Page 4 - Extraterrestrials, Foreign and Domestic

Remains to be Seen

“I know I violated Agency regulations by going it alone, but it
seemed important at the time to prove my ability without any
outside aid.”
Temporarily unobserved, Bauser rolled his eyes skyward. Don’t
they do psychometric profiling on recruits anymore? he wondered.
Aloud and calmly he said, “I see. Now, what was this perfect
crime you uncovered?”
The other man’s face lit up a little.
“Ah, that was a brilliant stroke on my part, if I may say so. After
a couple of weeks here, it began to seem too calm to me. None of
the precincts were reporting any armed robberies or aggravated
assaults. Yes, yes, supposedly normal for this planet, but my
studies led me to the conclusion that no urban population,
regardless of biology, could live so harmoniously that the crime
rate would approach zero. Something was going on: either my
subordinates, particularly the locals, were hiding the truth from
me, or else the methods of reporting and detecting incidents were
failing. I decided to implement some new techniques being
developed by the Agency, in particular remote sensing of organic
decay. That’s how I discovered the murder.”
Soznizot brought up a computer-enhanced image on his screen.
“There it is. Right in the middle of the royal scrap yard. A
corpse, not more than three days dead. The remains, to be seen,
required the latest in spectrographic technology. The local police
wouldn’t go in with me to investigate, so I took the mobile crime
lab out there myself. This is what I found.”
He zoomed in on the satellite photo, altering the bandwidth to
visible light. Bauser knew what he was looking at, but let the other
man continue.
“This is a solid steel structure, welded tightly at all joints, a cube
roughly two meters tall. No way to detect the presence of a body
in there by conventional means. It also gives us a big clue to the
identity of the murderers: metallurgy is a very specialized skill on
this planet, isn’t that so?”
“Well, yes,” began Bauser, “but—”
Soznizot had no interest in a qualified answer to his rhetorical
question.

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