Scott routed the file to Irina Kisaevna's account, doubly pleased because he was able to do that right here, without sending the coded message through the planetary net where, it was conceivable, a person might be able to intercept a copy and de-code it. There was a killer out there who would be watching every move he made on the datanet during the next few days, aware that he was acting as official coroner for the crash. Transferring the file to Irina's account was simply a matter of copying it straight into her private mail directory on the family's computer. He put a header on it marked "to be de-coded only in the event of Scott MacDallan's death" and hoped like hell Irina would never have to read the blasted thing.

That unpleasant chore completed, he turned his attention to the files he'd located on BioNeering, Inc. According to BioNeering company records, at least those available on the public net, the experimental research plant was operated by a small staff headed by one Dr. Mariel Ubel. Ubel was listed as chief research scientist for the plant, which was largely automated, like the Copperwall Mine several hundred kilometers away. Pol Rafferty was listed as her research assistant. Rafferty's body was on its way back to Twin Forks for burial, in the rescue 'car that had dropped him off at dawn. The only other personnel employed at the plant were the other two crash victims, who had pulled double duty as pilots for cargo transport and mechanics for the facility's automated equipment.

The work Ubel's team had been doing was supposedly extraction of the chemical compound that allowed picket wood to dissolve cellulose between healthy portions of a picket wood system and any part of the community attacked by disease or pest infestation. There were multiple, economically lucrative uses for such a compound, and BioNeering was investigating them, extracting the genetic material responsible for its secretion from wood harvested at the plant, which served as Mariel Ubel's primary research lab. For the past two T-years, she had been heading the effort to isolate the exact chemical compound and the genes that controlled its diffusion by living picket wood systems under attack.

Mariel Ubel wasn't at the plant at the moment, according to news posts on the net. She'd flown into Twin Forks with the research facility's passenger air car to meet with company officials, identify the remains of her colleagues, and recruit replacements to keep the plant and its vital industrial research operational. Since the facility was mostly automated, work in progress could continue for a short period without direct human oversight, allowing the scientist time to hire new staff in town. That suited Scott perfectly. The fewer people around when he arrived, the better.

The treecats' reaction to Mariel Ubel's photograph on the computer screen confirmed Scott's dark suspicions: both cats grew visibly agitated, bleeking in distress and anger at first sight of the strikingly beautiful blond-haired scientist's likeness. Fisher could never have seen Ubel in person; but the stray might well have known the woman first-hand and the anger radiating from both 'cats strongly suggested that the relationship had not been congenial. No, it wouldn't have been, not if she's responsible for murdering his friend.

What, Scott wondered, might the stray have been able to tell them, had he been capable of human speech? What had he witnessed in that BioNeering plant, between Mariel Ubel and Arvin Erhardt and the others? Mariel Ubel might well have gotten clean away with murder, if Scott hadn't stumbled across the stray and that crash site in the company of a couple of hundred treecats determined to get the truth across to someone. She might still get away with it, if he and the crash investigators couldn't locate proof that the crash had been anything other than a tragic accident. BioNeering could be fined—stiffly—and possibly even have their business charter yanked for violation of the Elysian Rule, but putting Mariel Ubel out of business wasn't sufficient. Scott MacDallan wanted to prove the story the treecats had so painfully managed to convey to him, which meant he needed to get his hands on some solid evidence pointing to cold-blooded murder.

And the only place he could do that was at BioNeering's remote research plant.

Scott printed out the files on Mariel Ubel and her automated tree-processing facility and tucked them into his coverall pockets, then shoved back his chair. He'd seen enough for now. It was time to get this investigation airborne. He inquired after Evelina Zivonik and gave her and the newborn Lev a brief exam, reassuring the family that she and the baby were doing just fine, then said his good-byes, thanked them for their hospitality, kissed Irina while the Zivonik children giggled, and took his leave. He left a copy of his flight plan with Irina as a safety precaution, giving her an alternative reason for going out there, so someone would at least know where he was going.

"I'm betting the stray comes from a treecat colony near there," he said quietly, "and now that his human friend is dead, I think he wants to go home. It's a long way for a treecat to go on foot, Irina, and I think that's why he's so thin and exhausted—he's already made that journey once, in this direction, just to reach his friend's body. I thought the least I could do is give him a lift home again."

"Of course, Scott."

Aleksandr, standing nearby, nodded and clasped Scott's hand firmly. "You got a heart of gold, Doc." The big farmer, whose parents had immigrated directly from old Terra's Ukraine in the colony's first wave, making his family one of Sphinx's prestigious first shareholders, glanced at Fisher, who rode Scott's right shoulder, then at the stray, who'd taken up a perch on Scott's left. "Isn't hard to see why that treecat of yours adopted you. And you can bet I won't be forgetting this little stray anytime soon. Take care, Doc."

They shook hands, then Scott climbed into his air car and the treecats jumped down. They joined him in the cockpit as he powered up and checked systems. Scott made sure his rifle and pistol were fully loaded, then strapped the pistol on and clipped the rifle into its holder so it would be easily accessible, and made sure his medical kit was strapped down securely. He rigged the safety webbing for the treecats, a precaution he always put in place when flying with Fisher in the co-pilot's chair, and smiled when the stray and Fisher pressed their noses against the canopy to watch his takeoff. He waved to Irina, who blew a kiss, and to Aleksandr and the children, then lifted slowly above the farmhouse, with its sharply sloped, conical green roof, designed to shed the heavy weight of winter snow, and headed southwest.

The devastation wasn't as widespread from the air as it had seemed in the treecats' mental images, but it was enough to churn his stomach. The dispersal pattern was clearly wind-borne, fanning out from the research plant in a cone of blighted trees down wind. The initial cone of destruction was not the only area affected, either. Whatever had been released, it had spread outward, stretching away from the plant in a widening vee of wilted, peeling picket wood trees that stretched five kilometers or more to either side of the facility. A sharp line of demarcation existed beyond the damaged area, with withered trees on one side and healthy, vigorous picket wood systems beyond. The reason for this became clear as he hovered lower over the canopy.

There were gaps in the forest where wood had been dissolved away in the picket wood system's last-ditch defense mechanism, cutting off the stricken section of forest. Scott had seen photos of damaged picket wood stands with just such gaps, but never up close and never resulting from damage caused by a man-made agent. Whatever it was, it had apparently affected the wildlife, too, because Scott couldn't see any of Sphinx's multitude of native species moving through the blighted trees or on the forest floor near the gap in the canopy. The stillness of the forest was ominous; Scott wondered uneasily if the agent which had damaged the picket wood system had also proven lethal to the region's fauna. A glance at the painfully thin stray sitting on the co-pilot's couch beside Fisher caused Scott to clench his jaw muscles. If the local game had died or been driven out because their food supply had vanished, starvation could well stalk any treecat population in this region during the coming months.