“Here, look at this.” Kneeling on the opposite side of the cadaver from Tellenberg, Haviti was pushing at the hair on the back of the dead man’s head. For once utterly indifferent to his fellow xenologist’s physical appearance, Tellenberg joined her in searching.
What they found was a small hole. Some of the captain’s hair had fallen down to cover it. Years of fieldwork had sharpened Haviti’s vision.
“Let’s turn him over,” she suggested solemnly.
Working together, they rolled the heavy body onto its back. As there was no hair to cover it, they saw the matching hole in Boylan’s forehead immediately. Small and perfectly round, it went all the way through skin, brain, and bone. A lot of blood, and other things, had leaked out, staining the captain’s face and the upper portion of his jumpsuit. Though Tellenberg was an experienced researcher who out in the field had examined and collected a great many disagreeable dead and dismembered specimens, he still found himself glad that Boylan’s eyes were closed.
Raising his gaze, he scanned what he could see of the surrounding alien forest. “Spikers? Or the hardshells? Or maybe something else? First we encounter two wary indigenous intelligences, then four, then five. Who’s to say there aren’t more?”
“Not me.” Bending low over Boylan, Haviti was using a field scope to inspect the wound closely. “I can’t see too far in—need lab equipment for that—but from what I can tell the ossial perforation is perfectly round and smooth-sided. Turn him again.” Tellenberg and N’kosi helped her roll the body. A quick evaluation of the exit wound found her sitting back and nodding.
“Front to back it’s a perfect match. Pretty hard to envision a spiker making a wound like that with a crude spear.”
“We only know the native weapons we’ve seen,” Tellenberg pointed out reasonably. “We know nothing of those unknown to us.” He eyed the corpse. “Still, I tend to agree with your assessment, Tiare. To cause an injury like that with primitive technology you’d almost have to hold him down and drive a metal spike through his head.” There was no hesitation, no quaver in the xenologist’s voice as he delivered his opinion. He was used to dissection. The captain, in his own involuntary way, had become a specimen. A specimen of just what, they did not yet know.
Actively studying the surrounding foliage, Valnadireb opined, “Perhaps Boylan was killed by some kind of large local predator. The fauna of the Commonwealth includes many very large carnivores equipped with teeth and jaws of sufficient penetrating power to make such a deep wound. My homeworld alone counts several such among its inhabitants.”
Haviti looked thoughtful. “So does mine. Deadly meat-eaters even still roam parts of Earth itself—albeit only in parks and reserves.” She indicated the body. “But if it was a predator, one would expect the entrance wound to be larger than the exit, or vice versa, since killing teeth and talons usually taper to a point. I’m not ruling out an exception, though.” She gestured at the surrounding undergrowth. “Especially not on this world, where biological exceptions seem to be the rule.”
Tellenberg looked around uneasily, unable to keep from wondering what might be lurking just beyond their range of vision and hearing while contemplating its next move. If something local, sentient or otherwise, had killed Boylan and left, there was no telling when it might come back.
“There’s something else to take into account.” With his right foot, N’kosi nudged the dead man’s left boot. “One would think that a predator expending enough energy to make a kill would at least taste its prey. Even an animal defending young is likely to take an exploratory bite out of something it has slain. Except for the hand that was gnawed away by those small scavenging arthropods, the corpse is untouched.”
“We’re thinking like biologists.” N’kosi joined his fellow humans in taking a close look at the deceased captain. “Maybe we should be thinking like psychologists.”
Tellenberg blinked at his colleague. “You’re saying that maybe Boylan killed himself?”
“That makes no sense,” Valnadireb injected.
N’kosi looked back at him. “Maybe not to a thranx. Captain Boylan always struck me as a little high-strung. Like any expedition commander he was under a lot of pressure.” He eyed his companions. “Who’s to say how seriously it affected him? We only knew the public man. He could have been under stress from all kinds of private demons.”
“I dunno.” Straightening, Tellenberg found himself staring in the direction of the camp. “Sure, he bitched and yelled a lot. I even encountered him muttering to himself a number of times. But those aren’t exactly signs of a suicidal psychosis.” He eyed N’kosi. “I know, I know—public versus private man. But still, did he ever strike you as likely to go over the edge?”
N’kosi chewed his lower lip. “No. He always struck me as logical and rational, if a bit prone to hysteria at times. I’m just putting forward another hypothesis. The man’s dead and we don’t know how or why. We have an event. I’m looking for a cause.”
“I do not think we can count self-death among the possibilities.” Valnadireb had settled back on his four trulegs, his foothands and truhands folded in front of him. “The fatal wound suffered by the captain is not consistent with the type of weapon he favored. An explosive shell would not leave such a neat, clean puncture. It would not leave a head.”
“He could have taken another device from stores,” N’kosi argued.
“There’s one other possibility.” Haviti also rose. “Maybe—maybe he and Salvador had a fight. They were always arguing. At least, the captain was. Even when he answered back, Salvador was always soft-voiced.”
“I wouldn’t call it arguing,” Tellenberg corrected her. “You need at least two to have an argument. Boylan was always bawling him out for some reason or another. I never saw Araza yell back.”
She met his gaze evenly. “There you have it. Potential for repressed anger. Only strengthens my point.”
Tellenberg spread his arms. His tone reflected his disbelief. “Come on, Tiare. There’s always tension between superiors and subordinates. And yes, sometimes it can build to the point where it leads to more than verbal confrontation. I can almost envision a frustrated Salvador taking a swing at Boylan. But murder?” He indicated their surroundings. “And if so, even if we countenance it just for purposes of discussion, why here? If Araza wanted to kill Nicholai, why not murder him in his sleep?”
“I don’t know,” she muttered, “since I don’t spend any time myself plotting imaginary homicides. What I do know is that Val makes a good point about weapons.” Crouching again, this time near the captain’s waist, Haviti checked the holster on his service belt. It took only a moment to learn what she wanted to know. “Empty,” she declared, looking up at each of them in turn.
Tellenberg’s lips tightened. “Irrespective of cause of death, that makes no sense at all. No matter what the circumstances, Boylan wouldn’t have left camp without a gun. Hell, he always wore one when he was inside the perimeter.” Turning, he started hunting through the undergrowth, shoving aside oversized leaves and thinner strands of other organic material of uncertain composition. His companions joined him.
His hunch proved correct. Valnadireb found the discarded sidearm lying in the mud. Picking it up in a foothand, the thranx xenologist transferred the weapon to a truhand and showed it to his companions. One chitinous digit tapped a readout on the side of the device.
“This holds ten rounds. Assuming it was fully loaded as usual, several are recorded as having been fired.” He stowed the recovered weapon in his backpack. “In camp we can access the weapon’s recorder to see what he was firing at.”
After fumbling through the dead man’s service belt, Tellenberg let out a puzzled sigh and stood. “There’s no communit. I’d sooner be stuck out here without a weapon than without a communit. This really makes no sense.”
“An active communit puts out a locator signal.” Haviti nodded in the direction of camp. “If Boylan was afraid of being tracked, he might have
left his behind.”
“You mean, if Araza was after him?” N’kosi joined her in looking eastward. “If that’s the case, it didn’t do him any good.”
“We could find out all the answers,” Tellenberg put in, “if we could ask him.”
“Can’t ask him.” Haviti withdrew her own unit. “Can ask someone else who might have some answers.”
Tellenberg put a hand on her arm. “What if you’re right?” he murmured.
She met his gaze. “You mean about Boylan and Araza having a fight? Look, Esra—there are certain things we can do. We can stand here hypothesizing ’til the end of time, or we can move forward with this. The captain’s death may have a depressing but perfectly reasonable explanation. I grant you that murder might be one of them. But it’s only one among several. One way or another, under one set of conditions or another, we have to get back to camp. That means confronting Salvador—unless our initial suspicions were correct and this is somehow the work of one or more groups of natives or some as yet unknown predator. If that’s the case, then Araza will be even more anxious to hear from us than we are to talk to him.”
N’kosi swallowed. “And if there was some kind of altercation and Salvador followed Boylan out here and killed him?”
Her reply was as hard as her gaze. “Then we might be able to ascertain that by asking the right questions and analyzing Araza’s answers, which would be a hell of a lot better than walking right up to him and putting the matter to his face, don’t you think?”
They spent several minutes debating their options. As these were limited, the discussion was concluded fairly quickly. It was agreed that they should contact the technician via communit.
“You talk to him,” Tellenberg told her.
Haviti blinked. “Me? Why me? Why not you, or even Val?”
Despite the seriousness of the situation Tellenberg almost smiled. “When he replies he’ll be thinking of you. Somehow I think that’s likely to be more reassuring than if he’s thinking of me, or Mosi, or Val.”
“That’s not a very scientific rationale, Esra.”
It was definitely not the right place or time to smile. “No, Tiare, it’s not. But it’s realistic.”
She hesitated. Seeing that all three of her colleagues were in agreement, she shook her head once and addressed the communit, instructing it to alert Araza.
As it turned out it did not matter whether she was chosen to try to talk to him, or Tellenberg, or even Valnadireb. It did not matter because no matter what method she employed, whether verbal or via wholly electronic input, the expedition’s technician did not answer.
“Maybe something’s wrong with your unit,” Tellenberg suggested after several attempts at contact had failed.
She shook her head. “It shows full functionality. Still…” She extended a hand.
He lent her his device. The results were exactly the same.
“This isn’t good. Not good at all.” N’kosi had tried to reach Araza on his own unit. “I can’t even raise his emergency locator. At least the camp’s separate module beacons all respond.”
“Same here.” Haviti handed Tellenberg’s device back to him. “It suggests that his unit has been knocked out of action. Or turned off.”
“Why would he turn off his communit?”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to be located,” a somber-faced N’kosi ventured. “Or maybe he’s just not in a talkative mood.”
None of the possible explanations were pleasant to contemplate, Tellenberg knew, although it was encouraging that the individual camp beacons were functioning. At this point, any sign of normality was welcome.
“Could the spikers have attacked the camp, chased Boylan out here, and killed Araza?” N’kosi wondered. “How would they get through the perimeter?”
“That still wouldn’t explain the precision of Boylan’s injuries,” Haviti pointed out, “or how he came to be out here, this far away from camp, without his communit. Unless of course there’s still more to this world than we can envision, and we’re being stalked by something unimaginable. Until we have some answers we have to proceed with the utmost caution.” She took a deep breath. “But proceed we must. We can’t just stay here and wait for explanations to come to us.”
Tellenberg nodded agreement. “All right—we go back to camp. But carefully. We scope things out as best we can before trying to enter. Assuming we make it safely back inside the perimeter, we look for Salvador.” He caught Haviti staring at him. “At the same time we don’t reject any worst-case scenarios no matter how convivial any greeting we may receive.” He eyed the rest of his companions. “Tiare’s right. We can’t risk making or disregarding any assumptions until we get some answers.” Reaching down, he tapped the holster that was attached to his own service belt. “And we go in with weapons activated.”
“Activated—or activated and drawn?” Valnadireb’s compound eyes and feathery antennae were aimed in Tellenberg’s direction.
The xenologist looked at Haviti, who in turn eyed the thranx. “No,” she declared firmly. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. We don’t know Boylan’s state of mind before he died. By the same token, we don’t know what kind of pressure Araza may be under. I agree with Esra. We have to be ready to defend ourselves from anything—or anyone. But we don’t want to be unnecessarily provocative, either. We have no idea of the true nature of things.”
Tellenberg nodded agreement. “No matter what the circumstances we should be alright if we just keep our heads and act sensibly. Something bad has happened. We don’t know the cause but we’re going to find out. And if it should turn out that Araza is in some way responsible for this blanket silence from camp and for the captain’s death, well…” He met the gaze of each of his colleagues in turn. “We’re not military people, but we’ve all had to handle weapons in the field. We know how to shoot to defend ourselves. And there are four of us.” This time he slapped instead of tapped his belt holster.
“If it comes to it, four experienced field operatives should be able to handle one disturbed repair technician.”
9
There was no disagreement about leaving the body of the captain behind. Everyone was of the same mind that it was too heavy and that under the circumstances, given the uncertainty with which they were presently faced, it was a burden they could not safely manage. They could come back for it later, with a transporter, and bring it back to camp.
Besides, Tellenberg found himself thinking gravely as he followed N’kosi back toward the waiting boat, Boylan would not mind.
There was some discussion concerning the hard-won collection of specimens. “Look,” N’kosi told his colleagues, “if the captain was killed by natives, or by some as yet unknown local life-form, or if despite the illogic of it he actually did commit suicide, we’re going to feel awfully foolish if we come back here only to find that other natives or fauna have damaged or knocked overboard everything we’ve worked so hard to accumulate.”
“Maybe I’m wrong, Mosi,” Haviti retorted, “but right now I could care less about specimen preservation. Call my scientific dedication into question if you want, but the most important thing we have to do right now is try to find out what happened to Boylan—and what’s going on at the camp. Should the worst-case scenario you describe eventuate, we can always acquire more specimens.” She turned from him to Tellenberg and Valnadireb. “Our most pressing need is to find out why Araza’s not answering his communit.”
Tellenberg’s tone was apologetic. “Tiare’s right, Mosi. Nobody’d miss the collection we’ve put together over the last several days more than I, but that’s not really important right now.”
N’kosi turned to the sole nonhuman member of the expedition. “Val?”
“I must agree with Esra and Tiare. The specimens are all dead. Captain Boylan is dead. We, on the other hand, are still alive. Ensure the latter first, deal with the deceased afterward.”
“All right then.” But as they started off back toward camp along
the crude trail they had hacked out of the alien forest several days earlier, N’kosi could not keep from casting more than one regretful glance back in the direction of the grounded boat and its unparalleled cargo of recently accumulated native life-forms.
While making their way through the forest they stayed on maximum alert, though for what they did not know. An attack by Quofumian aborigines, perhaps, or an assault by some previously unknown local predator. A growing unease gnawed at the back of everyone’s mind at the continued silence from the camp. Why wasn’t Araza answering? Even if he chose silence, his communit would keep advising him of the repeated attempts by his colleagues to make contact. There was still another possible explanation. He might be dead, too.
“If there was a fight,” Tellenberg murmured as he pushed aside a softly mewing knot of vines, “and Salvador killed Boylan, maybe the captain managed to shoot him. We know that Boylan got off three rounds. Maybe he wounded Salvador fatally.” He gestured over his shoulder. “Araza might be lying back there in the bushes just like the captain. Maybe we didn’t look hard enough.”
N’kosi glanced up at his friend. “We have to come back to the river for our specimens. If Salvador’s not in the camp, it would lend credence to that idea. Maybe we’ll find other indicators of what’s happened. Bloodstains, destruction of property.” He brightened. “The internal security system should have recorded any trouble.”
“Good thought, Mosi.” Having been raised on and lived most of his life on typically tropical thranx worlds, Valnadireb was more comfortable in their present surroundings than any of his human companions. “That’s the first thing we should do.”
It was such a good idea, in fact, that Tellenberg tried to access the camp’s security system via his communit. He failed, but felt it was worth the few minutes it took to make the effort. While a fair number of the camp’s systems could be remotely contacted and controlled, Security was not among them. Allowing remote access to Security would open that security to the possibility of being breached or otherwise compromised. Security that could be accessed externally was by definition no longer secure. Still, pondering the possibility gave him something to do. For a few moments it had the benefit of taking his mind off their present gloomy situation.
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