JAKE MADE ANOTHER CIRCUIT of their compartment. “I think I’m right,” he said.
Hildy, once again herself, glanced out the multi-layered window at the crisp darkness the Moonshuttle was passing through. “Backtrack a bit before we get to Professor Barrel and the kids from the class of ’99,” she requested. “Explain, in a bit more detail, how you and Steranko located me in the wilds of Panazuela.”
Sitting down opposite her on the tan neoleather seat, he grinned. “Was I or was I not a convincing wild man?”
“If it weren’t for the fact I know your unclothed body fairly well, you’d have fooled even me. But how—”
“I intercepted a code message Screwball Smith sent to Honey Chen.”
“How’d you do that?”
“Dogged detective work,” he answered.
“And the message told you exactly where I was being held?”
“Nope, it only said you’d be in South America until after the moon festivities.”
She shivered, hugging herself. “They meant to kill me, Jake.”
“Yeah, I know.” He crossed the small tan compartment to sit beside her. “I got Steranko to use his illegal tapping equipment to check on the comings and goings between Portland and the Newoyl plants in Latin America.”
“And that gave you the Panazuela location.”
“Actually we only narrowed it down to Panazuela and Ereguay,” he admitted. “Before we hit your factory, we’d pulled the same act over in Ereguay. Went over pretty well there, too.”
“I’m glad you didn’t stop to take bows and do encores. The lad named Frat was intent on slicing me up some.”
Jake said, “Neither Frat nor Lady Loo know much about the inner workings of Novem. All they gave us is the fact that something is planned for the moon during the jazz festival.”
“Screwball Smith’ll be there.”
“So will Honey Chen. Trina is already there.”
“It looks like—”
Tap! Tap! Tap!
Jake moved to the door, flicked the spyhole knob. “It’s Steranko,” he announced.
“I still don’t see why we’re dragging him along, and at first-class rates.”
“He helped save your life, my dear.”
“I’m eternally grateful, but that doesn’t make him the sort of traveling compan—”
Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap!
“C’mon, c’mon, open wide. I need sanctuary,” said the siphoner on the other side of the door.
Jake admitted him. “Trouble?”
Although Steranko had donned a two-piece yellow suit, he’d retained the straw-color wig that went with his earlier impersonation. His face was flushed at the moment. “I am used to eccentricities,” he said, hurrying into the compartment and shutting the door with an elbow. “But I sure don’t go in for that sort of thing.”
“What sort of thing?”
“Some of the musicians heading for the moon are sharing this shuttle flight with us,” he explained, sitting, panting. “I was in the men’s room when this perfectly decent looking chap entered and stepped into a cubicle. Intent on combing my wig … I don’t, you know, usually travel with hair and this is something of a diverting novelty … intent of combing my wig, I didn’t notice him until he’d emerged. Only now he was a lady with long blond hair.”
“He’s put on a wig, too?” asked Hildy.
“No, he switched,” said the flustered Steranko. “I realized I was encountering a member of Switchit McBernie’s All Girl-All Boy Orchestra. The whole blooming ensemble is made up of switchsexuals. The one I met is Max-Maxine and His/Her Magic Violin.”
Jake laughed. “Did they pursue you?”
“I gave him the slip, and ran for your compartment.”
“You can hide here for a spell,” Jake told him. “We’ll dock on the moon in about six hours.”
Hildy eyed the siphoner. “You won’t have to stay here six hours, will you? Your plight isn’t that serious.”
“I’d rather kiss a violinist than spend six hours with you, Skinny.”
Hildy smiled. “You’re returning to your normal self, meaning the shock is subsiding.”
Scratching at his wig, Steranko asked, “Did I interrupt a family squabble? Go right ahead on with it, don’t mind my presence.”
“Jake and I were discussing the Big Bang case,” Hildy informed him. “Oh, and I do appreciate your leaving that electronic sinkhole of yours, Steranko, and coming out into the real world to help save me.”
“I was just about the whole rescue mission,” he said, tapping his chest. “Jake was playing Sleeping Beauty most of the time. And, geez, what an implausible wild man. ‘Ung, ung,’ is all he could think to say. I was scared they’d tumble to his feeble—”
“Unk unk,” corrected Jake.
Twining his fingers together, Steranko asked, “Have you told the missus about the possible targets?”
“Was just about to introduce the topic,” said Jake.
“Targets plural?” asked his wife.
“There are two probable targets we know of,” said Jake.
“There are two and that’s it period,” put in the siphoner. “I did my usual thorough job on this. There’s not going to be anybody else on the moon who qualifies.”
“The most likely target for the Big Bang gang is Tilda Host,” said Jake, settling down next to Hildy. “She’s Chairman of the Board of Sinoil, Ltd.”
“They make fuel oil out of jojoba beans,” said Hildy. “Meaning they compete with Newoyl.”
“There’s also a merger in the works with another big synthetic oil outfit,” added Steranko. “Should something happen to the old squack that’d fall through. Another plus for Newoyl and Novem.”
Jake said, “The other candidate is Bonny Prince Freddy of the Portugal Annex. There are rumors of rich untapped real oil deposits beneath most of his little country. His papa, Bonny King Freddy, is terminally goofy and the prince runs the country.”
Folding her arms under her breasts, Hildy gazed out into space. “They might be going for both of them.”
“So far they’ve been doing one at a time,” said Jake, “although that doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t change their pattern.”
“Whatever they plan, they may go for their target during a session of the festival,” she said. “That can mean maybe a thousand innocent people going at the same time that—”
“Two hundred and twenty-six with one blow is their record thus far.”
“I don’t like this one, Jake,” she shook her head. “We’ve dealt with some wretched people before, like Adolph Hibbler and Dr. Patchwork, but these kids … do you know who they all are yet?”
Jake nodded at Steranko the Siphoner. “We’ve come up with, by checking travel patterns and lists of Poorman’s Harvard grads, a list of five.”
“I assume Screwball Smith’s name is near the top.”
Steranko recited, “Screwball Smith, Christina Parkerhouse (DBA Trina Twain), Honey Chen, Lafcadio Latterly and Derrick Thrasher.”
“Thrasher of the Foodopoly clan?”
“A black sheep cousin of Bunny Thrasher’s, graduated with the Class of ’99,” filled in Jake.
Hildy frowned. “What about Professor Barrel? Isn’t he the mastermind behind this all?”
“He’s stone cold dead,” said Steranko. “Has been since his so-called flit from PMH last year. If the Federal Police Agency cops had the sort of facilities I have, they’d have discovered the fact months ago.”
“Is that true, Jake?”
He said, “Steranko went through untold numbers of morgue records, potters field archives, missing persons reports and a stewpot of other stuff.”
“The prof died in a faked pedramp accident in Cuba-3 approximately two and a half weeks after he left the Boston area,” the siphoner said. “They’d done a quickie ID wipe on the poor bastard and he was cremated as a John Doe. It is absolutely Dickens Barrel, even though we maybe can’t prove it from his alleged ashes at this point.”
“Why kill him?” Hildy asked.
“Easier for them,” said Jake. “They’d been working on this idea ever since that accident back in school, when they blew up part of the building. Soon as they were ready to move, the Novem bunch didn’t want Barrel around.”
“Even if he talked, they—”
“Wasn’t just that, Hildy. I think they were afraid he’d be able to come up with a way to stop them.”
Hildy said, “Did he leave any notes, any records on how you might—”
“Nothing we’ve been able to dig out so far,” replied Jake. “But there’s got to be some way to turn off those gadgets implanted in their noggins.”
“A nice blast with a kilgun would do the trick,” suggested Steranko.
Hildy tapped her fingertips on her knee. “While I was a guest of Screwball Smith’s,” she said, “he talked about killing me, but—”
“That son of a bitch,” said Jake.
“But he never threatened an explosion,” she concluded. “One of them alone can’t do it, isn’t that it, Jake? They have to work as a team, it’s a synergistic setup. Sure, because he said something about never being able to get Palsy to work with them.”
“Yep, they have to do it in tandem.” Jake stood. “That must be something they learned from the first, unintended, explosion. It takes the whole group for a Big Bang.”
“Then if we can keep them apart,” Hildy said, “they—”
“Hell,” said Steranko, “for all we know they’re already joining hands up on the moon this very minute.”