“Oh, the police are calling Vesta—something has happened!” his companion exclaimed. “Let’s rush over—oh, hurry!”
Cloud hurried; but, as well as hurrying, he sent his sense of perception on ahead, and meshed his mind imperceptibly with Vesta’s as well.
Her mind was a queerly turbid, violently turbulent mixture of emotions: hot with a furiously passionate lust for personal, tooth-and-claw-revenge; at the same time icily cold with the implacable, unswervable resolve of the dedicated, remorseless, and merciless killer.
“Are you sure, beyond all doubt, that this is the garment of my brother’s slayer?” Vesta was demanding.
“I am sure,” the Vegian policeman replied. “Not only did Zambkptkn hold it pierced by the first and fourth fingers of his left hand—the sign positive, as you know—but an eyewitness verified the scent and furnished descriptions. The slayer was dressed as an Aldebaranian, which accounts for the size of the garment your brother could seize before he died; his four bodyguards as Tellurians, with leather belts and holsters for their blasters.”
“QX.” Vesta accepted a pair of offered shears and began to cut off tiny pieces of the cloth. As each piece began to fall it was seized in mid-air by a Vegian man or girl who immediately ran away with it. And in the meantime other Vegians, forming into a long line, ran past Vesta, each taking a quick sniff and running on, out into the street. Cloud, reaching outside the building with his perceptors, saw that all vehicular traffic had paused. A Vegian stood on the walkway, holding a bit of cloth pinched between thumb and fingernail. All passersby, on foot or in any kind of vehicle, would pause, sniff at the cloth, and—apparently—go on about their business.
But Cloud, after reading Vesta’s mind and the policeman’s, turned as white as his space-tan would permit. In less than an hour almost every Vegian in that city of over eight million would know the murderer by scent and would be sniffing eagerly for him; and when any one of them did find him. . . .
Except for the two Vegians and the six Tellurians, the vast hall was now empty. Vesta was holding a pose Cloud had never before seen—stiffly erect, with her tail wrapped tightly around her body.
“Can they get a scent—a reliable scent, I mean—that fast?” Cloud asked.
“Zertainly,” Vesta’s voice was cold, level, almost uninflected. “How long would it take you to learn that an egg you started to eat was rotten? The man who wore this shirt is a class A Triple Prime stinker—his odor is recognizable instantly and anywhere.”