The Furnace

by Timothy S. Johnston

  “Me?” he said, blanching.

  “The man who attacked me and Bram was strong. Very strong. Really there are only two people on board who fall into that category: you and First Officer Rickets.” Rickets looked mortified at being singled out in front of the crew, but he managed to maintain his composure.

  “Are you implying that I’m the killer?” Brick said with a hard edge to his voice.

  “This will go easier if you let me finish. Now, suspicion naturally falls on both of you. First, Brick. You borrowed money from Jimmy. Money that you didn’t fully pay back.” He opened his mouth to object but I pressed on. “That gives you motive for killing him. You didn’t want Jimmy to report to your superiors about your debt.”

  “But I—”

  “When I asked you about it, you refused to talk. It took two days before you finally confessed, which furthered my suspicion.” I shifted my gaze to Rickets. “I couldn’t find any motive for you, although the fact that you did nothing after Jimmy reported the assault in the life-support module was curious.”

  “No one was hurt,” he protested, “so I—”

  “Regulations Chapter 43, section 5.2: ‘In the event of an assault on personnel under an officer’s command, or if an assault is rumored to have occurred, the officer must pursue an investigation to determine the validity of the accusation and implement whatever charges necessary, under regulations Chapter 59, section 9.1.’ You of all people should be familiar with the regulations, Avery,” I said.

  “I didn’t think it was important. As I said—”

  “No one got hurt. I got that. However, it’s my belief that someone did get hurt during that altercation. In fact, I believe it even led to Jimmy’s mutilation.”

  “You think someone killed him because he saw something he shouldn’t have,” Manny said.

  I sighed. “In a way, yes. But not in the way you think, Captain. You see, his death was an accident.”

  There was a brief moment of silence, and then everyone started to talk at once. I raised a hand. “Just a second. I went out to the area where he was working before his vacsuit ripped. I took this picture.” I pressed a key on my reader and an image immediately appeared in the air over it, holoprojected in three dimensions. It showed the edge of the electrical-access panel on which Jimmy had been working. “That corner, right there.” I pointed. “It’s sharp. And it’s located at the right place to have made that rip, if he was still attached to the tether that towed him out there.”

  “Which he would have been,” Manny said. “We never remove the tether while outside.”

  “I also looked at Jimmy’s vacsuit. It was a jagged tear. The edges weren’t clean.”

  “What does that mean?” Grossman asked. “Someone still could have—”

  “I’ve seen that type of murder before. Often the rip is clean, after a knife or something sharp has pierced the suit. And there’s usually blood drawn. But there was no mark on Jimmy’s back—Malichauk took pictures which proved that. And no blood on the vacsuit. Furthermore, the rip was relatively small. Had it been intentional, it would have been much larger—more difficult to patch.” I shook my head. “No one killed Jimmy. He turned around, probably prepared to leave because he had just replaced the faulty sensor, and that’s when it happened. He was dead in minutes.” This was something I had bounced back and forth on since my arrival. After the attack in my quarters, I’d figured someone had murdered Jimmy after all. I’d been wrong. Completely wrong—but there’d been no way I could have known the horrible truth.

  “Jesus,” Brick breathed. “Then there never was a murder.”

  I glared at him. “There’s still the matter of Jimmy’s head and hands. And Reggie and Bel, of course.”

  He cocked his head. “Of course.”

  “I interviewed the captain and found some interesting things. He disobeyed regs on some occasions. Other than that, his record is impeccable, and I don’t think he’s the killer. I questioned all the scientists too, including Reggie. I found that Katrina often fought with him over sensor time.”

  “We’ve been through this before,” Katrina said. Her face was drawn. “It was just minor—”

  “So minor that the other scientists made a point to tell me how much you two fought?” I shrugged. “Maybe you’re right, but Reggie is dead now. No one else seemed to have any motive for killing him.”

  “But what does this have to do with Jimmy?”

  I pursed my lips. “Well, you’re right there. You had no reason to cut off Jimmy’s head and hands. None that I know of, anyway.”

  It was true that Katrina’s possible motivations were weak; still, I wanted everything out on the table, period. This was a time to clear the air, to explain what had happened—and to expose the killer.

  I turned to Grossman, Balch and O’Donnelly, who sat together at a table and watched me closely. They seemed interested in what had happened to their comrade, and thankfully were listening without giving me too much grief. Still, there was more of that to come, I was sure.

  “Then there’s you three. All of you are highly volatile people. Especially Grossman, transferred here against his will five weeks ago when Jarvis Riddel cracked. You weren’t happy about that, were you Godfreid?”

  “Damn straight,” he barked. “I hate this place. I’m only here because Riddel couldn’t handle it.”

  “So maybe when you arrived you decided to make someone pay for bringing you here.”

  He sneered. “Who, Jimmy? Absurd.”

  “I was thinking more of the captain.”

  There was a brief pause, and a look of confusion passed over his features. “Huh? I don’t—”

  “Responsibility for Jimmy’s death falls on the captain. He disobeyed regs when he sent Jimmy out by himself. When I make my report, his career will be over.”

  “So?” he snapped.

  “Perhaps you were so mad at getting stuck here that you decided to ruin his career. You mutilated Jimmy’s body and attracted the CCF’s attention.”

  Dead silence. Manny turned to Grossman. His fists were knotted. “Is that true, Crewman?”

  A look of panic. “No, sir! I don’t have anything against you. I mean, sure, I hate this station, but I’m still in the CCF! I would never hurt an officer.”

  He was believable—I had to give him that. I wished I’d had more on him, if only because he had been a complete prick to me. If I had been the CO of SOLEX, I would have crucified him long ago.

  “Anyway,” I continued, interrupting their confrontation, “there’s also Larry Balch, who has a spotty record. Disobeying orders, flaunting authority, that sort of thing. And Bram O’Donnelly—”

  “Hey!” the big man yelped, red beard twitching in anger. “Someone attacked me too!”

  “—who, despite his story, can’t actually prove someone attacked him.”

  His jaw nearly hit the deck. “You think I made it up?”

  “What proof do you have, Bram? Other than a welt on your head that you could have given yourself?”

  He snorted and looked extremely uncomfortable, but said no more. I moved on, done with the crew for now. Next came the tough disclosures; I hadn’t yet revealed my only real physical evidence.

  “Then there’s Dr. Lars Malichauk, who for some reason didn’t autopsy Jimmy’s body immediately, as regs state he should. Furthermore, he jettisoned the body before I could examine it. Tampering with evidence is a punishable offense, of which I’m sure you’re all aware.”

  Malichauk looked at me plaintively. “I told you I didn’t think it was murder. In fact, didn’t you already say you thought so too?”

  “Yes. But the mutilation is still a crime. Someone removed Jimmy’s head and hands in your clinic, Lars.”

  “I know. It’s still a mystery.”

  “Is it?”


  He looked confused. “I believe so.”

  I pursed my lips. “Okay. Last, but not least, Lieutenant Shaheen Ramachandra.”

  She watched me with a coy expression on her face. “Don’t tell me you think I had a motive for all this?”

  “Actually, I was going to say that I couldn’t think of a single reason why you’d kill Reggie and Bel.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But that doesn’t mean you’re not guilty, Shaheen.”

  “What? But—”

  “We haven’t gotten to the nanos yet.”

  * * *

  There was another long silence as people absorbed that.

  “Nano?” Manny asked. “Now I’m really lost.”

  “Join the club,” I said in a dry tone. “It really is a mystery, perhaps the most complex one I’ve ever come across. You see, I investigated this as if it were a normal—and I say that in the context of my work, trust me—murder. Motive, opportunity, weapon, and so on. But this situation is anything but normal. I realized that when I found a drop of blood in the life-support cylinder where Jimmy witnessed the first assault.”

  Manny looked shocked. “You found blood?”

  “A single drop. Old and dried, but it was there.”

  “Whose was it?”

  “An interesting question, Captain. I took it to Malichauk and asked him to match it for me. He told me it would take a few hours, which immediately set off alarm bells.”

  He frowned. “Why’s that?”

  “Why is that, Lars?” I asked the man. I noted with interest a look of fright in his eyes.

  “It was old—”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit!” I snapped. “It doesn’t matter how old it was! There’s DNA in that blood. You can determine in minutes who it belonged to. As a result, I also gave a sample of the blood—which I had cut in half—to Reggie Hamatsui, to match for me.”

  “And did he?” Manny asked with a glare at the doctor.

  I nodded. “Why did you lie to me, Malichauk? Why not just match it for me right there, when I asked?”

  “I—I was busy,” he stammered.

  “You started to work on it immediately. You lied.”

  “I—I...” He trailed off and lowered his eyes.

  “And later, you told me it had been here since construction!” He didn’t respond, and I turned away. “It’s okay, Lars. I’ll get to you later. Now, what was most interesting wasn’t the drop of blood. It was the nano that Reggie found inside it.”

  Malichauk jerked his gaze back to me. “There weren’t any nanos in the sample you gave me.”

  “Probably not. Reggie found only one. Unfortunately for him, it was in the sample he got, and not in yours.”

  “What do you mean?” Rickets asked.

  I sighed. “I believe that on the morning of his murder, Reggie probably went to the storage cylinder to get some equipment to study that nano. While in the cargo bay, he ran across Lieutenant Bertram, assigned by the first officer to do an inventory of the supplies. Reggie told her about it, and in doing so, got them both killed.”

  “Someone overheard and decided to kill them,” Sally gasped. “But why?”

  This was where my theory took hold. As bizarre as it had first seemed, it had grown more and more likely as I continued to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

  “Simple,” I said. “Knowledge of the nano had to be covered up.”

  “This still doesn’t make any damn sense!” Grossman grated. “Jimmy’s death was accidental, and now some mysterious nano—”

  “After the attack on Bram during the emergency, I put a few facts together,” I continued, cutting him off. “You see, the killer also attacked me in my quarters on my second day here. He stabbed me during that attack, if you recall. But something else happened that I didn’t tell anyone about.”

  They were focused on me now, waiting. “Go on,” Sally prompted.

  “My attacker grabbed my arm. His hands were wet. Really wet.”

  Malichauk gasped, and I had to make an effort to ignore him.

  “He squeezed hard, and I didn’t understand why. The weird thing was, he didn’t do anything else. It didn’t make sense. I remembered the attack that Jimmy had witnessed, of course, so I waited—”

  “For how long?” Malichauk blurted.

  I glanced at him. “A couple of minutes. Not long. Anyway, nothing much happened. I finally decided enough was enough and managed to get away. He ran from my cabin, and I tried to follow, but lost him. It was then that I noticed the blood on my arm where he had grabbed me.”

  “Did he cut your arm?” Katrina asked.

  “No, that was the funny thing. I washed the blood off and found I hadn’t been hurt there.”

  “So where’d it come from?”

  “From your wound?” Manny said.

  “That’s what I thought at first,” I said. “And it wasn’t until later, until I knew more about the nano and the attack on Bram, that I figured it out. You see, the blood wasn’t from my stab wound at all. It was from my attacker.”

  The captain blinked. “You hurt him?”

  “No, it was from his hands. You see, as soon as he attacked, I noticed his hands were wet. Even before he stabbed me.”

  I hesitated, then, “They were covered in blood.”

  * * *

  “Blood?” Lingly said, her brow wrinkled. “Why?”

  I ran a hand through my hair. It was going to be difficult to convince the others of this, but only because it was so completely crazy. I steeled myself. “Why indeed. You see, I think it’s how the nanos spread. In blood. My attacker had blood on his hands—blood infested with nanos.”

  A long pause. “But what for?” Manny asked, perplexed.

  “If I’d let him grab me much longer—or hadn’t washed the blood off—the nanos would have penetrated my skin and infected me.”

  I studied the faces that stared back at me. They were lost.

  “Let me say it in plain English. The killer is infecting people with nanos. A drop of blood was left behind from the attack that Jimmy witnessed. It had a nano in it. The guy that attacked me tried to infect me with nanos. He didn’t succeed. The guy that attacked Bram did the same thing.”

  “Then why wasn’t Bram’s arm covered in blood?” Shaheen asked. It was clear she hadn’t suspected any of this, despite having helped me with the nano.

  I turned to Dr. Malichauk. “Was there blood on Bram’s arm when you found him?”

  He looked stunned. “Maybe... I think—”

  I took a step forward. “You said there was no sign of trauma except for a bruise on his head.” My features were hard. He couldn’t hold my gaze.

  All eyes were now on the doctor.

  “Why keep that from us?” Manny growled.

  He shook his head. “I didn’t. I just—I just forgot about it, that’s all.”

  “Sorry, Lars,” I said. “That won’t cut it. First you lie about the blood sample I give you, then you ‘forget’ to tell us about the blood on Bram’s arm?”

  “What do you mean he lied about the blood?” Shaheen asked.

  “The blood I asked him to match for me.”

  “He said it had been here since construction, right?”

  I nodded. “That’s what he said. But that’s not what Reggie told me. The blood was from someone here, in this room.”

  I turned to Malichauk. “Why did you lie, Doctor?”

  * * *

  Malichauk shifted in his chair, unable to sit still. He looked as guilty as any criminal I had ever seen.

  “Why the lies?” I repeated.

  He looked at the others and perhaps realized he couldn’t talk his way out of this. He deflated. “It’s true
. Bram’s arm was soaked in blood. I cleaned it up and didn’t tell anyone about it.”

  “And the blood sample? Why didn’t you tell me who it belonged to?”

  The station’s power flickered again; the fans rattled as they slowed. After a long moment they started again.

  “Because...” He trailed off again, clearly stumbling now. He didn’t know how to answer.

  I continued. “Because it’s part of your plan, isn’t it?”

  “Plan?” the captain said. “Explain, Tanner. What do you know?” He had clearly grown frustrated with the way I was unveiling my evidence, but there was no better way. I had to walk him into this slowly...trap him...

  “The nanos are unique,” I said. “They’re biological, with mechanical components. And they can replicate! As Reggie noted, it’s totally foreign technology.”

  “Impossible,” Sally said.

  “I thought the same thing, but trust me, we’ve studied this. They divide every thirty minutes. I had Shaheen working on the problem. In fact, for a while I thought she was guilty because of her engineering expertise.” I looked at her; there was a quizzical expression on her face. “However,” I continued, “she helped me too much to be the killer. In fact, she discovered a piece of crucial evidence in the nano’s processor. A DNA code.”

  Sally’s brow creased. “What for?”

  “There can be only one reason. When the nano infects a person who has that DNA, the nanos will act.”

  “You mean kill,” Rickets said.

  I nodded. “Very perceptive, Avery. Yes. The nanos will kill the person. I’m not sure how or why, but that can be the only answer to this.”

  Everyone’s jaws now hung open. “Whose DNA is it?” Rickets said finally.

  “I ran a search. Our database has the DNA of every single person in the Confederacy, with a few notable exceptions.” I paused, then, “The search came up negative. I couldn’t match it.”

  Shaheen said, “I don’t understand, Kyle. You said—”

  “That the database has the DNA of every single person with a few notable exceptions. Ten exceptions, in fact.”

  “Ten,” she repeated.

  “That’s right. Ten very powerful people.”