the Hlats actually became rather fond of him during the fifteen or so years he lived on their island.
“That’s one point. The other has to do with their level of intelligence. We discovered on the way out here that our charges had gained quite as comprehensive an understanding of the functioning of the cubicles that had been constructed for them as any human who was not a technical specialist might do. And—”
He interrupted himself, stood rubbing his chin for a moment.
“Well, actually,” he said, “that should be enough to prepare you for a look inside the Hlat’s cubicle.”
Quillan gave him a somewhat surprised glance. “I’ve been told it’s ugly as sin,” he remarked. “But I’ve seen some fairly revolting looking monsters before this.”
Klayung coughed. “That’s not exactly what I meant,” he said. “I . . . well, let’s just open the thing up. Would you mind, major?”
“Not at all.” Quillan stepped over to the side of the cubicle, unlocked the door switch and pulled it over. They both moved back a few feet before the front of the cubicle. A soft humming came for some seconds from the door’s mechanisms; then it suddenly swung open. Quillan stooped to glance inside, straightened instantly again, hair bristling.