Catacombs by Anne McCaffrey Read Free Book Online Page B

of the ones that started this whole mess. They must have hid themselves someplace until the search and destroy parties were gone. Doc, they have the fairy-dust slobber and manure but they’re healthy as—well, horses.”
    Jared nodded, carefully not saying anything to agree or disagree with Varley. What could he say, after all?
    “So were the others, of course,” Varley said bitterly. “But they’re gone now—my breeding stock, my daughter’s pony, the caretaker’s dog Rollie, my Roary and Rowan …”
    Janina felt tears stinging her eyes and looked away. Jared had told her before that in vet work a soft heart sometimes could be a liability. Hers felt like it was breaking all over again. Those horses and dogs had been so beautiful, so full of life. But they were just
things
to the government. People had the glittery secretions too, she knew, but nobody had suggested murdering humans. Come to think of it, nobody had suggested hospitalizing even a single two-legged person for so much as observation.
    “How will you survive?” she asked Varley, although she hadn’t intended to speak.
    “Oh. I’ll get by, young lady. I can sell off some acreage if push comes to shove. But I have other resources and I intend to use them to bring down the criminal idiots who allowed this to happen. I never wanted to use my family’s money, never wanted to go into politics. But I am going to now, and all I’ll say is there are some bozos in Galipolis who will be real sorry they drove me to it.”
    The grounds and buildings were as neat as they had been before all the trouble started, but they looked bare without the dogs in the yard. No horses were pastured beside the pad where the trackers,flitters, and shuttles landed. The pasture grasses were tall, waving in the breeze.
    As they entered the barn and her eyes adjusted to the dimmer light, Janina saw a pair of glittering eyes, low to the ground on the far side of the barn. A rat. A large one, watching them from beside one of the stalls. It seemed unafraid. Well, why not? None of the fat sleek barn cats that once prowled the premises were to be seen. The Galactic Government’s efforts had succeeded in controlling only the domesticated animals—apparently not the wild rats and other vermin, left free to roam without predators to check them. The darn rat could thumb its nose at them if it had a thumb.
    The broken-colored horses that now occupied the stalls in place of the beautiful thoroughbreds that had lived there before looked as if they felt out of place. They shook their manes, stamped and snorted, obviously restless, wanting to be elsewhere. Jared spoke to each one, checked its mouth, and moved on. Janina thought that all of the strange horses had been tagged when she and Jared last came to Varley’s ranch, but apparently some of the beasts had hidden from them then. These horses were not tagged.
    The blaze-faced black and white Jared had just finished checking suddenly screamed, reared, and shot out of the barn at a gallop.
    “What got into him?” Varley asked. He had been in the entrance when the horse bolted, and was lucky he wasn’t trampled.
    Janina pointed to some red dots on bits of straw. “He’s bleeding!”
    “I just checked—” Jared began. A rustling noise came from the back of the stall.
    “I’ll bet that rat bit him,” Janina said.
    “That’s not very likely,” Varley told her. “There’s plenty of grain and that sort of thing for the rats to feed on. They’ve never gone after the stock before.”
    But even as he spoke, three large rodent forms darted across the open door at the other end of the stable.
    “Of course not. They were afraid of the cats, I’m sure.”
    “We’re short on those since the government stepped in,” Varley said. “I’ll have to put out traps or poison, I guess.”
    That was only the first instance they saw of the growing problem with the vermin. Soon, Jared was being called upon to treat bites and infections on what