The Furnace

by Timothy S. Johnston

  I frowned as I noticed a look pass over her features. “What is it?”

  “I’m just wondering why it replicates exponentially. It’s dangerous to create and unleash something like this. The numbers increase incredibly fast, as I’ve shown, but why? What number are they trying to reach? And more important, for what purpose?”

  The question hung in the silence between us.

  * * *

  I left her alone to try to solve the problem. Maybe it was just an aberration, something in that blood that had nothing to do with the mystery. And what about Jarvis Riddel’s death on Mercury? How did that fit into all of this?

  I knew I had no choice but to let Shaheen continue to study the nano and hope she could find something. Other than that, there was nothing else to do but wait for the killer to slip up.

  All her talk about exponential growth. Folds of paper and grains of rice. In all likelihood, her ideas were probably just wishful thinking. She was an engineer who saw what she expected to see because of her training. She knew about nanos. She probably wanted to see a replicating variety because creating one had eluded the greatest scientists, despite their best efforts.

  Then again, I thought with a shudder, what if she was right? Who could have created such a thing? And why?

  Chapter Fifteen

  The station’s communit came to life, and Avery’s voice pierced SOLEX’s mostly empty corridors and cabins. It was a call for me to go to the clinic, and when I arrived, I found Brick Kayle in a chair in the corner, watching as Malichauk puttered about sorting files and equipment. The two were currently partners, which, judging by Brick’s expression, he was not happy about. It kept him from his work with the scientists, or perhaps more importantly, it kept him from his duties as Council rep.

  Malichauk marched to a locked refrigerator, removed a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. He placed a vial within. He locked the door and returned the key to his pocket.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  He turned to me. “A vial of—”

  “No, I mean, in the fridge there. Why the lock?”

  “Oh, there are some items that, if freely obtainable, might disappear from the clinic if I wasn’t careful. Some biological samples, addictive drugs, and so on. As the doctor here—and the only one within fifty million kilometers—I have to monitor its contents.”

  “Maybe that’s what you were playing around with after Jimmy died.”

  A frown. “Pardon?”

  “I still don’t know what you were doing from 1800 hours until 0100 hours.” He had said he’d been busy, but he couldn’t tell me exactly what he’d been doing, other than “research” and “reviewing charts.”

  My comment startled him. “I told you, I was—”

  I waved his protest aside. “Right.” My tone was dry and deadly.

  There was a small hatch just past him covered with warning labels, set into the bulkhead. I knew immediately what it was: the hazardous-materials ejection chute. There was a lever beside it to purge the contents through the chute and out to space. It was probably where the killer had dumped Jimmy’s head and hands after their removal from his body, I thought grimly.

  Malichauk was still staring at me, and I pulled myself back to the present. “I got a call to—”

  “That was me,” Brick said. “I wanted to talk with you.” He shot a glance at the doctor, as if he wanted the conversation private. He gestured to a chair beside him. “Have a seat.”

  I hoped this was what I had been waiting for: a confession of sorts about the money he’d borrowed from Jimmy Chin.

  “I wanted to explain about the money,” he said finally.

  Bingo.

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  He licked his lips. “There’s no easy way to say it. It might hurt my position here as scientist liaison, and as Council rep for that matter, but I don’t want to impede your investigation. I don’t really think it’ll have any impact on it, but I want you to know I’m being truthful with you.” He stopped talking and sat there, quiet.

  I waited, but nothing further came. “I’m not sure what you want from me,” I said.

  He shifted in his chair. “I’m curious whether this information will find its way to the captain or into my file.”

  A minute passed while I considered what he’d said. He wanted assurances that the CCF wouldn’t discover his secret, whatever it was. In the end, I decided it would be best if I gave him the same promise I had given Anna. “If it has to do with Jimmy’s death, it’ll have to come out. If it’s unrelated, I’ll try to keep it quiet.”

  He pondered what I had said. Finally, “Well, I guess it’s the best I can get.” He made a poor attempt at a smile before allowing it to fade into a look of remorse. He cleared his throat, then, “In short, I have a bit of a gambling problem.”

  Gambling was one of many immoral activities prohibited by the Council. Officers in the CCF were expected to stay away from illegal activities. “So you wanted it kept quiet so it didn’t jeopardize your career.”

  “Right. I could have asked the captain or Rickets—or any of the other officers—for the money if it was for something legit. But it wasn’t.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “On Venus, just before HQ assigned me here. Construction on SOLEX was just finishing up—”

  “This was how long ago?”

  “A little less than a year. I fell deep into a poker game that I couldn’t win my way out of. I just kept betting more and more, hoping to win that one big pot. I was betting money I didn’t have. Pretty soon I was almost thirty thousand in the red. I had to go to a shark to get the money. I had the debt to the other player paid immediately, but the real trouble was the shark. The interest rate was huge, so I had to get it paid quick. Before I knew it, the amount owing was fifty thousand and rising every day.”

  “So you went to Jimmy.”

  “Yes. Like I said, he was a great guy. I could trust him. His father had died and left him some money. He wanted to buy a place on Titan when his tour ended.”

  “Titan?” Advertising lately had made it look like a paradise, but I knew better.

  “Yup. So Jimmy lent it to me. I paid the shark off—wired it to him—and then spent a few weeks getting my friends on Earth to lend me money to pay Jimmy back.”

  I frowned. This was getting confusing. Why get Jimmy involved if his friends were willing to help? It meant allowing knowledge of his activities to leak into his life with the military. “Why not just get your friends to help originally?” I asked.

  “I needed to scratch the debt with the shark fast. The interest was too high. I tried my friends first, but it took too long to track some of them down. So Jimmy helped me out quickly, gave me the money.” He groaned and held his head in his hands. “But he asked for interest too! It was at a lower rate than the shark, so I took it. I paid the guy on Venus off, then spent another week or so getting the money for Jimmy. And I got it too. I paid him back, but he wasn’t happy.”

  Ah. So Brick admitted to some conflict between the two of them. It was motive, but was it enough to explain what had happened?

  “You didn’t pay his interest.”

  He looked surprised. “How’d you know?”

  “He was unhappy that you hadn’t paid him back.”

  “But I did pay him back! Just not all that—”

  “You figured as an officer you didn’t have to.”

  “No, it’s not that,” he objected. “It wasn’t right for him to ask for it. He was a friend.”

  “Right,” I muttered in a dry voice.

  “You don’t believe me.” He looked at me, sullen. “Whatever the case, I paid him back and that was the end of it. He never asked for the interest again, and as far as he and I were concerned, it wa
s over. Ancient history.”

  I scowled inwardly. This was only one side of the story, I reminded myself. I’m sure Jimmy’s would have been utterly different. He probably would have spoken about officers not playing by the rules, taking advantage of the NOMs, unscrupulous behavior, and so on. He rightfully should have received the interest Brick had agreed upon, but Brick had taken advantage of his position.

  “You say he never brought it up again with you?” I asked.

  “That’s right.”

  I knew he could be lying. It was possible Jimmy had pressured him to pay the remaining interest and even threatened to inform his superiors. Brick could have killed him to keep him quiet. An entirely possible scenario—and quite common, in fact.

  He studied my expression. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said in a dark tone. “But if I had killed Jimmy, why the big masquerade? Why cut off his head and hands? It makes no sense.”

  “Killers sometimes don’t make sense. I made that clear earlier.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. The Torcher. I remember. But I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t kill Jimmy. He was my friend.”

  He seemed sincere, but he might have just been a skilled actor. Many killers were. After all, they’d had a lifetime of practice. It was sometimes the only thing they were good at. There were cases of murderers being released even after multiple interrogations. Some of them could fool even the best investigators—myself included.

  There wasn’t much I could do about it. Yet. I decided to let it go. “Okay,” I said finally. “I’ll keep it quiet for the time being.”

  He exhaled. “Thanks mate. I knew I could trust you.”

  “Sure,” I muttered as I pondered the new information. Brick’s story had some truth to it, but it more than likely had some exaggerations and perhaps even a few outright lies. At least he had confessed to his gambling.

  But it was no secret that a man guilty of murder might admit to a lesser crime to throw suspicion off himself.

  * * *

  For the next few hours not a lot happened. People were generally doing their work, still traveling in pairs, and there wasn’t much investigating I could do. Instead I went to the common mess to grab a coffee. I had looked at the officers’ files in detail, and it was time to do so with the crew histories as well. I called up the dossiers and settled in to learn more about the rest of the people on board the facility.

  I started with Bram O’Donnelly’s. The man’s picture greeted me on the first page. He was practically scowling at the camera, red beard and hair as bushy as ever. He hadn’t changed much since the picture, dated four years earlier.

  There wasn’t a great deal in the file. I already knew that he and the captain were friends from way back, and sure enough, I noted the request Manny had made to have O’Donnelly transferred to SOLEX just before the project began. I recalled that the two had quite an interesting relationship; it was very informal, with lots of bantering back and forth at meals—highly unprofessional to an objective observer.

  Nothing else of interest stood out. I moved to the next.

  Larry Balch. I had noticed that he was essentially a follower of O’Donnelly and Grossman. He was timid and didn’t speak much. He took his cues from the other two men and backed them up in times of conflict. Under the characteristic dossier mug shot was a close-up of the tattoo that stretched from his finger to his shoulder. It was an honest-to-God fire-breathing dragon. I couldn’t believe it; it just seemed so contradictory, having this mean tattoo on such a tall, skinny, harmless-looking guy.

  Something in Balch’s file caught my attention immediately: he had a history of gross misconduct and insubordination. On Venus, he’d had words with a few officers in a bar that had led to blows. I whistled. Trading blows with an officer? It was nearly unheard of. Evidently Balch’s CO had entered the incident into his file but had not pursued a tribunal. Had that occurred, the CCF would have drummed him out of the service and forced him to serve time in prison. He was a lucky man. Perhaps he even appreciated that fact; he had been pretty low-key since his arrival at SOLEX and hadn’t had any trouble with the officers.

  I shook my head in wonder. Balch just wasn’t what he seemed.

  Aina Alvarez, or Anna, was next. Her file also surprised me. I had expected to read about a responsible and well-liked CCF recruit, but instead found complaint after complaint lodged against her. Unlike Balch, however, her problem wasn’t with officers. Anna’s problem, I discovered, was with her colleagues. Arguments. Cruel jokes. Even physical fights. She often fought with men and came out on top. She never made friends with her crewmates. She was a loner and liked it that way. This fact puzzled me. She had told me that Jimmy had been her friend. Actually, she had implied that it had been even more than friendship.

  Godfreid Grossman. He had been a pain in my side ever since my arrival. He had been Jarvis Riddel’s replacement, transferred to SOLEX four weeks earlier. He was stocky, with big arms and a handlebar mustache. The file’s picture drew my eyes immediately: he stared at the camera with an intense expression of anger. I checked the date on the picture; it had been taken just prior to departure for SOLEX.

  He was clearly upset about drawing the assignment. He’d been at CCF HQ on Mercury when Riddel had arrived at the hospital; the new posting must have come as a great shock to him.

  I read all four files in great detail. In fact, before I knew it, two hours had passed. I checked my watch and saw that it was 1800 hours. I’d have to go over the scientists’ dossiers later—

  The station shuddered and a peculiar sound cut through SOLEX; it was the noise of metal wrenching and tearing under stress. Hurled from the chair, I ended up flat on the deck. The gravity field flickered momentarily and my stomach turned. The lights went out, replaced immediately by low-level emergency red spotlights on the hatchways. Alarms screamed and a mechanical voice pounded out through every corridor and cabin on the station:

  “Emergency, emergency. Cabin pressure loss in Module A. Hull is compromised. Heat-shield-failure warning. Heat-shield-failure warning. Full power loss to all modules. All life support currently on battery power.”

  The message repeated and then I felt another shudder.

  “Emergency, emergency. Cabin pressure loss in Module G. Heat-shield-failure warning. Heat-shield-failure warning.”

  I blanched as the alarms continued. Something had compromised the heat shield, and air was venting from two modules.

  Then the life-support fans died.

  An emergency couldn’t get much worse than this.

  * * *

  Manny’s voice broke over the recording. “Everyone into your vacsuits, now! The emergency hatches have sealed in the affected cylinders, but it’s still dicey. Something damaged the engineering module—Shaheen, get over there immediately. Life support is down. The heat shield is punctured.” There was a brief pause. “Looks like a couple of meteors got us. Bram, Balch, Anna and Grossman—get to the docking port and into the air lock. Make sure you’ve got shield-repair supplies with you!”

  The crew were probably already sprinting through the corridors, collecting what they needed and scrambling into vacsuits for an immediate EVA.

  The station’s designers had compartmentalized the facility in case of pressure loss, but a hull breach was still the greatest danger that faced people in space. Engineers built ships and stations to withstand such accidents, but vacsuits were supposed to be readily available and the crew fully trained and competent.

  I hoped the captain had prepared his people for this.

  I hesitated momentarily and wondered what I should be doing. I was currently in the common mess in Module C; Shaheen had been working in my quarters on the nano problem. As a result, here I was, on my own, in the middle of an emergency and not familiar with SOLEX’s procedures.

  The command center wou
ld be the best place to ascertain what was going on. I grabbed a vacsuit from an emergency locker; despite my feverish desire to pull it on, it took longer than usual. The cooling undergarment added an extra couple of minutes. The fact that it was skintight and I was clammy from fear didn’t help matters.

  I finally secured the last seal and sprinted from the mess hall.

  * * *

  The command center was in chaos. The lighting was almost completely out, and the monitors that usually displayed the scenes of the exterior and the sun were all dark. Manny was yelling into the communit at the crew outside the station, and Rickets was trying to talk over the din to Shaheen, who was in Module A, investigating the damage to our power supply and life support.

  I stood to the side and tried to decipher what was going on.

  “...can see a couple of punctures in A,” a voice distorted by static reported over the communit. It sounded like Balch, but I couldn’t be entirely sure. “Anna is working on it right now.”

  “You’ve got to get that shield repaired,” Manny growled. “Sensors in the module indicate that the temperature is now up to—” he checked a readout next to him, “—fifteen fifty. Shaheen’s in there. Get it fixed, fast.”

  “Working on it,” a new voice said. It was Anna. She understood the implication: vacsuits could only withstand the heat and radiation for a limited time, and it might take Shaheen hours to effect repairs. In addition, the vital life-support equipment was only designed to operate within nominal temperatures; such exposure could damage sensitive components. If that happened, it would make the situation for SOLEX even more precarious. Even if they got the hull repaired, such damage might result in the end of the project.

  “Did you find Bram yet?” Balch asked over the comm.

  I shot a glance at Manny; he was already looking my way. “Malichauk is searching right now. We’ll let you know.” The captain covered the receiver with his hand. “Bram O’Donnelly didn’t show up at the air lock, which our emergency procedures mandate. We’ve trained for this before.”