“So what you’re saying is Colpeys already knows what’s on the video,” I said.
“I think so.”
Luther sighed. “Which means he probably also flagged the videos from the Muninn.”
“Which is why it hasn’t made it into the reality shows,” said Nirti. “He’s been messing with the feed, so all that the network people back home know is that we’re having a lot of technical problems.”
We all thought about that for a while.
“If Colpeys knows, why did he argue about it with my mom?” I asked, but then I answered my own question. “He probably didn’t know about it at the time.”
“He’s slow running the bases,” said Luther, and then he cut a look at me. “That’s the baseball phrase, right?”
“He’s slow getting to first base,” I corrected, “but yeah. Colpeys doesn’t want any of this to be true.”
“He knows it’s true now, though,” said Nirti.
“Sure, he can’t help but know. But he’s keeping it on the downlow.”
“Well, if we can’t be the ones to break the news to him,” said Zoé, “what can we do?”
I spread my hands. “There’s only one thing we can do,” I said. “We need to set a trap for whoever’s doing this.”
Chapter 97
* * *
Setting a trap was easier said than done. I had to steal a crapload of electronics from Tony and hope that he wouldn’t notice. I felt bad, too, because I thought that Tony would be on our side. But on the other hand he hadn’t taken me into his confidence, which meant that Mom wasn’t willing to bring me in on it either.
Well, trust either goes both ways or it doesn’t. So I sneaked around and didn’t tell them. The plan was absolutely going to get me—all four of us—into serious trouble. But we’d deal with that later.
I removed the small cameras from half of the space suits we had in storage, and then filched some more from the equipment lockers in the workshop. These cameras were crucial to the mission, but not until we were actually on Mars, so I figured, what the heck. Using them now might help us get to Mars. The problem was that they were green. So once I had them all I took them to one of the heads and locked myself in while I painted the cameras white. We had several drums of paint on board—white, green, blue, and black—for staining landmarks once we were on the surface. The Martian landscape is red, so bright colors would stand out from miles away. We obviously wouldn’t use it until we were on the ground, so no one would notice some missing now.
Why paint the cameras? Everything inside the Huginn was pretty much white, so once painted, the cameras would simply blend with the white walls. After that there was the matter of the paint smell, but that wasn’t a serious problem because I did the painting in the bathroom and . . . well, it was a bathroom. Paint smells had no chance in there. To make sure, though, I added some of the deodorizers Nirti brought.
With that done I divided up the cameras among the four of us and we began positioning them around the ship. It took two days to do it, because it was hard to find moments when there was no one around. Plus Colpeys and Tony always seemed to be in the vicinity of the wastewater system and life support, looking for anything that was not as it should have been.
“They’re not being very sly about it,” observed Luther.
I shook my head. “They’re trying to prevent what happened on the other ship.”
“There are lots of other things people can sabotage,” he said, which was both true and scary.
We eventually got the cameras in place, and Zoé channeled the feedback to her own laptop.
That night, after spending the rest of the day doing maintenance chores Tony gave me, I recorded a reality show segment that was a total pack of lies. Talking about how we were all getting along so great and having fun and looking forward to getting to Mars. The two bits of actual truth were the fact that Mars One back home approved us doing a controlled burn to get both ships moving faster again. They actually came up with some numbers that would shave five days off the total trip, and it wouldn’t use up all of our fuel. That was great news, because it meant that we would reach Mars and still keep alive the possibility of rescuing the Chinese.
If there were any Chinese left to rescue.
The other bit of good news was that the crew of the Muninn were all beginning to recover. Even Inga was awake and able to speak. I raved about that for the reality show crowd, but there was still a cold spot in my heart. “Recovering” wasn’t the same as “recovered.” The danger was far from over.
Just like the fact that there hadn’t been any new malfunctions on the Muninn didn’t mean the danger was over. My mom would be watching things like a hawk, and she’d be better at it than either Tony or Colpeys. But she couldn’t be everywhere at once. If there was a maniac aboard the Muninn he’d be waiting for the next opportunity, and there were a lot of very bad things you could do on a spaceship.
I left the com-pod and went back to my bunk, and had just closed it up when I heard someone knock. When I rolled back the privacy cover Sophie was there, looking tired and stressed. “I was looking for you. Can I come in?”
“Sure. What’s up?” We sat on opposite ends of my bunk and once we were settled she fixed me with a penetrating stare.
“I’m just wondering what you’re up to, Tristan?”
I said, “Um . . . up to . . . ?”
“For the last few days you and your friends have been very secretive. You haven’t said two words to me or anyone. And you have a look in your eye.”
“A look? What kind of look?”
She took a breath, then said, “A guilty look.”
“No I don’t.”
Her eyes glistened as if she was trying not to cry. “Tristan,” she said with gentle urgency, “if there’s something going on—if there’s something you need to tell me . . .”
“Um . . .”
“Something you want to confide,” she said carefully. “Or confess . . . I promise I won’t judge you.”
I smiled. God only knows what she thought my big secret was. I never asked because there was no way it wasn’t going to lead us anywhere but a weird conversation. Instead, I told her what was really going on. My theories and all of it. Well, almost. I left out the bit about the hidden cameras. I was afraid that if she knew, she might get paranoid and jumpy and keep looking around for them, which would probably make it way too easy for our bad guy to accidently find out about them. She listened without comment until I was done with the story, and then she gave a single, slow shake of her head.
“Non,” she said. “I cannot believe this.”
“Why not? We saw the video, we know what happened. You were with me when we overheard Colpeys and Tony talking about this stuff. Someone on this ship is a spy. Someone wants to kill all of us.”
“I know . . . but I still find it so hard to believe,” she said. “I mean, why would anyone want to do such a thing? It’s preposterous, grotesque. It can’t be what you think.”
“I really don’t know why, Sophie, but it is happening. And whoever’s behind all this . . . they’re absolutely insane.”
“Or,” she said with a very French kind of shrug, “they’re dedicated to a different ideology.”
“Like what? Murder isn’t an ideology, last I heard.”
“Is it murder if it’s something that supports what you believe?”
“Of course it is,” I said, but she shook her head.
“What about holy wars? The Crusades? Those were people fighting for what they believed God wanted them to do.”
“Yeah, maybe, but that doesn’t make it right.”
“It doesn’t make them wrong, either,” she said. “Not in their own view. If someone absolutely believes that God—and by ‘God’ I mean whatever they truly and deeply believe in—requires them to raise a sword, then they are obeying God’s will. The Torah, the New Testament, the Koran . . . they are filled with stories of saints and holy people killing in the name of
their god.”
“That still doesn’t make them right.”
“What about jus bellum iustum?”
“What’s that?”
“It is a philosophy as old as history. In the Indian epic the Mahabharata, there is a discussion of a ‘just war.’ It’s presented in a story where five brothers who are all rulers enter a debate about war. One of the brothers asks if the suffering caused by war can ever be justified. You would think the answer would be an easy ‘no,’ but really, Tristan, who has ever completely argued with effect against war?”
“Is that what they said in that story?”
“It’s complicated. You should read it. I’m sure Nirti has a digital copy. But there are two aspects to the argument. One is a discussion of when, if ever, war is acceptable. The general feeling there in the Mahabharata and much later in the writings of Saint Augustine and others is that war is justified in defense or to protect the innocent. However, this is at odds with much of the Bible because the Israelites are told many times to conquer another people because it is God’s will that they do so, and who are mortals to deny the will of God? In Islam the people are encouraged to spread their religion through the use of violence. They call it jihad. There are many other examples.”
“So you’re saying we have jihadists on the ships?”
She almost smiled. “No, I don’t think so. I’m not talking about radical Islam or anything like that. We’re having an abstract conversation about motivation, cher. We are speculating.”
“Uh-huh. So what are you saying? That whoever is doing this believes that God wants them to?”
“Probably.”
“How can you even know that?”
“I don’t know it,” she said, “but it fits the circumstances.”
“How?”
“Whoever is doing these things must be aware that they, too, will die.”
“Sure, but that just means they’re nuts.”
Sophie shook her head. “You are sometimes very young, Tristan. Very naive. Don’t you know anything about martyrs?”
“Sure. But what you’re talking about are suicide bombers. People like that.”
She traced a heart shape on my chest. “Jus ad bellum, jus in bello,” she said. “There are two kinds of acceptable behavior in war. The first is the right to go to war. Jus ad bellum. This is the morality of war, of killing. This is the justification of raising a sword . . . or strapping on a bomb. No one would do this unless they believed.”
“Or unless they like to hurt people?”
“No. I do not believe anyone who would lay down their lives for what they believe would ever—could ever—be filled with hatred for others. No, they do these things because they are filled with love.”
“Love?”
“For what they believe in. It’s not about harm; it’s about protection.”
I shook my head. “What was the other kind of ‘acceptable’ behavior?”
“Jus in bello,” she said. “That is how one acts during war. When countries go to war they have agreements about what is not allowed. No firing on civilians.”
“Sure, the Geneva Conventions.”
“That becomes irrelevant when it is not a clash of countries but a collision of beliefs. When a group is fighting for their beliefs but has no country, no flag, they also have no rules. They are labeled as terrorists because they need to fight in a completely different way.”
“By different you mean blowing up busses full of school kids or sabotaging spacecraft?”
“Yes.”
“And you think that’s what we have here?”
“I cannot think of anything else that makes sense.”
I thought about and had to admit that it did make sense. “But who’s doing it? What ideology are they trying to defend? We’re not a political party, Sophie. We’re astronauts. We’re trying to help mankind.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “not everyone believes that.”
“Ah. You mean nutcases like those Neo-Luddite freaks.”
She shrugged. “Why not?”
“But they don’t even say what it is they believe in. All they do is blow stuff up.”
“They would not do that, cher, if they did not believe in something.”
“Like what? Give me an example.”
Sophie shrugged. “Perhaps they do not think anyone should leave Earth.”
“Why not?”
She shook her head. “That’s a question you’ll have to ask them.”
Chapter 98
* * *
That night, after I crawled into my sleeping bag, I lay awake for a long time. Thinking about Izzy. Missing her so much that I wanted to cry, to bang my head on a wall. I might have done it if I thought it would actually help. Breaking up is a kind of grief, and though I’d read all the pamphlets during the training, there’s a big difference between knowing something and getting through it.
Not sure when I finally drifted off to sleep, but it took a long time. I dreamed that I was on the Drakes’ porch roof with Izzy, watching falling stars and making wishes. Suddenly Izzy tensed and then she turned to me and began to scream.
It was the sound of the explosion that woke me up.
Chapter 99
* * *
I flew the length of the ship, back to the workshop, following smoke and clouds of debris. Everyone was coming out of their sleeping pods, and terror was as thick as smoke.
The explosion hadn’t been in the workshop, though.
With absolute horror I saw fire crawling along the ceiling through the open door to my father’s greenhouse. Two shapes—smeared in black soot and red blood—hung in the smoky air.
Dad.
And Tony Chu.
I screamed as I kicked off of a handhold and shot toward them. They looked so bad. Droplets of blood filled the air and I smashed through them to get to my father. He hung limp, eyes closed, his face flash-burned, half the hair on his head melted away. But as I reached for him, his hand closed around my wrist with surprising strength.
“The . . . the . . . ,” he tried to say. Then the last word came out as a faint whisper. “. . . vent.”
I didn’t understand. Other people were there now. Nirti’s parents were pulling Tony out of the smoke.
“Help!” I yelled. “My dad!”
Suddenly Nirti was there, pushing me to one side, a medical kit slung around her neck. I tried to fight her, to hold on to Dad, but Luther’s big arms wrapped around me and pulled me back. He had a firm grip on a handhold and I had no leverage at all.
“Tristan,” he yelled. “Tristan! Let her work. She knows what she’s doing. Come on, we have to stop the fire.”
That snapped me out of it and suddenly Dad’s words made sense.
The vent.
Jesus . . . the vent. There was a control vent in the greenhouse that moderated the gasses necessary for hydroponics. If the vents were open they’d continue to feed the fire, and if it went on long enough the flames could back up into the main tanks. That would destroy the entire ship.
“Okay, okay,” I bellowed. “Let’s go.”
Luther released me at once and gave me a hard shove toward the greenhouse. He followed fast and we ducked under the flames and had to grope our way through clouds of toxic fumes as the heat tried to fry us.
The greenhouse was one of the largest parts of the ship, and though I was not in there very often, I knew the layout. I knew every inch of the ship.
With Luther clinging onto my ankle, I pulled us both over tables of heat-withered barley and rye to a pair of heavy valves set into the far wall. These were emergency cutoffs. The fire control system should have triggered them to close automatically, but while reaching in, my hand encountered something strange. Someone had wedged pieces of metal into the works, effectively dogging them open.
“Luther—help me.” I coughed my way through an explanation of what we had to do and he got it right away. Even so, we had to work more by feel than sight because the fire and smoke w
ere getting worse. The pitch of the alarm had changed too, which meant that the main tanks were in danger of being compromised.
We had no time. No margin of error.
He grabbed the metal jammed into one valve and I grabbed the other. We braced our feet on the wall, and with smoke filling our lungs, we pulled.
We pulled. And we screamed.
Both pieces of metal came loose at the same instant and the release of resistance flung us all the way across the greenhouse. I hit the wall and Luther crashed into a group of confused people. We cursed and elbowed the people who were grabbing us, thinking they were rescuing us. This time Luther got free first and pulled me away from helping hands, and with a growl like a bear hurled me back toward the valves.
I found them by crashing into them.
Pain owned me. It was everywhere; it screamed inside my skin. But I found the valve and began turning. Then Luther was there, turning the other valve.
The hiss of gasses changed in pitch. Faded, faded . . . and stopped.
And then there was the clunk of machinery as someone found the control for the oxygen intake, which sucked the smoke out of the air. People filled the room with fire extinguishers, but the flames were already dying.
Luther and I hung there, holding on to the valves, gasping.
Chapter 100
* * *
It was bad.
Dad was badly burned. Tony Chu had a concussion and a broken arm from hitting the wall during the blast. Six of the crew, including Luther and me, were treated for smoke inhalation.
The greenhouse, though . . . that was gone. Dead. Every plant and half of the seed stock Dad brought with him.
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