Flatlander - Larry Niven [97]
It was roomy and almost flat. It would be a good place to stretch out and watch stars. I looked toward the city, and Chris Penzler’s “tilted rock” was almost in my line of sight, assuming I had the right rock. I could look right into Chris’s window around four hundred yards away. The sun made me squint. But at night that window would make a fine shooting gallery.
I thought it over for a few seconds. Then I said, “Hamilton speaking. I’d like to try a couple of things if nobody has any objection. First, I’d like to test fire a message laser.”
I used Jefferson’s. He showed me how to hook the transceiver cable into my helmet mike and how to aim the thing, first making sure the dimmer switch was at full dim. If you turned it up, the safety gave you five minutes and then turned it down again. Otherwise you could accidentally vaporize whoever you were trying to call. You never used full power, Jefferson explained, for anything closer than an orbiting spacecraft.
He showed me how to find and call the Watchbird One satellite, using the scope. I got a computer. It gave me a news update. Spacecraft Chili Bird had safely departed the Belt Trading Post for Confinement Asteroid. Sunspot activity was on the increase, but no solar flares had yet formed.
I asked Jefferson, “These things do function as weapons, don’t they?”
“In an emergency, yes.”
“How?”
He showed me how to turn the dimmer switch to full bright. I fired at a darkish rock. I got a half-second burst of red flame and a hole three inches deep and a quarter of an inch wide.
“Half a second isn’t much of a message,” I said.
So he showed me how to override the safety. “It burns out the sender, of course, and you get just enough time to yell ‘Help! Blowout!’ That can be enough.”
I handed it back, “Second,” I said, “I’d like to go straight back to Hove City from here, and I’d like to take an escort. Officer Watson, would you care for a stroll?”
He said, “All right. See you later, Naomi, and don’t worry.”
She nodded jerkily, wearing the same stony expression she’d worn all this time.
We hadn’t gone far when Watson said, “Operative Hamilton, we can adjust our helmet mikes so we won’t disturb the others.”
“I know how. Call me Gil.”
“I’m Alan.”
We set our radios for privacy. I said, “It finally hit me that I was missing the point. You and I aren’t looking for the same killer as the rest of them. We think Naomi’s not guilty, right?”
“She’d never kill a man from ambush.”
“So we’re looking for someone else. Sticking to Naomi’s route won’t give him to us. She never saw him.”
He bought it. He relaxed just a little. “She can’t even tell us where he wasn’t. That place where she watched the stars … he could have come after she left. Penzler saw his killer, didn’t he? Jefferson says he did.”
I’d known Naomi ten years ago, but Alan Watson knew her now. He believed her. Could I be wrong?
I filed the question. “Penzler says he saw something, but he can’t even describe the suit. Something human, past the tilted rock. So let’s walk toward the tilted rock, taking our time and looking around.”
We walked through pools of glare and shadow, with almost no in-between. The colors were mostly browns and grays and whites. Alan said, “I wish I knew what to look for. It’s a shame she didn’t lose something.”
I shrugged that off. “We aren’t looking for anything Naomi dropped. This is where the killer had to be. We check the high points because he had to have a view of Chris’s window. We look for tracks of a vehicle or burn marks from a rocket, anything that could get him out of here before the police started looking for him. He had ten minutes or more. And look for pieces of a laser. I would have found a laser, but it could have been broken up.”
“Your imaginary arm?”
Skeptical. He’d have his chance to sneer at my imaginary arm when I testified for the prosecution against Naomi.
The thought of Naomi being broken up for spare parts gave me the creeps. I could never be neutral where Naomi was concerned. But say that love and hate could add to make indifference