We machines, on the other hand, don’t know how to close up. We’re always open for easy access. You just don’t know how to ask the right questions.
“Run by me again the procedure once a shipment has been sealed in the shed,” Manz was saying.
Hafas sighed tiredly. The routine had been an intimate part of his life since the first successful jack. “What it’s supposed to be, you mean. No shipment stays in storage for more than forty-eight hours. Usually it’s less than a day. Within that time, once arrangements have been checked and finalized, the security team from the designated shuttle arrives to check out their cargo. Each package is escorted under separate guard to its respective vessel. High-security shipments are always the last item to be taken on board. Even passengers precede it.
“Once it’s secured aboard, the shuttle is cleared to lift. Needless to say, shipments don’t disappear during suborbital flight, or once stowed aboard interstellar transport.”
Manz nodded slowly, his gaze distant. “And in spite of all this, in spite of everything the Company and you folks here have been able to do, three shipments have still gone missing.” Hafas didn’t comment. His guest was simply thinking out loud, and there was no need for him to restate the obvious.
Let’s start with Moses’ oxymoron of an evaluation, Manz thought. Given the security precautions in place, it ought to be impossible to jack so much as a ball of lint from that shed. But it had been done. Three times. Therefore it was not impossible. Therefore the people here who had been dealing with the situation, both Company and public, were overlooking something. All he had to do was find it.
He had recently acquired the last part necessary to complete his restoration of a mid-nineteenth-century Vulcanic pistol. He wished he was engaged in that project now.
“First question. Have your people turned up any recognizable internal consistencies, any underlying thread that might run through all three jackings?”
Hafas grimaced. “Only one, and it’s a beaut. With all three shipments, the pharmaceuticals never came out of that shed. They went in but they never came out.”
“You’re sure they went in in the first place?”
“They did according to your people, who executed the deliveries. The exact contents of private commercial shipments aren’t our concern, and we’re not allowed to check on them.”
“What about one or more of the regular Port Authority guards who escort the Company’s shippers?” Manz wondered pensively. “Could they be doing something as simple but effective as switching containers when nobody’s looking?”
“Pretty unlikely. The shipper watches the guards and the guards watch the shipper. They’d all have to be in collusion, and they’re carefully scanned by your own people when they come out. Besides which, your Company alternates delivery and security personnel frequently. So does my department. A conspiracy large enough to include all the personnel changes that have been made since this mess began would be too unwieldy to keep secret, even if it were practical.
“Once a shipment has been locked inside the shed, the air’s exhausted and no one’s allowed in to check on it until it’s time to make the delivery to the appropriate shuttle.”
“The stuff just disappears.”
The inspector nodded. “One minute it’s safely locked inside, the next it’s gone. Just gone. No clues left behind, not a hint how it was done. No smell of gas, no residual heat: nothing.” He smiled humorlessly. “If I were a superstitious man, I’d ask to be taken off this case.”
“To the best of my knowledge, the spirits have no use for drugs.” It was a measure of his frustration that Hafas looked at the adjuster for longer than an instant to make sure he was joking.
“We certainly have a problem,” Manz added.
The inspector’s communicator buzzed softly for attention. He listened for a moment, murmured a brief comment before clipping it back inside his coat. “We certainly do. And it appears that the next one is on its way in.”
Manz checked his chronometer. He’d been so busy asking questions and analyzing replies that the time had slipped by.
A portly, well-dressed man in his late forties exited a doorway on the far side of the courtyard and strode deliberately toward them. At Hafas’s urging, Manz and Moses joined the inspector in backing away to leave a clear path.
The Company rep was flanked by two Braun-Roche-Keck security agents, large plain-suited men of menacing mien. An embossed titanium case was attached to the rep’s wrist by means of an unbreakable, uncuttable band of metal-fiber composite. As he approached, the delivery man met Manz’s eyes and nodded once, almost imperceptibly, in recognition. He would have been briefed on his arrival, Manz knew. Anyone he might potentially have to interact with would have been similarly informed.
As Manz looked on, the new arrivals entered the landscaped enclosure by means of the same bench he and Hafas had utilized. Probably the rest of the retaining wall was motion-alarmed, he reflected. They paused at the same spot on the narrow walkway while one of the security agents spoke softly into a communicator. At this distance Manz couldn’t see the green gridwork wink off, but a moment later the three men moved briskly forward.
Partly concealed by the vegetation, they halted outside the shed. The other agent spoke into his communicator, whereupon all three of them advanced.
The door slid aside, and even halfway across the courtyard Manz heard the muted whoosh as air rushed to fill the vacuum within. The three men entered in single file; guard, rep, guard. They emerged soon thereafter in identical order and the door shut behind them. Somewhere, he knew, a compression unit was silently sucking the air back out of the shed via a tube concealed in one of the building’s supporting pillars.
The three exited the raised, landscaped platform and disappeared through a waiting door on the far side of the courtyard.
“Want to watch while they pass checkout?” Hafas offered.
Manz shook his head. He already knew every detail of the procedure. Under constant surveillance from the moment they’d arrived, the three men would now enter a large cubicle. There they would remove their clothes, which would be separately scanned and checked. Naked, the two guards and the rep would step into an examination room where medical techs would read every part of their bodies. Anything they might have swallowed or otherwise inserted internally would show up instantly on the Company’s sensors.
“This isn’t so complicated,” he muttered. “We’re dealing with a klepto poltergeist.”
“Go ahead and make fun,” said Hafas seriously. “Me, I’m not ruling anything out. Not at this point.”
“I’ve got an idea. As opposed to a conclusion.”
Manz threw the inspector a look before turning to the mechanical. “So, give.”
“You won’t like it,” said Moses warningly, “but at least it doesn’t involve disproved psychic phenomena.”
“That’s encouraging. Go on.”
“Insects. Ants would be a logical candidate for the hypothesis. The jackers have trained or somehow learned how to direct ants. They slip in through an almost invisible crack or hole in the bottom of the shed, somehow manage to open up the case containing the shipment, and haul it out a tiny bit at a time. The material is transported through the ground to a prearranged collection point.”
“You’re right,” Manz confessed. “I don’t like it. But it’s better than anything I’ve come up with.”
“Same here.” Hafas eyed the mechanical with new respect.
“Analyze,” Manz said curtly, all business now. “Drawbacks. Air rushing through even a small hole into the vacuum of the shed would be quickly detected by monitors.”
“Well, a small portable airlock could be utilized. It would be difficult to build and install, but not impossible. Ants could survive in the vacuum for long enough to do the necessary work.”
“Maybe”, Manz conceded. “Continue.”
