Fiell looked past the big gray-haired man, out the door of the command hut, to the stockade and the unpitying noon sky. “But what that little monster was doing meanwhile—” Abruptly he closed his mouth.

With equal haste, Jonafer said: “The other guides ran away, you have told me, as soon as they sensed you were angry. I’ve just had a report from Kallaman. His team flitted to the village. It’s deserted. The whole tribe’s pulled up stakes. Afraid of our revenge, evidently. Though it’s no large chore to move, when you can carry your household goods on your back and weave a new house in a day.”

Evalyth leaned forward. “Stop evading me,” she said. “What did Moru do with Donli that you might have prevented if you’d arrived in time?”

Fiell continued to look past her. Sweat gleaned in droplets on his forehead. “Nothing, really,” he mumbled. “Nothing that mattered…once the murder itself had been committed.”

“I meant to ask you what kind of services you want for him, Lieutenant Sairn,” Jonafer said to her. “Should the ashes be buried here, or scattered in space after we leave, or brought home?”

Evalyth turned her gaze full upon him. “I never authorized that he be cremated, Captain,” she said slowly.

“No, but— Well, be realistic. You were first under anesthesia, then heavy sedation while we recovered the body. Time had passed. We’ve no facilities for, um, cosmetic repair, nor any extra refrigeration space, and in this heat—”

Since she had been let out of sickbay, there had been a kind of numbness in Evalyth. She could not entirely comprehend the fact that Donli was gone. It seemed as if at any instant yonder doorway would fill with him, sunlight across his shoulders, and he would call to her, laughing, and console her for a meaningless nightmare she had had. That was the effect of the psycho-drugs, she knew and damned the kindliness of the medic.

She felt almost glad to feel a slow rising anger. It meant the drugs were wearing off. By evening she would be able to weep.

“Captain,” she said, “I saw him killed. I’ve seen deaths before, some of them quite messy. We do not mask the truth on Kraken. You’ve cheated me of my right to lay my man out and close his eyes. You will not cheat me of my right to obtain justice. I demand to know exactly what happened.”

Jonafer’s fists knotted on his desktop. “I can hardly stand to tell you.”

“But you shall, Captain.”

“All right! All right!” Jonafer shouted. The words leaped out like bullets. “We saw the thing transmitted. He stripped Donli, hung him up by the heels from a tree, bled him into that knapsack. He cut off the genitals and threw them in with the blood. He opened the body and took heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, thyroid, prostate, pancreas, and loaded them up too, and ran off into the woods. Do you wonder why we didn’t let you see what was left?”