Utopia

Even the handwriting itself suggested as much. The letters were too regular in shape for an illiterate who had no practice writing. They had the look of a literate person trying to make mistakes. And there was something too careful, too thorough, about the misspellings. The Crime Scene robots had already scanned the message, and even taken paint samples off it. Devray shrugged and dismissed the form of the message from his mind. Let his handwriting experts and the paint experts and the psychologists analyze it to their hearts’ content. He was ready to bet it would tell them nothing at all.

But the message itself. What could it tell them? The basic interpretation was simple enough. Stop the comet from hitting and deposit five hundred thousand in Trader Demand Credits in account number 18083-19109 of the Planetary Bank of Inferno-or else we’ll kill Beddle.

That was all perfectly clear. But surely there was more, surely there was some way to read between the lines.

Gervad was there in the cockpit, examining the flight controls-and not finding much that told him anything, by the look of it.

“So what do you make of it all, Gervad?” Justen asked his personal robot, pointed toward the message.

Gervad studied the words painted on the wall. “Someone has stolen Simcor Beddle, sir. We have to get him back.”

“That sums it up rather neatly,” said Justen, though it was not quite the detailed analysis he had been hoping for. Well, Gervad never had been one for conversation. There hadn’t been much point in asking him the question in the first place. What bothered him was that the message made none of the standard demands that the police not be contacted, or that searches not be carried out, or that publicity be avoided. Why not? Why weren’t the kidnappers worried about such things?

He gave it up. There was no way to know.

“Come along with me,” he said. Justen went out of the cockpit and left the aircar, Gervad following behind.

“Commander Devray! Sir!” One of the Crime Scene robots was calling to him. He looked around and spotted the robot he had sent down into the downs lope area.

“Yes, what is it?”

“There are definite signs that an aircar has been there recently, sir. We spotted very clear landing-pad prints. We ought to be able to determine the make and model, and possibly the weight of the vehicle. There are also indications that someone worked to sweep out any signs of footprints. There are one or two very indistinct marks. It’s doubtful we’ll be able to get anything much out of them.”

“But it’s a start,” Justen said. “Good. Keep at it.”

Justen stood there for a moment, watching the Crime Scene robots working the site. It was plain he was not going to be able to spot anything they would miss here. But he wasn’t quite sure what to do next. Aside from breaking up the attempt to snatch Lentrall, he had never worked a kidnapping before. Aside from the Lentrall case, he was not entirely sure that there had ever been a kidnapping on Inferno before. There were case histories in the books and the databanks, of course. He had studied a number of the cases from other worlds. In theory he knew how to proceed. But, wondered Justen, was theory going to be enough?

Well, it had damned well better be. “Find me an aircar and get me to Depot,” Justen said to Gervad. “We’ll work this case from there. We’re going to start pulling some people in.”

“Yes sir. Might I ask who?”

“I don’t know yet,” Justen admitted. It almost didn’t matter. Sometimes, when you had no idea where to start, the best thing to do was just to pick somewhere at random and start there. “I’ve got the flight to Depot to decide.”

“Very good, sir. There is an available car just over this ridge, if you would follow me.”

Justen followed the robot to the aircar and climbed in. He chose a seat and put on his seat belt automatically, his mind elsewhere. Who the devil should he pull in?

He didn’t have the faintest idea who the kidnappers were, or who they were working for. There were any number of suspects to choose from.

Alvar Kresh had ordered him to layoff the investigation of the Government Tower Plaza incident, but there were some cases so big you couldn’t ignore them even if you tried. Three separate suspects picked up on other charges had volunteered credible information about that attack, all of it pointing straight for the Settlers. Maybe Tonya Welton’s people were making another try to stop the comet. Maybe out of genuine fear and concern, or maybe because they wanted to maintain their dominant position on the planet. According to the watcher reports Justen got, Cinta Melloy had been spending a lot of time in Depot, enough that Justen had started to wonder why. Maybe now he had his explanation.