by A. C. Ellis
“I had to. There has been another attempt on your life within the past hour.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The technician who was working on your LIN/C has been murdered.”
Sudden fear filled Susan’s thoughts. That’s what he had meant. They had tried to trace her through her LIN/C. “When did it happen?”
“Her body was found less than half an hour ago. But we don’t have time for this. We must get off Luna—now.”
Perhaps Karl was right. Maybe the attacks did have something to do with Hyatt’s impostor.
“As we speak, Photon is being moved to my private launch site,” Hyatt continued. “Report to my office immediately, and you will be escorted out to her.” He clicked off.
Susan stood in the dark for several seconds, unmoving before the phone’s lens cluster, her mind numb with shock. Karl finally knew about the attempts on her life.
But the fact that they had tried to trace her through her LIN/C meant access to the Fleet computer on a top security level. And that could only mean someone high up in Fleet.
Someone like an admiral?
She forced her legs to move. Going to the far side of the room, she slapped at the light switch beside the door, then blinked for several seconds in the sudden glare. She shuffled to the closet and took out a uniform jumpsuit and boots, and began to dress.
One thing was certain: Renford hadn’t killed that technician himself. He would have known it wasn’t Susan. It had been someone who didn’t know her, someone who’d never before seen her.
But that certainly didn’t rule out Renford as the one behind those attacks.
She tucked the pendant into her jumpsuit, then fastened the uniform up the front. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she slipped into her boots.
What about Clayton? Should she let him know she was leaving Luna earlier than either of them had anticipated?
No. Even if she wanted to tell him, she didn’t know how to reach him. And she did not want to tell him, anyway. If he knew about the technician’s death, he might somehow delay her departure. He would find out soon enough what was happening—hopefully too late to do anything about it.
And should she tell Bill Darcy? Darcy had been good to her. He had given her help when she needed it, and had let her keep her secrets. She owed him the truth now, and the knowledge that she was leaving Luna. She didn’t want him to worry.
But there wasn’t time. She fastened her boots and stood, then went to the door.
“Incoming call for Captain Susan Tanner,” the phone began again.
For an instant she considered ignoring it. If it was Clayton, that one call could end her chance to pilot Photon into deep space.
But it could just as easily be Darcy. Or even Karl…
“Incoming call for—” She stepped into the sensing field and the phone’s drone ceased. Hyatt’s image appeared on the screen.
“Meet me at the mining camp,” he said without preamble. “I have someone waiting for you outside Darcy’s quarters to escort you there.”
“You’re there now?”
“I will be by the time you arrive.”
“What about Photon?”
He hesitated a beat, then said, “It will be there when we return. Right now, I want you to meet me in the mining camp’s living quarters.” He clicked off.
Susan’s thoughts were suddenly filled with apprehension. Something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t pin it down.
Still, Hyatt was in charge. And he was in contact with Karl.
She turned and went to the door. It irised open and she stepped out into the corridor.
Chapter Nineteen
A young lieutenant dressed in the green uniform of the Luna City Police Force waited outside the door. One hand rested on the butt of a blaster holstered at his hip.
“Follow me, please,” he said, then turned and started down the corridor. Susan struggled to keep up with his practiced stride.
“Why am I meeting Hyatt at the mining camp?” she asked after a few seconds of silence.
The lieutenant did not look at her, and his pace did not slow. “I’m sorry, Captain, I’m afraid I don’t know anything about this. My orders are to escort you to the Survey Service compound, and turn you over to a Service officer there.”
Susan nodded.
They showed identification and were spore-scanned as they entered the compound. There, a Survey Service lieutenant took over escort duties with a crisp salute. She, too, wore a blaster.
Only a few years Susan’s junior, the woman was short and heavy bodied—not fat, but of sturdy build. Her pace was faster than the police lieutenant’s had been, and she silently refused to slacken it. She waited at each bend in the corridor, tapping her foot impatiently, then hurrying on ahead, only to turn and wait again at the next bend.
Susan tried to talk to her several times, but she refused to respond. She was taking her task entirely too seriously—she had obviously been instructed to hurry and to maintain strict security, and she was certainly doing both.
Soon they were in an area of the compound Susan had never before seen. There were fewer doors along this section of corridor than there had been in any area she had previously visited. Those doors that did exist bore small metal plates with inscriptions like HIGH-STRESS LAB, METALLOGRAPHY LAB, and COMPUTER SCIENCE LAB. All the signs warned against unauthorized entry, and armed guards stood at every turn in the corridor.
At last Susan’s escort stopped before a door marked: FREDRIK HYATT, DIRECTOR, SURVEY SERVICE. The lieutenant showed her identification to the guard standing beside the door, and Susan did the same. The guard nodded them through.
A middle-aged Survey Service sergeant sat behind a gray painted metal desk in the anteroom. He did not bother to look up from his work as the lieutenant marched to a door on the far side of the room. Susan followed a bit more slowly. The door irised open and they stepped through.
The first thing to strike her was the room’s starkness. This was Hyatt’s office. It belonged to the man in charge of the entire Survey Service. Susan had been expecting plush carpets the same powder blue as a Survey uniform, and at least here a real wood desk. Some hint of the luxury to which his position entitled him.
What she saw was floor tile the dirty gray characteristic of that manufactured from lunar rock, and a medium-sized metal desk—also gray in color—occupying the center of the room. A straight-backed conventional chair sat behind the desk. Set in the rough rock wall behind both were several non-holographic, two-dimensional- display monitor screens. The office was the model for Hyatt’s austerity and self- sufficiency program.
Susan’s escort allowed her no time for closer inspection. “Let’s hurry along, Captain,” she snapped, and Susan followed her to the door to the right of the monitor screens.
Beyond was Hyatt’s bedroom. It, too, was stark and nearly bare, containing an uncomfortable-looking conventional bunk, a small bathroom, and a closet. The room’s only obvious concession to technology was a vid-phone in one corner.
The lieutenant went to the closet on the far side of the room and opened the door. She pushed aside a few uniform jumpsuits hanging there, then stepped behind them. Over the lieutenant’s shoulder Susan saw a heavy door built into the back wall—an airlock.
What was an airlock doing at the back of Hyatt’s clothes closet? It made no sense. Unless, of course, it was meant to be used for escape.
The lieutenant mumbled a few unintelligible syllables, and the airlock irised open. She stepped through, and Susan followed. The door closed behind them.
The room was small. A low bench ran along one wall, and there was another door at the opposite end. That door, too, was of heavy metal. Controls were built into the wall beside it.
Then they were in an airlock. Four Survey blue life-support suits hung from pegs on the wall above the bench. One peg stood empty.
“Get into a suit,” the lieutenant said. She unbuckled her holster, laid it on the bench,
then reached for a suit.
“Now, just one minute—” Susan began.
“I’m only following orders, Captain,” the lieutenant said as she stepped into her suit. She pulled it up over her body.
Susan paused. The lieutenant was right—she was only following orders. Taking a suit from a peg, Susan began pulling it on. “Why am I meeting Hyatt at the mining camp?” she asked. “Why not at the ship?”
“Don’t talk,” the lieutenant said, frowning. She shrugged her shoulders into the upper half of the life-support suit. “Someone might have a parabolic pick-up trained on this airlock.”
Susan nodded, and fell silent as she continued to dress.
The room was cramped, which made for slow and uncomfortable work, but the two women finished at almost the same time. The lieutenant pulled the blaster from its holster, attaching it to the appropriate brace on the outside of her suit.
“You’re expecting trouble?” Susan asked.
“I hope not, but we have to be ready just in case.” She put on her helmet and activated her suit.
Susan put on her own helmet, then activated the suit. She tapped a switch in the helmet with her tongue. FULL, painted a glowing message on the visor, indicating the status of the suit’s air tanks.
The lieutenant turned to the controls beside the door and pressed a button. The muffled hiss of air being sucked from the airlock lasted several seconds, then stopped. She pressed another button and the door irised open.
Light slashed out into total darkness beyond as she stepped from the airlock and to her left. The blackness swallowed her. Hesitantly, Susan followed. She felt uneven ground beneath her life-support suit’s heavy boots. The door irised closed behind her, and she was suddenly alone in the dark, seemingly cut off from the rest of the universe.
Brilliant overhead lights flared on, and she blinked. She stood in a high-domed chamber carved from the lunar rock. On the far side of the chamber, fifty feet away, stood a large metal door, very much like an Earth-side hangar door. It didn’t look air-tight; it was obviously meant to keep intruders out, not air in. Four standard-design, hydrogen powered open crawlers were parked along the wall to her right, their balloon tires giving them an awkward appearance.
The lieutenant stood to the left of the hangar door, her hand still on the light switch. She shuffled to Susan and they touched helmets.
“I don’t have to tell you not to activate the radio circuit,” Susan heard, muffled, in her helmet. She nodded. The frequency could be monitored. This way, whoever might be listening would not overhear.
“Let’s have it,” Susan said.
“There isn’t time, Captain. And I really don’t know anything, anyway. Can you drive one of those things?” She pointed toward the line of crawlers.
Again Susan nodded.
“Fine. Then follow me out. And whatever happens, don’t turn on your headlights.” She stepped away from Susan and shuffled toward the crawlers.
Susan stood unmoving for several seconds. Her questions remained unanswered. She had meant to ask why she was being taken to the mining camp. Before, Hyatt had been so eager to get off Luna. Now, this delay…Why?
The lieutenant stood beside one of the open crawlers, impatiently signaling Susan to follow. Susan nodded, exaggerating the motion in her helmet, then shuffled to the nearest crawler.
The large hydrogen and oxygen tanks left little room for a suited driver, but with an effort she squeezed in behind the wheel. The seat wasn’t padded; she anticipated an uncomfortable ride.
Reaching down to the valves beneath her seat, Susan turned on the hydrogen, then the oxygen. She looked at the gauges on the dash. Both tanks registered nearly full pressure. She pressed the starter button and instantly felt the engine’s vibration through the seat and heard it as it was conducted through her suit.
Putting the crawler into reverse with her left foot, she backed away from the wall, then maneuvered to face the hangar door. The lieutenant did the same ten yards ahead.
The overhead lights went out, leaving only the dim glow of the crawler’s dash to break the darkness. Susan searched for the switch that controlled the overhead lights and found it beside the one marked door.
When she looked up, she saw a patch of black, star-speckled sky where the door had been only a few seconds before. It grew as she watched, and she could just make out the other crawler going through the opening, silhouetted against the unexpectedly bright field of stars. Shifting into forward gear, she followed the other crawler from the chamber.
She clutched the wheel with both hands and concentrated on driving, and on keeping the other crawler in sight. Without headlights, it would be a rough trip. Although the starlight was sufficient to make out the other crawler ahead if she really worked at it, it wasn’t nearly bright enough to reveal every crater and bump. Her crawler lurched and jerked over the rough terrain, throwing her about between the tanks at her back and the steering wheel in front of her. She only hoped her guide knew the way well enough to keep them out of the deeper craters.
Chapter Twenty
They were nearly to the mining camp before Susan saw it.
Something wasn’t right. The entire area around the camp should have been bathed in bright light, but it wasn’t. There should have been the bustle of work, yet the only indications that the facility was even there were the shadow shapes of buildings blocking out sections of the sky’s star field.
She stopped her crawler beside her guide’s. She could just make out another vehicle parked ten yards beyond.
Unfastening her seat belt, she struggled from the crawler and started for the dirt-covered Quonset hut living quarters almost invisible fifty yards ahead. Then she stopped. Her escort sat in her crawler, unmoving. Susan shuffled back, bent, touched her helmet to her guide’s.
“I have orders to leave you here, Captain,” came the other’smuffled voice. “You’ll return with director Hyatt.”
Susan nodded in her helmet, although she was sure the other could not see it. She no longer felt anger toward her guide. The lieutenant’s methods were unconventional, yet she had accomplished the task assigned her. She had delivered Susan safely, with minimum delay.
“Thanks,” Susan said. She straightened, then turned and shuffled toward the mining camp’s living quarters.
Chapter Twenty-One
The airlock’s outer hatch stood open. Susan stepped in, then keyed the helmet chronometer with her tongue. The digits projected on her visor: 0812.
She waited for the outer hatch to close, but nothing happened. Then she realized that only manual airlocks existed when the mining camp was built. This was the oldest still-operating facility on Luna.
Yet the mining camp had been in nearly continuous use since its construction, almost a hundred years ago. It had brought more than its share of wealth to the lunar colony. Wouldn’t the facility have been updated in all those years?
And again she wondered at the camp’s lack of light and life.
She pulled the outer hatch closed and turned its locking ring. The red airlock light should have come on, casting its customary sight-adjusting glow, but it did not. She tongued her helmet lamp on and blinked in the sudden glare.
Within a few seconds her vision adjusted, and she turned in the small airlock to face the inner hatch. The light that should have glowed green when the airlock attained full pressure was broken—slivers of glass littered the floor, covered with a thin layer of dust. Obviously, the airlock had not been used in some time.
Again she felt the unnaturalness of the place. It seemed as if the camp had been deserted for years.
But that couldn’t be. She remembered…
She pushed the thought away and reached to the manual air valve on the wall beside the door. Turning the handle, she waited for the hiss of air rushing into the airlock. For nearly half a minute she stood listening to the rasp of her breath and the pounding of her heart in her ears before she realized the airlock was not working. She turned the inner hat
ch’s locking ring and pushed the heavy door open, then stepped through.
Danger clanged in her thoughts as her ability warned her. Someone waited here.
Slowly, she turned her head, directing the helmet lamp in a wide arc, sweeping the single large room with its beam. The metal frames of more than two dozen triple-tiered bunks were bolted to the floor, many twisted or broken. At the far end, in the corner to her right, stood the galley. The microwave oven’s door laid on the floor. In the left-hand corner stood the toilet. It, too, was in ruin.
Empty metal brackets that had once supported communications equipment were bolted to the wall on either side of her. A tangle of wires and electrical couplings dangled from the overhead beside her right ear.
The light’s beam fell on a patch of blue beneath a bunk frame in the center of the room. She shuffled to it, keeping the helmet light trained on it. It was a human figure, laying face down, wearing a Survey Service life-support suit. A blaster burn blemished the suit at mid-back, a dusting of crimson ice crystals feathered out around an opening as small as a thumb nail.
Susan squatted and took the suited figure by the shoulder, then rolled it over. A face stared up at her through the fog of ice crystals on the inside surface of the helmet’s visor, eyes frozen wide in shock and pain.
It was Hyatt.
She stood and staggered back a step, coming up hard against the bunk frame behind her. Catching a stanchion with a wildly thrown arm, she leaned against it for a few seconds, trying to clear her thoughts.
Hyatt had told her to meet him here. He had arranged for her to be brought out to the mining camp.
And now he was dead.
Sudden movement to her left brought her around in a defensive crouch. The beam from her helmet light caught a red-suited form as it stepped from behind the ruined galley. The other held a blaster pistol trained on her.
She could not tell who it was. The light from her helmet caught the other’s visor just right and was reflected back.
Susan felt suddenly dizzy, and her would-be attacker disappeared, just like that other had done in the corridor outside the curio shop on Fleet Base. The headache came and the pendant burned beneath her suit. Both lasted only a few seconds, then were replaced by the snowflake pattern. Without thought, she began mumbling the healing mantra.