“Figures. How’s Larry?”
“The captain has lost consciousness again. His breathing is weak and I do not know the extent of his internal injuries. I am trying to revive him by flooding the bridge with pure oxygen. If I cannot revive him soon—or if he dies—command will fall to the only remaining crewmember: the assistant flight engineer.”
Mike felt that same dark mist once again trying to get into his throat. His voice took on an anguished, pleading tone. “We can’t let Larry die. Is there anything I can do to help?” Mike’s free hand became a fist. “Anything?”
“No,” the ship said. “At this point there is nothing you can do for him.” But then it added something Mike had never before heard a computer suggest as a serious option and never would have expected from a machine. “That is,” it said, “unless you know how to pray.”
Chapter Four
Black Thimble
Five minutes later, Tina—still sitting on her foam-covered ventilation duct—was filing her nails with a nail file she’d dug from the lowest depths of her travel case.
Mike stood with his back to her, hunched over his pocketsize, watching as it ran simulated experiments of various ideas he and the little machine had been discussing—ideas that were intended to slow or stop the ship’s tumbling but which so far didn’t look promising.
The ship’s voice once again surprised him by coming out of his pocketsize. “Mister McCormack,” it said briskly, “before the captain lost consciousness he insisted that I show you all the recorded images of the chief flight engineer’s work on the engines in the minutes before she was thrown from the ship. Do you wish to look at them at this time?”
Mike wasn’t sure if he was ready to see what amounted to Kim’s death. He tried to express this. “I’m not sure.”
“For some reason that I am not aware of, the captain feels it is important that you, more than anyone else, understand how this crisis developed.”
Mike swallowed hard. “OK. Show me.”
“Very well,” said the ship. “I will begin a few minutes before the leak started—at 1:41pm, 13:41 Universal Time—one hour and twenty three minutes ago. At that point the chief flight engineer was attempting to discover why the engines had gone into automatic shutdown.”
The display on Mike’s pocketsize became a split-screen view. One image was of Larry sitting quite normally in his command chair on Corvus’s bridge; the other—actually a cluster of several overlapping images—must have been what Larry saw as he looked up at the domed ceiling.
As far as Mike could tell the image cluster was composed of at least four separate images: a status diagram of the ship’s subsystems; a map of the Earth/Moon system with Corvus’s location and projected path within it; a clock with a sweep second hand; and a pair of green-gloved hands loosening the bolts on, Mike guessed, one of the ship’s fuel pumps.
These were definitely Kim’s hands. Her three vacuum suits were the only ones aboard ship with green on them. Her suits were white with green gloves, boots and decorative striping, while Frank’s were white with yellow and Mike’s were white with red.
The view of green-gloved hands was approximately the same view Kim must have been seeing herself, and was the only image of her work the captain would have access to as long as she remained near the engines and inside the rad-shield.
No digital cameras could be permanently mounted inside the rad-shield. Video chips—indeed, any computer chip—if exposed to the constant flux of gamma rays given off when the fusion engines were running would quickly deteriorate into non-functional garbage.
Protecting the ship, and all those aboard, from this gamma ray flux, was the rad-shield: a large gray object of foamed lead alloy shaped like a shallow cereal bowl. A cereal bowl ten feet deep and fifty feet wide—half the width of the ship.
Corvus’s twin engines sprouted side by side from the rad-shield’s basin. If the shield was thought of as a valley, and one pretended that the engines pointed upward, then it was easy to imagine that the engines resembled a pair of large metal trees. In such a metaphor, each tree’s complex root system was fully exposed and made-up of its hydrogen fuel lines, coolant lines, valve actuator lines and hydrogen pre-heat lines; as well as the safety valves, feed-pump and fuel filter. The two fusion chambers, being fat cylinders, would probably be considered the tree trunks; and the huge exhaust nozzles would have to play the part of the great spreading masses of leaves and branches.
Flanked by an empty command chair on both his right and left sides, the captain sat alone on the bridge. Mike noticed the captain massaging his forehead with his fingertips as he watched Kim’s hands at work.
The image of Kim’s hands originated from a pair of tiny cameras mounted on the communication headset she wore inside her vacuum suit helmet.
The captain pursed his lips, then said, “Ship?”
“Yes, Captain?”
To Mike, the ship’s voice seemed smaller and farther away than when it had been speaking directly to him only moments ago, yet both times the same voice had emanated from the same little speakers in the same little computer. Mike decided to ignore this and continued watching in silence.
The captain removed his fingertips from his forehead and placed his hands on his padded armrests. Mike could tell from the way the captain moved as well as from the way his clothes draped and hung on his body that the bridge was in zero-g. The ship had not yet started tumbling.
The captain said, “Show me a diagram of a fusion motor’s liquid hydrogen fuel pump.”
The image appeared on the dome.
“Enlarge it.”
It became larger.
“Animate it.”
Its moving parts began to move. There were only two: a pair of toothed gears enclosed in a stationary housing. In the animation, the two gears rotated in opposite directions; their teeth meshed between them.
“I don’t get it,” the captain said, as he stroked his clean-shaven chin. “The thing’s so simple, how could it break down?”
“Is that intended as a rhetorical question?” the ship asked.
“I was just mumbling.”
The ship responded with, “Captain, one of your passengers is calling. Specifically: Tina Jennifer Bernadette.”
The captain smiled a tight-lipped little smile, straightened the collar of his flight uniform and sat up taller in his seat. “Put her through.” His voice sounded less gruff and less old.
A new image appeared on the dome and covered portions of several existing images. It contained Tina’s head and shoulders and upper torso. In it she was wearing a delicate yellow blouse, cut low enough to make a man look, but not so low that he would forget to admire her many other delightful features. She was not smiling.
This last fact did not slow Larry, he was now smiling enough for them both. “Captain Lawrence Palmer speaking. How may I help you?”
“Captain, I’ve noticed that the engines have stopped.” Her southern accent seemed even thicker than Mike remembered. “And I was wondering if there was some kind of problem.”
The captain shook his head, gently. “Nothing serious. We’ll be under power again within a few hours.”
“I hope this won’t cause us to arrive late. My schedule is tight, already. If I miss my connecting shuttle to Earth, I’ll miss the entire Nobel Prize ceremony.” It was now her turn to shake her head. “That would be something we cannot allow.”
“Rest assured, Ma’am.” Mike’s eyebrows went up in amazement. His old buddy sounded just like the sheriff in one of those western movies from the days before 3-D. “We’ll have no trouble making up this little delay and arriving at Von Braun on schedule. We can make up as much as a seven hour delay without being late.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” Tina gave her head one good shake as though tossing back long hair—an unnecessary gesture since her hair was trimmed short. “I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that I fully expect my mother to win the prize in biochemistry this year.”
/> “No, ma’am. I’m looking forward to watching it on television myself.”
Mike smiled. Liar! You wouldn’t sit through a sixty second commercial of that kind of crap.
“Thank you, Captain. I appreciate your candor.”
“My pleasure. If you have any other concerns, please feel free to call me.”
“Thank you again, Captain.” She ran the fingers of both hands through her shimmering golden hair and tilted her head back as though she enjoyed the sensation immensely. An alluring pose to remember her by? Perhaps. “This is Tina Bernadette: out and clear.”
Her image disappeared from the bridge dome and in doing so uncovered the image of Kim’s gloved hands exploring a fuel pump’s gear teeth.
The captain frowned. “Kim, found anything?”
“No, Captain. Pump looks fine. I’ll put it back together and check the filter.”
“OK, I’ll be monitoring.” The captain closed his eyes and smiled, stupidly.
Mike scowled. What’s he doing? But it was painfully obvious: he was attempting to memorize how Tina looked with her lovely head tilted back and her delicate fingers running through her magical golden hair. Mike wondered if Larry was going to tell the ship to replay the closing frames of her message. He’d always known Larry’s head could be turned by a pretty face, but he had no idea what an old fool Larry could be when he really tried. Mike had no clue that sometimes he looked just as stupid.
“Captain,” the ship said, “the medsys is calling.”
“Oh? What in the world does that thing want?”
“It did not say.”
The captain shrugged. “Maybe somebody’s sick. Put it through. Captain here. What’s up?”
No new image appeared on the dome. The call was voice-only. “I am sorry, Captain,” the medsys said in a decidedly slow and formal manner, “but it is my unfortunate duty to inform you that approximately twelve minutes ago one of your passengers died: an engineer named Valentina Cortez.”
The captain’s amazement shrank his voice down to a barely audible whisper. “What?” He pulled himself forward in his big gray command chair though there was, of course, nothing to see. “What happened?”
“She was poisoned. The substance used—sodium cyanide—suggests the poisoning was planned in advance. What’s more, my own analysis of her medical file indicates the probability of this having been a suicide is less than three percent, which means there is a ninety seven percent probability that you have a murderer on board this ship.”
The captain’s voice returned to its normal volume but his tone was one of open disbelief. “A murderer?” But then he frowned and rubbed his forehead with one hand as if his attitude was changing. Medical computers aren’t known for leaping to ridiculous conclusions. If a medsys believed something, it was usually true. “Is there any evidence as to who the murderer might be?”
The machine described the wad of paper and clump of hair it found in Val’s stomach, along with the message written on the paper and the circumstances of Mike discovering her in her room and bringing her to medical.
The captain’s big hands closed into fists. “You’ll never get me to believe that Mike killed her! Never! I’ve known him for over fifteen years. He’s one of the finest people you could ever hope to meet. And solid as a rock: I’d trust him with my life any day of the week.”
Mike smiled. Now there’s the Larry I know!
“I am not saying that Mister McCormack killed her. Only that he had the opportunity, and that it is a bizarre piece of circumstantial evidence that strands of his hair were found wrapped in paper inside her stomach.”
The captain rubbed an elbow with the palm of his hand then folded his arms across his chest. “Is there anything else you need to tell me?”
“A few miscellaneous facts: I’ve begun an autopsy, since there will be a formal investigation. The poison that killed Valentina was taken orally no more than ten minutes before Mister McCormack called me. There is no evidence of either a struggle or sexual assault. And finally—and most importantly—I must recommend that you assume you are dealing with a murderer. A murderer who may or may not be Michael Tobias McCormack.”
The captain took a deep breath and released it before continuing. “I understand. Thank you. Captain: out and clear.” He took another deep breath, then closed his eyes as he spoke. “Ship?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“There will be an investigation of this after we dock at Von Braun. I want you to begin gathering whatever evidence you can. Archive all the images and audio from the hallway camera data-recorders as well as all the ship’s com channels. Oh, and be sure to lock Valentina’s cabin; we don’t want anyone sneaking in there and tampering with physical evidence. Coordinate all this with the medsys. It may have other evidence-gathering ideas that will need following up.”
“I understand.”
“Good.” He opened his eyes. “Where’s Mike now?”
“In his cabin.”
The captain did not ask what Mike was doing. The privacy act of 2022 prohibited permanently mounted cameras inside a person’s private quarters. Instead, he said, “I want you to monitor everyone aboard this ship—both passengers and crew—for any suspicious behavior. Watch the hallway cameras and the com channels and listen to the intercom system.”
“Com channels are generally scrambled for privacy.”
“I know. Unscramble as much as you can, but record everything. I want every shred of data that might turn out to be evidence stored and archived for the investigators regardless of whether it’s clear or scrambled.”
“As you wish.”
The captain stared at the image of Kim’s hands working. She had already put the pump housing back together and carefully torqued each bolt in accordance with its official specifications. She had then begun taking apart the filter housing. This was a cylindrical object one foot long and eight inches wide which resembled a miniature automobile muffler. She was now removing its filter elements, but there was something else in there. Something dark with an irregular shape. Something about the size of Kim’s hand.
Again, the captain pulled himself forward. “Kim, you found something?”
The dark object became larger as she pulled it out and brought it near her face. “Yes, Captain.” She sounded confused. “This seems to be the problem right here. The filter’s clogged with these little fibers.” She pinched the dark mass and tugged a few dozen strands away from the rest. “Looks kind of like hair.”
Mike’s eyebrows went up. Hair clogging the fuel filter? That’s how Richard died! He tried not to remember walking through the shredded remains of Richard’s prospecting ship, but the images were too strong. The unburned wreckage had been scattered across a wide lunar plain.
The captain scowled. “Did you say hair?”
“Yeah, but what would hair be doing in a liquid hydrogen tank? It couldn’t possibly get in there by accident.”
The captain started rubbing his elbow again. “Is it the same color as Mike’s hair?”
“Yeah, about the same. Why?”
The captain leaned back in his command chair and folded his arms across his chest. His voice became artificially calm, as though trying to make something sound normal that he knew full-well wasn’t. “Is there a note stuck in there?”
“A note? Like on a piece of paper? Why would there be a note?”
Mike heard what he thought was an odd edge to Larry’s voice; an edge that seemed to indicated he was forcing his voice to remain calm and pleasant. “Just look in the filter and see if you find one.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding.”
The captain released his anger and let it flow into his voice. “Do it!”
“All right. All right. I’m looking. I’m looking.” Kim placed her helmet’s glass faceplate almost in contact with the open filter housing and looked around inside. “I don’t see a note, Captain.”
“Good.” His voice returned to normal. “How long until you can have the f
ilter cleaned out and put back together?”
“About fifteen minutes. But if the rest of the liquid hydrogen in the tank has hairs floating in it the filter will just clog again in an hour or so and the engines will go into auto-shutdown again.”
The captain spoke slowly and deliberately. “If the thing clogs every hour we’ll just have to clean it every hour. We have no choice. Let me know when you’ve got it back together.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Kim scraped all the hair out of the filter housing and started putting the unit back together. Then—for some reason Mike was not privy to—she glanced across at the identical filter housing on engine number two. “Captain, someone has stuck a small ring of modeling clay to the side of engine number two’s filter housing.”
In the image from her headset, Mike saw it too: bright yellow clay with large finger-shaped dimples around its entire length. Every dimple displayed an imprinted pattern of wavy lines—the uniform fingerprint of a standard vacuum suit’s glove.
Kim climbed across the structural steel from one engine mount to the other. As she did so, the ring of clay grew larger within the image.
Memories floated up to Mike from his past. Memories of how he and Richard and other lunar prospectors had searched for fields of frozen comet-ice buried under the soil in deep mountain valleys near the Moon’s south pole where sunlight had not imparted its warmth for millions—perhaps billions—of years. They had sometimes used a similar clay-like substance, but this clay was the wrong color. He stared at the irregular yellow ring. It is the wrong color… isn’t it? When he saw Kim begin to reach for it he decided he didn’t care what color it was. He and the captain shouted almost in unison: “Don’t touch it!”
Tina looked up from her nails. “Don’t touch what?”
Mike turned around nearly far enough to glance at her. “Never mind. I was talking to my pocketsize.”
“You’re yelling for your computer to not touch something? Are you crazy?”
He turned back to his pocketsize, hiding it from Tina with his body. “It was nothing. Forget about it.” He expected her to pester him with more questions. He was as surprised as relieved when she let it pass. He raised the pocketsize to his mouth and whispered, “I missed some. Go back to where Kim reached for the yellow clay. And cut the volume by half.”
Bones Burnt Black: Serial Killer in Space Page 5