Read 04. The Return of Nathan Brazil for Free Online

fairly attractive young women, neither of whom looked to be much older than sixteen. All were naked; although securely bound, the cells contained nothing except the chairs to which they were bound—and even the chair was fashioned out of the material of the cell itself when it was molded.
    Dr. Van Chu saw the dragon's reflection in the glass but didn't turn from observing the four people in the cells.
    "Hello, Marquoz," he mumbled. "I figured you'd still be in debriefing."
    "Oh, I took a break. You know how much respect I have for all that nonsense. I filed a report. I fail to see what repeating the story a few hundred times will add."
    Van Chu chuckled. "Every little bit helps. You've dropped a nasty one in our laps this time. Worse than the last time. Can I persuade you to return home and have a mess of kids or whatever it is you people do and let us get some rest?"
    Marquoz took the cigar in his long, thin fingers and snorted. The snort produced a small puff of smoke from his own mouth. Chugach did not need to carry cigar lighters.
    "That'll be the day," the little dragon responded. "No, you're stuck with me, I'm afraid, as long as I'm having this much fun."
    Now the lab man looked over and down at him, curiosity all over his face. "What makes you tick, Marquoz? How is shooting and getting shot at on alien worlds for alien races fun? Why not Chugach?"
    That question had been asked many times, and he always gave the same answer. "You know that every race has its oddballs, Doc. The ones that don't fit, don't like the rules or things as they are. I'm the chief oddball Chugach. I'm a nut, I know I'm a nut, but I'm having fun and I'm useful so I stay a nut."
    Van Chu let the matter drop. Suddenly dead serious, "You sure you got them all?" he asked, motioning toward the prisoners with his head.
    Marquoz nodded. "Oh, yeah. On Parkatin, anyway. Who knows how many in other places? Our pigeon, Har Bateen, was dropped on a farm about twenty kilometers from town only the day before. We traced back his movements pretty easily. Apparently he just walked up to the nearest farmhouse—man, wife, one young kid—and pretended to be on his way from here to there. They were hospitable—and the first three he took over. We got none of them. Man, we did a drop on 'em and had that farmhouse surrounded in minutes, but they just wouldn't give up. We just about had to level it.
    "He took their little roadster and drove into town the next day, checked into a small hotel in the sleazy section, near the spaceport. A busy lad: we found eight he'd gotten there including Grandma over there." He pointed with the cigar to the little old lady in the cell. "Then he went to the bar, took the madam there, then wandered out and over to us. These characters vary in their desire to live—Bateen himself was pretty meek and after we stunned him and put a vacuum suit on him he behaved real nice. The roomers tried to shoot it out; grandma just wasn't fleet of foot— tripped and knocked herself cold. The others we had to burn. Likewise the madam, although she'd infected the two girls, there, and they were still unsteady enough that we had 'em wrapped and ready to ship before they could do much."
    "How'd you know they weren't what they appeared?" Van Chu pressed. "I mean, I'd never guess they were anything but what they seemed."
    Marquoz chuckled. "They stink. Oh, not to you. Apparently not to anybody but a Chugach. Not an ordinary kind of stink; a really alien kind of thing, an odor like nobody's ever experienced before. I can't describe it to you—but I'm hoping you folks can figure it out and synthesize it so we can get detectors. This crap kind of gives you the creeps—you can't know who's who."
    The lab chief shivered slightly and nodded agreement. "At least you can smell them. We can't even do that. The whole lab's paranoid now."
    "Find out anything yet?"
    Van Chu shrugged. "A great deal. A little. Nothing at all. When you are dealing with the previously