“The Crime Scene robots have already done a full exterior scan, “ Donald replied. “I think if you wear surgical gloves, and have a Crime Scene robot do an interior scan of any compartments you open, that should suffice. You are quite right to be concerned about fingerprints. With a bit of luck, whoever tampered with the machines left a fingerprint or two somewhere on one of the robots’ interior surfaces. ”
“Good. Good,” Fredda said, a bit distractedly. She wasn’t really listening all that hard. There was a puzzle for her to solve, and it was already absorbing her attention. Which was fine with her if it got her mind off the dead man in bed on the other side of the room. “Then let’s get to it.”
Fredda made no move toward the robots. Something was missing, something she wasn’t seeing. And then she got it. The robots had been shot through the chest, the same as Grieg. Even to Fredda’s unpracticed eye, they were obviously aimed shots, precise enough so that it could not be mere chance the robots were all shot in the same place.
But chest shots didn’t make sense. The best way, the only sure way to kill a robot, was with a shot to the head, where you would be certain to destroy the positronic brain. There was no particular reason why a shot to the chest would kill. There were no equivalent structures to the heart or lungs whose destruction would insure instant death.
If you did enough damage, cut enough circuits, yes, that would do it. But you could not be absolutely sure to the degree you wanted to be with a trio of fast-moving, aggressive security robots corning at you.
Unless, of course, you knew everything there was to know about this particular model of security robot, knew exactly how powerful a blaster shot it would take for a chest shot to kill-and if you knew they were not about to come at you.
Well, all right, that would at least explain why the shooter didn’t need a head shot. But that didn’t explain why the shooter did need a chest shot.
Unless-unless there were something in the chest the killer wanted to conceal. And if that were so, vaporizing that something would certainly serve to hide it. There was a way to test that idea.
“I don’t need to examine these robots just now,” Fredda said. “Maybe later. First I want to see one of the other Sappers that was shot. ”
“Of course, Doctor,” Donald said. “Come this way.”
Donald led Kresh and Fredda out into the hallway and toward a slumped-over heap on the floor. Fredda knelt down beside it and looked it over.
“This one at least looks like it was in motion, heading toward the scene, when it went down,” Kresh said.
“No,” Fredda said. “I don’t know much about blasters, but I do know how paint reacts to heat on robot bodies. Welding, laser cutting, that sort of thing. Maybe you were meant to think this robot was moving when it was shot, but it was as inert as the others when the blaster got it. ”
“How can you be so sure?” Kresh asked.
Fredda pointed to the blaster shots. “Look at the chest shot. Virtually identical to the shots on the bedroom robots. That was the one that killed it. ”
“So?” Kresh said.
“So look at the paint-melts. The melts from the two smaller shots overlap the death shot. The killer blasted the robot in the chest from close up, then he or she got artistic. Either the robot fell over or the killer knocked it over and then backed off to do the other shots from a greater distance after the robot was already down.”
“You’re right,” Kresh said. “I should have spotted that. ”
“Well, your weapons analysis people would have seen it sooner or later. I only saw it because I was looking for it.”
“Looking for it?” Kresh asked. “Why?”
“Because these robots were not shot because the killer needed them dead,” Fredda said. “They were shot because that was the fastest way to destroy the evidence of tampering. My guess is that there was some sort of gadget attached to the circuitry in the center of the chest, right under the central access panel. ”
Fredda realized she was still staring down at the dead robot. A shot just like the one that killed the other robots. Just like the one that killed Grieg. Grieg dead. Sweet stars in the sky, Chanto Grieg was dead. She shut her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to pull herself together. This was not the time to grieve. Not when the whole planet was about to fall apart.
“Sir, Doctor, if I might interject?”
“Yes, yes, Donald,” Fredda said, collecting herself. “What-what is it?”
“The Crime Scene robots have just posted some initial results to the hyperwave datanet. It concerns weapons analysis that might have some bearing on all this.”
“What sort of results?” Kresh asked.
“Range, power, and sequence estimates, sir. ”
“What are those?” Fredda asked.
