Evil Work Afoot?

So it was only when I had succeeded in bringing the two craft together that I had time to reflect on the oddity of all this. It was strange enough that an Ib - and a non GalEng speaker at that - should have been off-planet. But beyond that, the lifeboat was of a fairly standard Earth design. Thus it could safely be assumed to be from an Earth mother ship. But what had an Ib been doing aboard an Earth ship?

There was something else, too. Lifeboats always bear the registration number of their mother vessel. If a lifeboat is found, and those aboard turn out all to be dead or unconscious (or even not able to speak GalEng), then the rescuers naturally want to have a way of finding out what ship it's from. But this boat bore no markings at all. Of course, there should also be papers aboard the lifeboat containing that information, but I had a sneaky feeling that this time there wouldn't be.

A nasty theory was beginning to take shape in my mind. Had the Ib been deliberately set adrift in the lifeboat? The chance of the boat being found, away from the regular shipping lanes (where there was only the occasional smuggler), before the occupant died was small. It would be found eventually, of course, but by then there would be no way of tracing the mother ship. But then I realised that one thing did not fit in with my theory. If it was correct, then why hadn't the distress beacon been disabled?

1. I boarded the lifeboat.
2. I boarded the lifeboat - and found that my assumption that the Ib was the only person aboard was wrong.

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