Andre Norton - Postmarked the Stars

“Tau had better have a look at it,” Jellico said.

Mura was already loosing the extra safeguards on the cage door. He had that half open and was stretching in a gentle hand to grasp the plainly sick animal when the brach came to life. The nose horn flashed, and Mura, with an exclamation, jerked back a hand on which blood ran. Then there was a scurry, and the brach was out, showing such speed as to avoid them in a way Dane had never seen before.

He ran after it, only to find it at last crouched at the door of the sick bay, using both its horn and its less strong claws in a fruitless attempt to force an entrance there.

Its purpose so consumed it that it did not seem aware of Dane’s arrival until he tried to catch hold of it. Then it whirled about and slashed with its horn at his hands, much as it had wounded Mura. It stood on its hind feet, its back to the door it had tried to open, its eyes wild and showing red. Now it began a low, chittering noise, the sounds divided almost, Dane thought, as if it spoke the words of some unknown language.

“The female.” Mura came up nursing his torn hand. “It wants to reach the female.”

At that moment the door was pushed aside, Tau standing there. The brach was ready, speeding past the medic before the latter was aware of what was going on. As Dane and Jellico pushed forward, they had a glimpse of the brach leaning over the nest box. Now that chittering sound softened. The brach balanced uncomfortably with a third of his small body leaning over the rim, his forepaws stretched down as if it were trying to embrace his mate.

“Better get him,” began the captain, but Tau shook his head.

“Let them alone for now. She’s been very restless. Now she’s quieted down. And we don’t want to lose her, too—”

“Too?” questioned Jellico. “The kits then?”

“No. The lathsmer. Look here.” He motioned them to the left, well away from the family reunion by the box. There was a viewer on the table, and the medic triggered it. On its small screen flashed a picture, a very vivid one. “That’s the present state of the embryo I snooped. Do you understand?”

The captain put his hands on the table and leaned closer to the screen, as if that picture had some vital message. What it did show was a reptile-like creature coiled in a tight package from which it was difficult to separate legs, long neck, small head, or any other portion clearly.

“That’s no lathsmer!”

“No, not a modern one. But see here—” Now Tau switched on a record reader, and the tiny, very exact picture it showed was that of a reptilian creature with a long neck, small head, batlike wings, a long tail, and rather weak-appearing legs, as if it depended more upon those wings than upon limbs for a mode of transportation.

“That was a lathsmer ancestor,” the medic announced. “No one is sure how many thousand planet years ago. It ceased to exist, as far as our records run, about the time our own ancestors stood reasonably erect and began to use a handy rock for a weapon. We don’t have embryos of lathsmers; we have something out of a time so remote that our specialists can’t date it.”

“But how?” Dane was bewildered. The embryos according to his records were of perfectly normal breeding stock of the most recent well-established mutations, guaranteed to keep on producing the strain without fault. How had they suddenly become these—these dragon things?

“Retrogression!” Jellico stared from one picture to the other.

“Yes,” Tau replied. “But how?”

“All of them so affected?” Dane went on to the most important question for him, the present state of the cargo.

“We’ll have to test.” But Tau’s tone was unpromising.

“I don’t understand.” Dane glanced at the brachs. “You say the embryos retrogressed. But if the intelligence of the brachs increased—”

“That is so.” Jellico straightened up. “If the radiation worked one way on these, why a different reaction with the brachs?”

“There could be several reasons. The embryos are just that, not yet completely formed. The brachs were adult creatures when they were exposed.”

Dane had another flash of speculation. “Could the brachs have once been a higher type of life? Could they have already retrogressed, so that now they are returned to an intelligent species?”

Tau ran his hands through his short hair. “”We could have half a dozen answers, and we can’t confirm any without the proper equipment. We’ll have to leave that up to the lab techs when we planet.”

“But can we?” Jellico absently rubbed the blaster scar on his cheek. “I think we may be in no position to wait upon the opinion of experts, not with settlers who have invested their life savings waiting for lathsmer embryos. Thorson, what was the agreed shipping date for those on the invoices?”

“When transport was possible,” Dane replied promptly.

“When possible, no guaranteed date of arrival. Therefore, they could assume that the embryos might come in on the next trip.”

“We can’t hide those boxes,” Tau objected.

“No, not with customs coming on board at setdown. At the same time, this situation is such that I want to appeal to the Board of Trade before I make any other statements.”

“You think deliberate sabotage—the I-S, sir?” Dane asked.

“Oddly enough, no. If the I-S saw a chance to score off us in passing, they might do it. But too much planning has gone into this. I think the roots lie on Trewsworld, and I want to know more, much more, before we are any deeper in than we are now. If we show up without the embryo boxes and the brachs, there may or may not be unusual interest shown. That will be our clue to who is behind this, who might protest too loudly if we land without the expected cargo and what they had rigged on board.”

“Not jetsam!” Dane protested.

“Not in space, no. But Trewsworld is not a thickly populated world. There is only one main spaceport, and our cargo is consigned there. There will be no sky search if we follow a regular orbit in. So, we load the embryos and the brachs on a lifeboat and set that down in an uninhabited section. Van Ryke, if I can contact him, will have friends on the board. Anyway, I shall ask for a local hearing—in confidence.”

But he said nothing of going to the Patrol, Dane noted, spoke only of the one authority the Free Traders could appeal to, which must mean he wanted none of the formal law until he was sure they had a defense. But a defense against what? As it stood, all of them could go into deep probe and prove their innocence, if that drastic step was needed. It must be that Jellico believed they were in some way involved past the point that even a probe reading could clear them.

“Who takes down the LB?” Tau asked.

Jellico looked to Dane first. “If anyone is expecting your double, he or they won’t follow the planned orbit set if you walk out of the Queen on landing. We have a dead man on board. He might just as well be the one he claimed to be for a time—Dane Thorson. And we can spare a couple of juniors—Shannon for your pilot—though the LB will home in on automatics, so you won’t need to set a course—and Kamil in charge of that infernal box. I want that out of the ship, too, before we fin in at the port. Wilcox will chart you a course that will take you away from any settlement. You’ll take a beacon with you and set it on the Queen’s frequency. Wait a couple of days—then turn it on. We’ll contact you when we can.”

He turned back to Tau. “What about those embryos? Any of them near decanting time?”

“No way of telling.”

“Then the sooner we get rid of them, the better. Mura, get E rations, plus whatever the brachs eat. The LB will be crowded.” Jellico spoke again to Dane. “But your ride down won’t take long.”