The military ferrets could have cut the screen, but in earlier scouting the operators had discovered two small duct ports where the mesh had come loose and could be easily pushed in to allow entry by something the size and plasticity of the ferrets. While there were some dangers following them down into the house, most notably lasers guided by sensors whose sole purpose was to zap any wildlife that might find similar openings inside, they tended to be of a standard sort for which electronic countermeasures were already in the ferrets along with routines to deploy them. The sensors were easily fooled by the simplest of mechanisms-making them see and focus on some suspicious small moving object away from the ferret and then targeting the lasers there while the ferrets darted by on the opposite side.
"Too easy," Murphy muttered.
Broz, the self-styled Commander of the Ferrets, shrugged. "Not easy at all. Probably cost a bloody fortune. What good's a ferret if it can't get by the simple systems designed to swat cockroaches?"
"Maybe. Still and all, didn't you say the lady was some kind of security expert?"
"Efficiency," Maslovic put in. "You don't set bombs and dogs to kill flies. You put your security where it will best secure what you need to secure. If we'd come in over the walls ourselves or through the doors, I think we'd have quite a mess right now, but the ferrets are not us. They'll have something that can detect them, I suspect, but not yet. Ferrets, after all, can only report, they can't carry out the family jewels."
Ferret One was already pushing through the vents built into a top-floor room and now looked down upon it. A quick scan showed it to be on the right side of the house, third floor, and most likely a bedroom.
An old-fashioned-looking ceiling fan turned just below the ferret, keeping the air moving so that it would not get stuffy or build up smells even if the room were left unoccupied for weeks. The ferret could see the air and sense the movement and feed the information back to the computer a block and a half away for analysis. It betrayed no traps, no hidden passages, nothing like that. It was as it should have been.
Below and against the wall was an enormous four-poster bed, its linens still thrown randomly back, indicating that it had been recently used and not yet serviced by a robotic or human housekeeper. Overall, the place looked pleasant and lived in but contained nothing odd or suspicious even if it did seem to be out of another time and place. The ferret stuck to the wall but registered no serious concern. Whatever traps and sensors there were weren't here.
"You'd think they'd at least have somethin' on the windows," Murphy noted.
"Pastine," Broz explained. "The kind of material used in making transparent windows for spacecraft and camera and sensor covers for space work. Not unbreakable, but what it would take to punch a hole in them would not only alert the household but probably the neighbors a kilometer away. Vacuum welded. You aren't going to go in and out of those."
"And remember, this is the third floor," Maslovic pointed out. "Second floor's more of the same, and the first floor adds a vacuum layer through which pass some of the most accurate sensors made. And if you were really observant, you'd see that the roof overhang and gutter system covered the grounds around the house to a distance of three meters. Anything heavier than two kilos would trip it, so you're not likely to walk up or use a ladder, and if you're on some kind of floating platform, you'll break the sensor webbing for more than five seconds and that will set off the alarm. Anything more sensitive and you'd have alarms going off every time a bug flew by or a heavy rain rolled down too much for the guttering. The ferrets are less than one kilo and were on the building's siding in under five seconds in any event."
"You make me feel like a rank amateur here," the old captain said respectfully.
Maslovic smiled. "Now you know why you should always pay your defense taxes."
With both ferrets now inside, they fanned out, mapping the entire third floor before going down one level. Some nice bedrooms, sumptuous baths, a full spa in the east wing, but nothing threatening nor of interest to them.
A center atrium framed a circular staircase which the ferrets declined to take. There was a small but detectable electrical current in the stair that indicated some connection to the master maintenance and alarm systems. As usual, the walls were much nicer.
"Interesting paintings hung on the atrium walls there," Murphy noted.
"Yes, I agree," Maslovic responded. "Broz, let's see them in turn."
They were huge and ornately framed, yet there was something about them that didn't seem quite right.
"Separated, but a triptych," the old captain said. "Odd. Go in on the one on the left, if you please."
Broz framed it perfectly in the monitor. Although it didn't come through properly on their screen, it was clearly some kind of holographic photo, a scene that in person would seem almost suspended in the framing. It was a violent scene, a landscape of stark barren landscape, volcanic activity along a rift in the back, and with storm-tossed clouds seeming to close in as if ready to engulf the whole scene.
"Is that a creation of someone's imagination or a photograph of a real place?" the Irishman wondered, the question rhetorical.
"Impossible to say. Let's see the middle."
A dark, cold, threatening landscape it was, with little sense of life of any sort. In the background, rolling hills seemed to fold like dough or plastic in and out of the undulating landscape below a sky of bright, numerous stars.
"And the right," Maslovic requested.
What was dangerous in the first and bleak and cold in the second was absent from the third, a veritable garden of trees, flowers, sparkling pools and even a small waterfall. It was as bright and cheery as the others were threatening and desolate.
"Pull back a bit."
On the wall, between the first and second and again between the second and third picture were ornately carved symbols, three each, overlapping and with one above the other two creating a small pyramid of frozen, mechanical facelike designs.
"Those are like the girls' stones," Maslovic noted, trying to figure out the grand scheme.
"More than that," Murphy responded. "The one up top's quite dark and shiny, the two below are lighter yet have duller finishes. Not the Magi stones but the Magi, Sergeant. Wise men, magicians, astrologers. Balshazzar, Melchior, and Kaspar, the Three Kings of Christian lore. One carried gold to the Christ child, one frankincense, an exotic scent, and the third a rare spice, myrrh."
"I thought you weren't religious."
"I'm not, but by God them catechism classes finally come in handy. 'Twas a Catholic monk that found 'em, so there's a common source, if you please. Me sainted mother always hoped I'd become a priest, but there wasn't no money in it."
"And what's all that have to do with these pictures?" Broz interjected, impatient to go on.
"You don't get it, do you? You never heard of the Three Kings on that shiny sterile factory ship of yours? The three lost worlds of treasure and ease, where all your wishes can come true. That's them, you see. That's what they look like. Shows how much ugliness gets lost in the legend, don't it? That's where the stones come from. That's where whatever this is all about is centered. That's where your mysterious enemy is."
"So why don't we just pack up here and go there and face them down?" the tech asked, both bored and confused.
"Aye, see, that's the rub. Nobody knows where they are or how to get there, and them few what did never got back. Devil worship my ass! They found some rich suckers to do their dirty work for 'em, that's all."