Again there was a silence, and this time it had a quality of shock. The Vardda looked at one another, and suddenly Trehearne's spine turned cold. Shadows under a waning star, an ugly forest tight around him like a leprous wall, a tug, a snap, and death, unseen and unexplained but very capable, closing on him like a great dark fist.
Murder?
Voices, Vardda voices, aroused, indignant, challenging. The merchants were leaving, and the Hedarin had stepped down. The Vardda were demanding proof.
It couldn't be. No one aboard the Saarga had anything against him. It must have been an accident. There was no reason to think it wasn't.
"Who is it?" roared the captain. "You can't make an accusation like that and then walk out...."
"We have no part in your affairs. You demanded a reason, and it was given. That is all."
Murder. It was an ugly word. Trehearne wished they hadn't said it. He wished the episode of the air-line hadn't happened. It opened the way for so much speculation. It made him apply the threat to himself, when after all, every member of the crew probably had at least one enemy he wouldn't mind killing. Everybody thought about it at one time or another. He had thought himself about killing Kerrel, but thinking was one thing, and doing it another.
Kerrel. Could he have hired somebody, to see that a certain Earthman did not come back from the Hercules Cluster?
Say he did. Who? Rohan? Perri? Yann? No, Yann had saved his life, and he couldn't see either of the youngsters in the role of a killer. Somebody else, then. He looked around at the familiar faces, angry now, resentful. Who? He could not pick one out. He knew them all. They were his shipmates. They might do a lot of things, but—murder?
The First Officer said a skatological word. "You could probe into any man's subconscious mind and find a wish to kill. It doesn't take a parapsych to know that. They just wanted an excuse."