The Gordon Mamon Casebook Read Free Page A

to. Also, while you’re at it, if you could send a full description of your passenger and freight handling policies and procedures, that would be very useful.”
    “I’m sure we have that somewhere.” She adjusted her glasses. “Do you want all of that as a facsimile, an email, a direct download …”
    He’d need a hard copy, for his records. He put on his best TV detective voice. “Just the fax, ma’am. Just give me the fax.”
    He’d always wanted to say that.
     
    * * *
     
    The documentation, when it arrived, told him everything he wanted to know. Hostij was ticketed on the flight, four days’ time, to Barnard’s Star. O’Meara wasn’t booked on any outward flights. And Taybill was on the crew list for the departure, three days from now, for Proxima Centauri.
    Most intriguingly, Formey had been booked on both the Barnard’s Star and Proxima Centauri flights. Now that was curious. Was Formey attempting some vainglorious application of quantum duality to the ticketing process? He couldn’t be on both flights … Gordon checked the time of purchase. They’d been booked only seconds apart, about a week ago. He’d purchased them, then, at the same time. This, to Gordon, suggested that he was seriously entertaining the idea of starting over with Hostij, but wanted an escape route if he changed his mind in the interim. And neither ticket had been cancelled …
    He read further through the documentation. Yes, this was what he’d suspected. This was what tied it all together.
     
    * * *
     
    Gordon used the eyeball and thumb once more, to enter the guest’s room. He knew roughly what he was looking for, but wasn’t sure where to find it. Wardrobe … suitcase … bedside drawer … kitchenette cupboard … bathroom cabinet … all negative. It had to be here somewhere!
    Wait a minute . He looked again at the bedside digital clock. That didn’t look like Skyward’s usual model! He picked up the clock, turned it over, examined it. Yes, this confirmed his suspicions. Now, where was the activator on this thing?
    He pressed three buttons before he found the one that gave the desired effect. Even though he’d been partially expecting it, the sudden apparent materialisation of Neil B. Formey, tyrannical multi-sesquillionaire, was startling. Not least because the animated tycoon was at least three metres tall. He twiddled the control surfaces on the ‘clock’ until he found the magnification controls, then reduced Formey’s image to a less gigantic size. Now … that looked more realistic.
    The holographic projection was indeed remarkably lifelike. Presumably, some of the controls on the ‘clock’ would dictate motion, and perhaps the setup was also designed to convey sounds, simple phrases and such. However, he didn’t need to check that out right now. This should be enough to—
    “Boy, you sure lucked out,” the voice at the doorway commented, with a nasty edge. “Ordinarily, I bet you couldn’t solve a two-piece jigsaw puzzle without looking at the picture on the box.”
    Gordon turned to face the figure in the doorway. His attention was commanded by the weapon that was directed at him. This was only natural since, aside from the evident lethality of the piece, it was also the weapon that had spoken at him. He recognised it as one of the most feared items of portable weaponry in known space. A needle gun.
    “Shoulda stuck at washing the dishes, lift-boy,” the gun jeered. “Your snooping has just got you into a whole plateful of trouble.”
    Although the needle gun’s jeers and verbal jabs could induce apoplexy in the exceptionally weak-hearted, they weren’t usually fatal. Rather, they were a novelty feature designed to improve the weapon’s sales. It was the gun’s ‘sticks and stones’, rather than the names it called him, which would hurt Gordon. ‘Sticks and stones’ being in this case, he strongly suspected, the gun’s standard-issue ammunition: flechettes of cryocooled