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"Lieutenant!" Greene's booming voice was urgent, and Benden propelled himself as fast as he could back to the cabin where Greene was searching Kimmer roughly. "Sir, he's wearing metal. I felt it when I frisked him." And as the sergeant peeled back the shipsuit, a vest was exposed—a vest made up of panels of gold. "Shit!"
"Hardly!" Kimmer remarked, smiling smugly.
"Strip him!" Benden ordered. Shortly it became clear that Kimmer was wearing not only a gold vest but a thick belt of gold cast in lozenge shapes. Even his underpants had pockets filled with thin gold sheets. Greene was nothing if not thorough: the boots on Kimmer's feet produced smaller gold plates worked into the soles and ankle leather.
"Saraidh!" Benden roared. "Search those women. Greene, you search the kids, but gently, get me? Shensu, Jiro, Kimo, in here on the double." Benden took some comfort when the three men proved to be wearing no more than their shipsuits. Ni Morgana's yell confirmed Benden's guess about the women. It took both her and Vartry to carry into the cabin the concealed sheets and gold plates the women had secreted. All the while, Kimmer's slight, amused smile did not waver.
"I'd estimate that's about ten to fifteen kilos per woman and five per kid," Saraidh said as they looked down at the pile of gold.
Benden shook his head. "Forty-five kilos is a drop! No-where near four hundred ninety-five point fifty-six Ks." He turned on the naked Kimmer, who smiled back, all i
"You don't panic me, Lieutenant Benden." Kimmer's eyes glittered with a vengeance that shocked Ross. "This ship's in no danger. Your cruiser'll rescue you."
Benden stared at the man in utter amazement. "The cruiser is behind Rukbat, in com shadow. We can't arrange a different rendezvous. Unless we can lighten this ship, we can't even make a course change for the one chance we have of staying alive!" Benden hauled Kimmer by the arm to the console and showed him the diagram on the screen, and the little blip that was the Erica, serenely heading for her original, now nonviable, destination. "We certainly don't have enough fuel to make the arranged rendezvous." He tapped out the sequence to show the original flight plan. Then, with his finger, Benden indicated the inexorable path the Erica was taking. "Tell us what and where the excess weight is hidden, Kimmer!"
Kimmer contented himself with a wry chuckle, and Benden wanted to smash the smile off the man's face. "If that's the way you want to play it, Kimmer. Sergeant, get the stuff and bring it with you." Benden hustled the naked, barefooted colonist down the companionway to the airlock and, palming the control for the i
"I mean it, Kimmer, either tell me what else is on board and where, or you go out the airlock."
Kimmer turned, a contemptuous expression on his face, and he folded his arms across his chest, a gaunt old man with only defiance to clothe him.
"You've more than enough fuel, Benden. Chio checked the gauge. The Erica's tanks were full. Since you had to have used at least a third of a tank to get here, I'm of the opinion that Shensu knew"—his eyes traveled to Benden's left, where Shensu was standing by the window—"as I always suspected, where Kenjo had stored his pilferings." Kimmer drew himself up. "No, Lieutenant, I will call your bluff."
"It's no bluff, Kimmer, and if you had any training as a space jockey, you'd've felt how sluggish the gig was. She's heavy, too heavy. We burned too much in the lift-off. The gold on you and the women isn't enough to cause that. Damn it, Kimmer, it's your life, too."
"I'll have taken a Benden down with me," the man snarled, his face contorted with hatred and sheer malevolence.
"But Chio, and your daughters, your grandchildren—" Benden began.
"They were none of them worth the effort I put into them," Kimmer replied arrogantly. "I have to share my wealth with them, but I'm certainly not sharing it with you."
"Sharing?" Benden stared at him, not quite comprehending the man's words. "You think I'm blackmailing you? For a share of your wealth?" The disgust in his voice momentarily rattled the old man, but Benden hardly noticed. "There are many people in my world, Kimmer, who are not motivated by greed." He gestured with contemptuous anger at the sheets and lozenges at Kimmer's feet. "None of that is worth the risk you want us to take. What have you hidden on the Erica—and where?"
Just then, Ni Morgana beckoned urgently to Benden. Gratefully, he moved away from the window. His hand novered briefly over the evac button. Kimmer could stay where he was, just a thin sheet away from space, and contemplate his situation.
"When I was looking for tranks," Saraidh said quietly, for Benden's ears only, "I came across a vial of scopalamine in the medical chest. It may be an anesthetic, but the right dosage provides the truth, so Chio spilled it out. It's platinum and germanium, sheets of it, stuffed wherever they could when they came aboard on legitimate errands, and when they drugged whoever was on the dogwatch. That's why we all had headaches."
Benden was astounded. "Platinum? Germanium?" he exclaimed loudly enough for the others to hear.
"Kimmer was a mining engineer. He found ores, and we've all had to work in them," Shensu said, pushing over to them. "I wondered why the workroom smelled of hot metal. He must have had the girls melt the ingots down at night, extruding sheets. No wonder they've looked so worn out. I never thought to check on the metals, because they'd be too heavy to bring."
"Where is it?" Benden demanded, looking up and down the aisle, momentarily bewildered when he thought of all the places sheets of thin metal could be unobtrusively attached within the Erica. "We've got to search the ship! Everywhere! Sergeant, take your marines to the stern. Shensu, you and your brothers start on the lockers."
"He knew one helluva lot about the interior of gigs," Nev remarked almost admiringly when the marines found that the missile tubes had been stuffed with metal plaques. These were immediately flushed into space.
"And I watched her, Lieutenant," Vartry said, aggrieved, when they found that the locker where the medicines had been stowed was also lined with thin slabs of silvery metal. "I stood here and watched her, heard her tell me she wanted to be sure the medicines were safe, as she slapped sheets top, bottom, and side."
The lockers in which the 23.5-kilo personal allowances had been stowed also proved to be lined with platinum.
"You know," Ni Morgana remarked, bending one of the thin sheets she had found under Benden's bunk, "individually these don't weight much, but they damned near coated the gig with ‘em. Ingenious."
There were sheets everywhere, and still more were found and piled at the airlock hatch.
Nev, remembering how he'd entertained Hope and Charity by showing them the cabin, found metal glued to the bottom of the blast couches, lining the inside of the control panel, and thin rolls of metal tacked to the baseboards, looking for all the worlds like i
When the pile at the i
"Kimmer? Where's Kimmer?" he cried. "Who let him out? Where is he?"
But Kimmer was nowhere in the ship. A gesture from Benden had the marines on his heels as they propelled themselves to the galley, where the brothers were still searching.
"Which of you depressed the evac button?" Benden demanded, seething with impotent anger.