"These," said Jill, "are rather large. My uncle is interested in
experimental breeding. I understand the biggest tusker weighs nearly
two tons. They're alarming beasts. Miguel's the only one who can get
close to the boar."
* * * * *
Outside it was early evening, still light, but Dowland went first to
the wrecked grid-car to get a flashlight. He'd need it during the
night, might even need it immediately if he found he could force
an entry into the laboratory. In that case--if the building wasn't
metasteel after all--he probably would find no YM inside it. Which,
Dowland admitted to himself, would be entirely all right with him.
But he was reasonably certain it was there. The Overgovernment's
instructions about what to watch for remained annoyingly indefinite,
but uniformly they stressed the unusual, in particular when associated
with the disastrous. And so far, that described the situation here. The
large and uncomfortable question was what kind of disaster might be
about to erupt next.
There were other questions, somewhat too many of them at the moment.
But the one he wanted answered immediately concerned Jill Trelawney's
role. There was a guaranteed way of getting the information from her,
but he had to be sure she wasn't as innocent as she acted before
resorting to it. At the very least, he had to establish that the
activities in the laboratory constituted some serious violation of
Overgovernment law--even if not directly connected with YM--and that
the girl knew about it. Otherwise, the whole present pattern of the
Ym-400 search on Terra might become very obvious to all interested
parties.
He thought he had a method of forcing Jill's hand. If she had guilty
knowledge, she might consider a non-Terran animal trader, who'd just
happened to drop in, literally, a convenient tool to use in this
emergency. She wanted to get help, too, though not from the Solar
Police Authority. The Trelawneys couldn't possibly be alone in this
thing.
But she couldn't, if guilty, take the chance of trying to make use of
an Overgovernment cop. A policeman wouldn't be here at this particular
moment by accident. There was some risk in revealing himself--she might
react too hastily--but not much risk, Dowland thought. From what he'd
seen of her, she'd use her head. She'd make sure of him.
The uproar from the animal building lessened as he went back across the
slope to the entrance of the lab. Miguel's beasts might have caught
his footsteps, and started to listen to see if he was coming in. The
outer door to the lab--a frame of the weather-proofed wood that covered
the building--stood slightly open. Dowland pulled it back, looked
for a moment at the slab of metasteel behind it, and at the circular
depression in the slab which was the atomic lock.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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