“You made a lucky guess, then,” he said hoarsely, having found his voice. “But if you aren’t accusing me of cheating on Grant, why this demonstration? Some people might call it unusual, maybe even cruel.”
“Oh, but you,” she said fiercely. “You wouldn’t have McNeil?” She glanced at his forearms, which rested on his thighs, his hands clasped between his knees. “Even with your sleeves rolled up.”
He shook his head no. “I could have cheated him easily enough, Inspector Troy. But I swear I didn’t.”
“Thank you for saying so. Although I was confident that you would admit the truth.” Sparta got to her feet.
“ ‘Life and honour seemed in different categories. . . . the more that was lost the more precious the little left.’ “
“What’s that mean?” McNeil growled.
“From an old book I glanced at recently—a passage that made me want to read the whole thing someday. It gave me considerable insight into your situation. You’re quite good at concealing truths, Mr. McNeil, but your particular sense of honor makes it very difficult for you to lie outright.” She smiled. “No wonder you almost choked on that coffee.”
McNeil’s expression was puzzled now, almost humble.
How could this pale, slim child have peered so deeply into his soul? “I still don’t understand what you mean to do.”
Sparta reached into her jacket again and brought out a small plastic book. “Star Queen will be inspected by other people after me, and they will be at least as thorough as I’ve been. Since you and I know you didn’t cheat Grant out of his life, it’s probably a good thing you thought to bring this book out with you, and that I never found it, and that I never had any suspicion of what a gifted amateur magician you are.”
She tossed the book on the bed, beside the cards. It landed face up: Harry Blackstone on Magic.
“Keep the cards, too. Little gift to help you get well soon. I bought them ten minutes ago at a kiosk in the McNeil said, “I’m having the feelin’ that nothing I said came as much of a surprise to you, Inspector.”
Sparta had her hand on the door panel, poised to leave.
“Don’t think I admire you, Mr. McNeil. Your life and the way you choose to live it is your business. But it so happens I agree that there’s no justification for destroying the late, unfortunate Peter Grant’s reputation.” She wasn’t smiling now. “That’s me speaking privately, not the law.
If you’ve kept anything else from me, I’ll find it out—and if it’s criminal, I’ll have you for it.”
PART FIVE
BLOWOUT
XVII
Sparta reached Viktor Proboda on the commlink: he could stop playing games now. The passengers from Helios could come aboard.
Spaceports in space—unlike planetside shuttleports, which resemble ordinary airports—have a flavor all their own, part harbor, part trainyard, part truckstop. Small craft abound, tugs and tenders and taxis and cutters and self-propelled satellites, perpetually sliding and gliding around the big stations. There are very few pleasure craft in space (the eccentric billionaire’s hobby of solar yachting provides a rare exception) and unlike a busy harbor, there is no swashing about, no bounding over wakes or insolent cutting across bows. The daily routine is orbit-matching— exquisitely precise, with attendant constant recalculation of velocity differentials and mass/fuel ratios—so that in space even the small craft are as rigidly constrained to preset paths as freight cars in a switching yard. Except that in space, gangs of computers are continually rearranging the tracks.
And aside from local traffic, spaceports are not very busy. Shuttles from the planet’s surface may call a few times a mouth, interplanetary liners and freighters a few times a year. Favorable planetary alignments tend to concentrate the busy times; then local chambers of commerce turn out costumed volunteers in force, greeting arriving liners the way Honolulu once greeted the Lurline and the Matsonia. Lacking indigenous grass skirts or flower leis, space station boosters have invented novel “traditions” to reflect a station’s ethnic and political mix, its economic base, its borrowed mythologies: thus, arriving at Mars Station, a passenger might encounter men and women wearing Roman breastplates, showing their bare knees, and carrying red flags emblazoned with hammers and sickles.
At Port Hesperus the passengers from Helios, disembarking after a long delay, traversed a winding stainless steel corridor rippling with colored lights, garish signs boasting of the station’s mineral products in English and Arabic and Russian; kanji-splashed paper banners, fluttering in the breeze from the exhaust fans, added an additional touch of festivity.
When the passengers reached a glass-roofed section of the corridor they were distracted by a silent commotion overhead; looking up, they were startled to see a chitoned Aphrodite riding a plastic seashell, smiling and waving at them, and near her a Shinto sun goddess wafting prettily in her silk kimono. Both women floated freely in zero-gee, at odd angles to each other and everyone else. These apparitions of the station’s goddess (the Japanese were stretching the identity some) were haloed by a dozen grinning men, women, and children gesturing with fruit-and- flower baskets, products of the station’s hydroponic farms and gardens.
The passengers, before being allowed to ascend to the level of these heavenly creatures, faced one last obstacle.
At the terminus of the corridor Inspector Viktor Proboda, flanked by respectful guards with stunguns at their sides, ushered them into a small cubical room upholstered on all six sides with dark blue carpet. Some were admitted individually, some in groups. On one wall of the carpeted cube a videoplate displayed the stern visage of Inspector Ellen Troy, bigger than life-size. She was ostentatiously studying a filescreen in front of her, its surface invisible to the videoplate watcher.
Sparta was actually in a hidden room not far from the disembarkation tube, and in fact she was paying no attention to the filescreen, which was a prop. She had arranged with Proboda to bring the passengers into the room in a specific order, and she had already disposed of most of them, including the Japanese professor and the Arabs with their families, and various engineers and travelling salesmen.
At the moment she was trying to hustle the Dutch schoolgirls on their way. “We won’t have to detain you any longer,” she said with a friendly smile.
“Hope the rest of your trip is more fun.”
“This has been the best part,” one of them said, and another added, with much batting of lashes at Proboda, “We really are liking your comrade.” The third girl, however, looked as prim as Proboda himself.
“Through here, please,” he said, “all of you. To your right. Let’s move it along.”
“Bye, Vikee . . .”
“Vikee” felt Sparta’s amused gaze from the videoplate, but he managed to hurry the girls out and get Percy Farnsworth into the room without having to look her image in the eye. “Mr. Percy Farnsworth, London, representing Lloyd’s.” Farnsworth came into the interrogation cube with mustache twitching. “Mr. Farnsworth, Inspector Troy,” Proboda said, indicating the videoplate.
Farnsworth managed to be brisk and breathless at the same time. “Eager to be of assistance in your investigation, Inspector. Say the word. This sort of thing my specialty, you know.”
Sparta watched him, expressionless, for two seconds: a veteran confidence man who’d done his time, now working for the other side. That was the story, at any rate.
“You’ve already been helpful, sir. Given us a great many leads.” She pretended to peruse his file on her dummy filescreen. “Mm. Your Lloyd’s syndicate seems to have been quite enthusiastic about Star Queen. Insured the ship, most of the cargo, the lives of the crew.”
“Quite. And naturally I’d like to contact Lloyd’s as soon as possible, file a preliminary . . .”
She interrupted. “Well, off the record, I’d say the underwriters have gotten off lightly.”
Farnsworth mulled this bit of information—what exactly did she mean?—and apparently decided the inspector was willing to play cozy with him. “Encouraging, that,”
he said, and dropped his voice to a confidential murmur.
“But would you mind terribly . . . this business with Grant . . .”
“I suppose you’d like to know if it was legally an accident or a suicide. That’s the big question here. Unfortunately the solicitors will just have to fight it out, Mr.
Farnsworth. I have nothing to add to the public record.”
Her tone conveyed no coziness. “I’ll accept your kind offer of further assistance. Please move through that door on the left and wait for me inside.”
“There?” A door into a grim steel tube had suddenly opened in the carpetry. He peered through it hesitantly, as if expecting to meet a wild animal.
Sparta prodded him. “I won’t keep you more than ten minutes, sir. Carry on. Eh?”
With a mumbled “Quite,” Farnsworth moved through the door. The moment he was clear it popped shut behind him. Proboda quickly opened the door to the disembarkation tube. “Mr. Nikos Pavlakis, Athens, representing Pavlakis Lines,” Proboda said. “This is Inspector Troy.”