"Norton, Andre - Solar Queen 04 - Postmarked The Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

The forgery of the ident disk was perfect. Jellico stood now flipping that back and forth as if it alone could
somehow prove a key to unlock the puzzle.

"Such a careful plan means a big deal. You say that call to pick up the security package came through the
field tower?" he asked Dane.

"Regular channels. I had no reason to doubt it."

"Probably was straight, as far as they knew. Anyone could have put it in to them," Steen Wilcox, the
astrogator, commented. "You're sure there's nothing on the manifests that is suspicious?"

"Nothing." Dane suppressed a sigh. Of course he was only a stand-in for Van Ryke (and how he wished
now that the usually omniscient cargo master was here and that he himself could return to the less
responsible role of assistant), but at least he knew what he had seen stored away. He had personally
clamped most of it into the special racks. The biggest things they had handled were the embryo boxes and
the brach cage. The brach cage! That was the only thing he had not remembered, mainly because its
inhabitants, being alive and needing attention, had been placed in Mura's territory of the hydro
compartment.

"What about the brachs?" he asked now.

Tau had a ready answer. "Nothing there. I give them daily inspections. The female's about to have kits--
not until after we planet--but she should be checked. That traveling cage can't conceal anything."

Dane thought about the brachs. They were common on Xecho--the largest native animal, that is, land
animal.

But that did not make them very big. An adult male was about as tall as Dane's knee, the female slightly
larger. They were amusing, appealing creatures, covered with a soft growth that was really neither fur nor
under-feathers but had some of the texture of both. This was cream-colored with a faint rosy underlight in
the female, darker in the male, who was in addition equipped with folds of skin under his throat that could
be inflated and, when so, flushed crimson. Their heads were long with pointed, narrow muzzles and a
small, sharp horn on the very tip, which they put to excellent use when dealing with their favorite food, a
shellfish that had to be pried open. The ears had feathery fringe. They were easily tamed but now rigidly
protected by law on Xecho after early settlers there had carried on an illegal trade in their skins. Selected
pairs were sometimes exported only under bond to specialists in xenobiology, as these were due to be
delivered to a lab on Trewsworld. For some reason they seemed to present a puzzle to most biologists, and
several different planets had scientists devoting time to a detailed study of them.

"That's it," Dane said a short time later. He had run through the tape of inventory--nothing anywhere,
except a dead man who must have been part of a very elaborate plan.

"So--" Wilcox looked as if he were now faced with one of his beloved mathematical formulas, one that
was new and he was now admiring, before solving, for its very intricacy. "If this was not for the cargo, it is
the man himself. He needed to get to Trewsworld under cover. Either the disguise was meant to operate to
pass him at both ports or one alone. He risked our uncovering him and putting him under arrest. And
murder, since they must have meant to eliminate you permanently"--he nodded to Dane--"is a very high
price to pay. What's going on on Trewsworld according to rumor?"

Planet politics could be a perilous business on some worlds, as they all knew. Free Traders carefully did