Moon Shot

by J. Alan Hartman

  Quinn was standing in front of a range of white boards while members of the robotics and surgical teams scrutinized four large displays. Each monitor showed an aspect of the surgery frozen in time. As they clicked forward frame by frame various team members called out information. Quinn then added it to one of four coloured lines that were drawn on the boards, which stretched from one end of the room to the other.

  “Laser power up.”

  “GI Tract being cauterized.”

  In increments of a hundred milliseconds the team walked through all aspects of the surgery: the movements of the scope, the surgeon’s view on Earth, the medical technician’s view in the lab, the power usage of the system. Four hours of diagnostics on the equipment had showed no equipment malfunctions, no procedural errors by the surgeon, nothing other than what they expected to see. So as a last resort, they were walking through it the old-fashioned way: by hand.

  “Laser power down.”

  “Scope motor engaged.”

  “Scope extending.”

  They’d gone all the way through the half-hour long surgery and seen nothing they hadn’t expected to see.

  “Laser power up.”

  “Wait, what was that?” Doctor Green had been watching the bio-readouts on the far left screen, but she now charged across the room to where the equipment readouts were displayed.

  “Laser power up. Right there.” Jones, the technician monitoring the equipment displays, pointed to a window on the monitor in front of him.

  “Why is the laser on? The appendix was already severed.” Doctor Green turned to the monitor displaying the video views, both her view on Earth and the view seen by the scope in the lab. The surgical nurse clicked her mouse a few times and the views appeared side-by-side on the wall monitor in the center of the room.

  “I don’t see any sign that the laser is on,” the nurse said.

  “Advance it a few frames,” Doctor Green ordered. The display remained unchanged.

  “How long did the laser stay on?” Quinn had moved to stand behind Jones.

  “Six hundred milliseconds.”

  “Are you sure?” Everyone was gathered around the monitor now, staring at the output.

  “Severing the appendix took three hundred and fifty-seven milliseconds. What would six hundred milliseconds do?”

  Doctor Green had taken over the monitor showing the view of the camera on the end of the scope. She scrolled back and forth in time. “It’s impossible. The laser points at the same thing the scope points at. Look here, when the appendix is severed. You can see the light. There’s no way the laser was on for that long and we didn’t see it.”

  Quinn studied the image. “Are you sure the laser can’t be moved independently?” She looked over at the white board again. “The scope motor was on, so something moved.”

  “No it didn’t.” Doctor Green and the nurse spoke in unison.

  “The scope doesn’t move for,” the surgeon clicked forward several frames, “five seconds.”

  “That can’t be right.”

  “Look for yourself. The image is perfectly still.”

  “Perfectly?” Muttering and sounds of disbelief sounded around the room.

  Quinn stomped back to the whiteboard. “Okay everyone. Back to your stations. We’re going to start again at time 09:32:15.300 when the appendix cauterization was complete, and move ahead in ten millisecond increments. I want to know everything that happened during that five seconds.”

  Two hours later Quinn was in Lattimer’s office. The head of Mission Control was grim. “Murder? You’re sure?”

  Quinn nodded. “It had to be. Someone modified the laser commands deliberately. The only reason to do that would be to kill the patient. And it had to have been done by someone on the lunar base.”

  Lattimer sank heavily into the chair behind his desk, his normally impassive face showing fatigue for the first time since Quinn had known him. She knew how he felt. The crew and staff of the lunar base project were a close-knit family. Everyone was committed to making the mission a success. While angry blow-ups were not unheard of, this was cold and calculated.

  “Walk me through it,” he said at last.

  “The tele-presence equipment allows a surgeon on Earth to control the medical equipment on Luna-1. She sees what the scope sees, and sends instructions to the equipment in the remote operating room. Because of the time delay between here and the lunar base, the computer compensates by slowing down the movements of the equipment, to give the doctor time to adjust. A number of the functions are automated. For example, the surgeon doesn’t turn the laser on or off, but rather activates the cauterize function, which knows how long to turn on the laser. The surgeon’s view and the ultrasound use Augmented Reality. It’s a real image with computer-generated information superimposed overtop of parts of the image. This lets the surgeon see information from the scans taken before the operation while doing surgery.”

  “So?”

  Quinn took a deep breath. “In both the surgeon’s view and the ultrasound, whenever the appendix appeared, its appearance was modified to make it look infected.”

  “Silverstein didn’t notice that the appendix was healthy when he pulled it out of Beauregard?”

  “It didn’t look healthy, because the display wasn’t the only change to the program. Doctor Green controlled the equipment by issuing commands: cut, cauterize, grasp, like that. Someone modified the cauterize command to do more than just cauterize. After the normal action was complete another set of commands kicked in. The surgical unit moved ahead and the laser fired a long blast. It scorched the appendix, making it look damaged.”

  “Why didn’t we see it?”

  “Because the video playback was frozen on the last image before the new commands kicked in. The image didn’t start moving again until after the extra commands completed. We didn’t notice it until we started going through the surgery frame by frame.”

  Lattimer’s brows knitted together as he considered this. “How did burning the appendix kill Beauregard?”

  “It didn’t. It was the other extra commands. After burning the appendix the scope rotated until it found the intestinal artery, and then it burned a series of spots, like perforations in a check book. Each was just a pinprick in size. Not big enough to cause any bleeding before the surgery was over, but big enough to weaken the artery wall. Eventually normal arterial pressure would have caused them to rupture. Once one gave way the rest would go, tearing an inch long hole in the artery, and causing Beauregard to bleed to death.”

  Lattimer closed his eyes and sat still for a few moments. Finally he looked across at Quinn. “Is there any chance this was sabotage from outside?”

  “No.” It hurt to say this out loud, but Quinn continued. “Beauregard spent hours throwing up, which caused him to go to the Infirmary in the first place. Someone made him throw up. And that could only have been done from inside Luna-1.”

  Lattimer leaned his head into his hand and rubbed his forehead. “Who else knows?”

  “The robotics and surgical teams were together in the lab when we figured this out. They’ve been sent to their quarters to get some rest, and ordered not to discuss this with anyone, not even each other.”

  “Where’s Doctor Green?”

  “Running diagnostics on Beauregard’s stomach contents. They had been collected as per procedure, but since the ultrasound confirmed appendicitis the analysis wasn’t done before the surgery. She’s running it now to figure out why Beauregard started vomiting.”

  Lattimer picked up his phone and punched several buttons. “Doctor Morales? My office, five minutes. I need your crew assessments.” He slammed the handset on the phone back into its cradle. “That will be all. We’ll update the commander at oh five hundred. I’ll need you there.”

  “It can’t be murder.” The disbelief in Ortiz’s voice was apparent even from several hundred thousand miles away.

  “There’s no doubt. Beauregard’s stomach contents show sign
s of botulism. Someone on the base poisoned him, rigged the tests to make it look like appendicitis, then rigged the surgical gear to kill him.” Lattimer was standing again, his boxer’s physique rigidly upright, control radiating from every line.

  “This is a highly driven team that was hand-picked from thousands of candidates for one of the most prestigious jobs in the world. We’ve been tested, trained, and screened to prepare us for this mission. And you’re telling me one of my crew members deliberately killed a teammate? Why?”

  “We don’t know,” Doctor Morales said.

  “Where did the botulism come from?” Mentally Ortiz began running through their inventory, considering how they would cope if the food supply was contaminated.

  “Could have been grown in the life sciences lab,” Lattimer said. “Any unexpected or unusual activity there recently?”

  “Maybe.” There had been an accident in the lab two days before. A number of dishes growing samples had been smashed when one of the automated arms had reached into a cabinet and overshot its target. “Any idea who?”

  Morales consulted her tablet computer. “We’re looking at the base records from the last few days. It’s hard to pick out any anomalous behaviour. Everyone seems to go everywhere. I don’t suppose anyone has seemed more stressed than usual lately?”

  Ortiz shook her head. “Everyone’s been stressed lately due to schedule issues.” What she didn’t mention was that they’d fallen behind schedule because Beauregard had been playing pranks, causing minor chaos. He had reprogramed the robot hands in the life sciences lab to give Silverstein the finger when they completed an action. He had told Orlando that he had been ordered by Blair to focus on building the new laboratory pod rather than the radio telescope, because “it wasn’t like they were going to get anything useful from listening to the stars.” This had triggered bickering between the astrophysicist and the second in command. And he had continually referred to Anders as the junior payload specialist, even though the two of them were equal rank and had the same number of years of experience.

  The rest of the conversation between Ortiz and Lattimer was a heated debate over whether or not they would keep the murder secret from the rest of the crew. Finally Ortiz agreed that since the suspect pool was so small, she would allow the rest of the crew to believe that the death was accidental, at least until they returned Earth-side.

  After turning off the monitor Ortiz sat in thought for a while. She prided herself on her ability to lead. It was why she hadn’t reported Beauregard’s behaviour to Mission Control. She and Blair had agreed that they would deal with the situation themselves. She thought about her crew’s behaviour over the past two weeks. Nothing in particular stood out. Unlike the space station, the lunar base had a lot of space, allowing the crew to have private quarters and even a lounge with games. The base was made up of a number of pods connected by short hallways. The size of the base meant it was possible to work in isolation for long periods of time. Unlike the space station, where almost every square inch was devoted to the mission, it was possible to relax for a while, let down your guard. And maybe that was the problem. Someone on the base had let their control slip long enough to let irritation with Beauregard’s pettiness turn into something darker.

  But who? The more she thought about it, the more one person came to mind. The space agency’s policies said that she should wait until they got back to Earth, until forensics could be conducted on the samples they brought with them. The crew was governed under international law. There would be a penalty. But right here, at this moment, she was in charge. And she needed to know.

  Ortiz pulled herself into the drone control room. Blair was strapped into one of the control chairs, the visor over his eyes and his hands in the controller gloves. No one else was present.

  At her entrance Blair’s visor cleared and he looked at her quizzically. “Something I can help you with, boss?”

  “No.” She turned and went back to the control hub, a large pod located at the middle of the lunar complex. From here she could bring up cameras in every part of the base. Finding the person she sought, she headed down to the life sciences lab.

  “Commander. What can I do for you?” Silverstein and Anders were repotting some plants into larger containers. The medic brushed the soil off his hands.

  “Actually, I need to talk to Julie. Do you mind?”

  Silverstein looked back at the robotics expert, then shrugged. “No problem. I need to update my progress report with the latest photos of the plants.” He picked up a camera from a side counter and walked out, closing the airtight door to the lab behind him.

  Ortiz crossed to where Anders was bent over a pot, packing the soil around the roots. She remained focused on the plant.

  “I didn’t realize you were into botany.”

  The younger woman shrugged. “This garden is Josh’s baby. He’s convinced the new crew will screw it up.”

  “Shouldn’t you be getting back to the robotics control room? We were already behind schedule on construction of the new lab. Or is there some reason you don’t want to go back to the room where you used to work with Neil?”

  Anders finally looked up, met the commander’s eyes, then glanced away.

  “Look at me.”

  It was a clear order, but still Anders did not return the commander’s gaze. “How did you know?”

  “Up until a week ago everyone was sniping at each other, but mostly back and forth with Neil. Only you went so far as to avoid him. You wouldn’t even look at him. But the day before he got sick, you were normal. No sign of any hostility, even when Josh complained about getting the finger. I can only guess that you’d made your plan by then. You certainly have the skills to reprogram the surgical robot, and you spend enough time in here that Josh wouldn’t have noticed you growing something in a petri dish in the corner. The only thing I don’t know is why.”

  Anders began rubbing the palm of her left hand, scrubbing at dirt in the crevices with the thumb of her right. Ortiz could see the muscles in her jaw clenching and relaxing. Finally she took a deep breath.

  “You know he converted his drone control station to play games. First person shooter, driving games, a bunch of crap he brought with him from home. He just disconnected the control station from the drone, then used the visor and the gloves and even the foot pedals. Billions of euros spent building this place and he turned it into a game lounge.”

  Ortiz nodded. She knew. Mission Control considered it a harmless way for the crew to blow off steam.

  “He’d stopped calling me Space Barbie after Mike gave him hell last week. I thought maybe he’d finally grown up. Then he started giving me these looks, smug, like he knew something I didn’t. I was going to give him hell, so I went looking for him in drone control after hours. I walked in on him playing a game. He, he was, well, hard. He had the visor on, but it cleared when I came in.” She swallowed, closing her eyes. “The look he gave me.” She gave up rubbing her hands together and began to fuss with the tools on the potting table.

  “So I went into the lab and I hacked into the games in his private partition. And that’s when I found it. He must have stolen the files from the medical scans. He had a three-dimensional model of me. He had animated it, and made it do things. Disgusting things. And with the gloves, he could grope it. You know how sensitive those gloves are.”

  Ortiz supressed the urge to swear. She’d realized shortly after they’d arrived that Beauregard wasn’t the team player he’d made himself out to be during training. She hadn’t realized he was a total bastard. “You should have told me.”

  “And you’d have done what? Locked him in his room? Erased his game? He never should have been on this mission in the first place, but we were stuck with that pervert for another two months.” Anders was looking Ortiz in the eye now, her voice rough with suppressed fury, her face flushed with rage.

  “That’s still no excuse for murder!” Ortiz wanted to shake the younger woman, knock some sense into he
r, but it was too late. Silence fell between them.

  Finally Anders looked away, and went back to scraping at her palm.

  “Did you really think you’d get away with it?”

  Anders shook her head. “I meant to go back and erase the changes I’d made to the surgical program. But Teresa wanted to talk about the tragedy. She wouldn’t leave me alone. By the time I tried to log into the Infirmary’s computer I’d been locked out by Mission Control.”

  Silence fell again, and Ortiz found she could not look at the junior operator.

  “What happens now?” Anders finally asked.

  Ortiz sighed. “Mission Command wants this kept quiet. They’re worried about crew morale. But I’m going to have to report our conversation to them.” Anders nodded.

  “Julie, you were selected for this mission out of thousands of applicants. It is an honor and a privilege to serve on this crew, and I expect everyone to live up to it. Are you committed to the success of this mission?”

  “I am.”

  “Then I expect you to continue to fulfill your duties. You will be under closer scrutiny at all times, either by myself or Commander Blair, and your access to some of the systems will be restricted.”

  “Understood.” Anders’ face was impassive, but she returned the commander’s gaze.

  “Then wash your hands and report to drone control.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Ortiz watched the younger woman leave, and wondered if she had done the right thing.

  One month later Ortiz was in the launch dome, supervising the docking of the shuttle that was bringing the new crew on board. The hand-over period was supposed to last two weeks, but the outgoing crew had been ordered home within a week. As the new crew began to get their moon legs, the outgoing crew started unloading supplies. Watterson, the new mission commander, asked if he could speak to Ortiz alone.

  As soon as they were alone in her office he asked, “How is Anders doing?”