Free A Galaxy Unknown 10: Azula Carver by Thomas DePrima Page B

against his throat. "It wraps around the neck and picks up the sounds made in the larynx. I've built a translation device, but without knowing what the sounds mean, collecting them has been almost pointless."
    "My girls and Thor are very intelligent. I'm sure I'll be able to convince them to work with you."
    "That would be wonderful."
    "I'm willing to bet they'll be as enthused about being able to communicate with us as we are about communicating with them."
    ~     ~     ~
    "Today's meeting will come to order," Chairwoman Gladsworth said as she pounded the decorative gravel once on the sounding-block.
    Once all council members were seated and the room was silent, she said, "Councilwoman Overgaard has a report to make regarding her investigation into the whereabouts of Lower Council Chairman Arthur Strauss. We'll start with that report today. Councilwoman Overgaard?"
    "Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. As I reported previously, we've gone back to the very beginning and started our investigation anew, hoping to find a lead we might have previously missed. This time we began by investigating all normal business Chairman Strauss was involved with when he disappeared and everything unusual he had been involved with during the previous five annuals. Perhaps the most unusual situation was his involvement with Mikel Arneu, who had used his position to transform himself into a woman named Nicole Ravenau, ostensibly to better hide from Space Command."
    "Yes, we're familiar with the Arneu/Ravenau situation. Continue."
    "As you're probably aware, Ravenau was killed when the building housing her lab was destroyed in what has been described as a suspicious accident. Fortunately, the Arneu formulas for the DNA Manipulation Process and the Age Prolongation Process had already been turned over to the Central Labs section. However, while investigating the suspicious nature of the explosion we learned that not all of the recovered computer files had been examined in detail. The reason is simple— we believed we had all of the important files and there would be little chance that the unexamined files would contain anything pertinent to the cause of the explosion. That proved to be true during our recent reexamination, but we did find some interesting material regarding Nicole Ravenau. It seems she had ordered a team of her people to prepare the injections she would need to change her appearance again. In fact, it appears they might have prepared as many as fifty different appearances for her. Most of the new bodies would be males, but a dozen were female."
    "And what significance does that have in the investigation to locate Arthur Strauss? Ravenau was dead long before Strauss disappeared."
    "Perhaps."
    "Perhaps?"
    "We learned that one of the appearances designed for Ravenau in secret was a copy of Arthur Strauss, right down to his fingerprints. She would become his twin. Even more than a twin. She would actually be Arthur Stephen Strauss. She would not only look like him, she would sound exactly like him. From a physical standpoint, no one would be able to tell the difference, personal mannerisms aside."
    "But she died in the explosion. They found her body."
    "Not necessarily. The line of reasoning we're following now is that she was responsible for the explosion as part of an effort to hide from Strauss. He had repeatedly threatened to kill her after the Christa Carver incident on Dakistee, and she may have believed she would only be safe if Strauss were dead. But she first had to fake her own death so no one would suspect her. We believe the Ravenau body was faked, using one of the women from a failed experiment. We expected to find Ravenau's body, and we found one that looked like her, so we didn't look further. We believe that once her transformation into an identical Arthur Strauss was complete, she killed the real Strauss and took his place. Then it was simply a matter of waiting for just the right opportunity for her to disappear."
    "Why