The Prometheus Incident, A Martian Murder Mystery

by Joseph H.J. Liaigh



  The Prometheus Incident:

  A Martian Murder Mystery

  Joseph H.J. Líaigh

  To my family; my wife, Mandy, and my sons, Timothy, James and John, who have had the misfortune of putting up with me and have done it graciously and generously.

  PO Box 2123, Parkdale, Vic. 3195, Australia.

  Email: leachpublications@gmail.com

  First published in Australia 2015

  Copyright © Leach Publications 2015

  Cover design: pro_ebookcovers

  Editor:Anita Saunders

  ISBN 9781311093165

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express prior written permission of Leach Publications.

  The moral rights of the author are asserted.

  Liaigh, Joseph H.J.

  THE PROMETHEUS INCIDENT: A Martian Murder Mystery

  Cover photography courtesy of NASA

  Cover layout and design by pro_ebookcovers

  Acknowledgments:

  This book would not have been written without the encouragement and support of me family. This is particularly true of my brother Anthony, who gave invaluable advice on how to structure and develop the story.

  I would also like to thank the members of the Melbourne University Science Fiction Club who provided the first forum for my writing.

  Finally, thanks to Julie Postance for her encouragement and technical advice and to Anita Saunders for her kind words and editing skill.

  Chapter One – The Assignment

  The most surprising thing about the whole affair was that it had been so easy. It had been necessary to turn the computer off, then do a survey range over the landing area until a strong surface reflection was picked up, a reflection that was strong enough to indicate free metal on the surface. After that, there was only the one simple three-second burst with the beam on full power. A burst designed to penetrate rock, a burst that would run along wires, jump circuit breakers, burnt out circuit boards and explode computer chips. There had been no dread, no feeling of death. A green light on the panel had indicated that the job was completed. Then the computer was turned back on and everything proceeded as normal. Memory, however, can be a strange and powerful thing. Sleep didn’t come easily. The present was haunted by memory, haunted by a memory of hanging weightless in a cramped, familiar space, facing a battery of electronic controls: a computer quietly monitoring the instrumentation.

  The mission commander sat back in the fake leather of the driver’s seat and gazed out the front-view port of the MERV (Mars Extended Rover Vehicle). She looked across the red wind-eroded sand to the derelict spacecraft, still standing after all these years. Its white ceramic hull looked pink under the reddish Martian sky and it was partially covered by the fine red dust that seemed to cover everything on Mars. The space-suited figure of her second-in-command emerged from the derelict and waved to her.

  “I’ve finished, skip,” he called over the radio, “but it doesn’t make sense. I just don’t see how this could’ve happened. Even the suit circuits are blown. Two of them didn’t have much time at all. They were outside when it happened and their suits failed. They managed to get back to the ship but, without the electrics, they couldn’t operate the airlock. The one inside, DeWitt, he died a long time after the other two. He had time to scribble something on the wall. I’ll send the image over to you.”

  “OK, Bob,” she replied.

  She looked at the image on the heads-up display, superimposed over the Martian landscape. There, in an untidy scrawl, she read; ‘They’ve got to me. I should have known they would. I was so close. I wish I had time to write the details.’

  “Hey, Bob,” she called back. “Who do you suppose he was talking about? Who got to him? This was a simple exploration expedition. What’s he talking about?”

  “Beats me, boss,” Bob O’Brian answered. “But whoever they were, they did a good job. There’s not a whole circuit anywhere on the ship.” He looked about him at the flat red plain extending uninterrupted to the horizon. “I don’t know what the hell he thought he was close to. This is the middle of the fucking Hellas Basin. He wasn’t close to anything!”

  The commander sighed. “OK,” she said. “Document as much as you can and download what’s left of the computer memory. Maybe someone else can figure it out.” She frowned. This was meant to have been a simple historic site survey, but right from the start it had been clear there were things about it that she hadn’t been told, that she didn’t understand. She turned to the main communications panel and typed in a six-digit code. This gave her direct, secure access to the director of the United Nations Space Agency in Geneva. The access and secrecy that afforded was unheard of in Mars operations, but her message was even more unusual.

  “Good morning, sir,” she said. “This is Commander Ramasami. The code word is Alpha.” She closed the channel, knowing it would take more than twenty minutes for her message to get to the director. She looked around at the red sandy plain that formed the bottom of the Hellas Impact Basin. Code word Alpha meant that the deaths were the result of a complete electronics failure, something that was almost unimaginable. How had he known that these weird circumstances were a possibility? Another mystery. Her frown deepened as she looked at the two long dead figures lying at the foot of the derelict, their spacesuits almost buried in the red dust. There were too many mysteries associated with this mission. She didn’t like mysteries. On Mars, mysteries could get you killed.

  It had all been so easy: easy to do, that is; not easy to live with. There was a price to be paid. Those few moments had meant that there was a darkness that constantly reached from the past and discoloured every success, every triumph and every joy. All of life was now haunted and the ghosts who did the haunting were never far away.

  Detective Inspector Richardson was just about to begin Sunday dinner with his family, a tradition he tried very hard to hold on to, when the doorbell rang. His heart sank. He couldn’t even get this one night alone.

  “I’ll get it!” Tommy, his youngest, called, running off before anyone could stop him. He came back very subdued. “There are some people there for you, Dad,” he said. Richardson sighed. Just once he would like to eat a full Sunday dinner in peace. He walked to the door to find his boss, Chief Inspector William Gordon, waiting there. Behind him were two young uniformed men, both standing stiffly erect. He didn’t recognise the uniforms but they weren’t just neat, they were immaculate, as if they were about to go on parade.

  His boss looked at him apologetically. “Sorry to interrupt your dinner, Frank,” he said. “But this is going to be a long one – a lot of pressure from high up, really high up.” Richardson was studying the young men behind his boss. They hadn’t moved. Ridiculously neat uniforms and strict discipline; who were these guys? It was then that he noticed the United Nations insignia on their arms. This was both unexpected and unfortunate.

  Following the violence and financial chaos of the early twenty-first century, the UN agencies had taken more stringent control over the financial and security affairs of the world. The UN had gone from an unwieldy and largely ignored organisation to an ever-tighter confederation of nations. National governments still existed, but they were so bound by treaties and covenants that they could do nothing outside t
heir borders, and precious little inside them, without UN supervision. Presidents and prime ministers were still elected but the real power lay in the hands of those who ran the UN agencies and that led to a good deal of legal tension. Nothing good could cause UN soldiers to turn up at his home on a Sunday night.

  “What’s going on, Bill?” he asked. “What’s the UN here for? What ‘do they want?”

  His boss shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t know, Frank,” he said. “All I know is that this comes from very high up and that they asked for you by name. As far as I can make out, it’s something to do with the space agency. That’s it. I don’t know anything more. They’ve deliberately kept me in the dark. I don’t like it but there’s nothing much I can do about it. Let me tell you something, Frank, you need to be careful. There’s something really weird going down. These guys are here to take you on a helicopter ride down to the Avalon Spaceport where you will catch the next sub-orbital shuttle to Schiphol. And get this: from there, you will be helicoptered to Geneva where you will be personally briefed by Dr William Chang, the director of the United Nations Space Agency.” Richardson looked at his boss as if he had to be kidding. The young men in uniform didn’t react in any way.

  “Bill, what … I mean … what the hell are you talking about?” Richardson asked. “Why would the director of the UN Space Agency want to brief me? What would he want to brief me about?”

  Gordon just shook his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to me either but there’s no point in asking me anything else. You now know as much as I do.” The detective’s wife came and stood behind him.

  The chief inspector gave her an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Kate,” he said. “I need him. This one’s really big.”

  “Aren’t they all?” she asked sarcastically as she handed Frank his coat. She was a policeman’s wife. She was used to interrupted dinners. She gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  “Give us a call when you can,” she said.

  Detective Inspector Richardson stepped back in surprise as he was saluted smartly when he walked out the door. He was escorted to an expensive limousine while CI Gordon got into a small police pool car. Richardson was then driven to the local sporting field where a military helicopter was waiting. It took off as soon as he was on board.

  As he was flying out over the western suburbs of Melbourne, he was trying to work the puzzle. Why was he, an everyday local policeman, getting called from his evening meal and rushed into a sub-orbital shuttle to Geneva to get a personal briefing from the director of the United Nations Space Agency? Why was he asked for by name? How did the director of the United Nations Space Agency even know that he existed? No obvious answers presented themselves.

  Memory is a strange and powerful thing. It was impossible, of course, but at various times all three of them had appeared, although mostly it was her. They might be walking down a street or sitting at a cafe. Only momentarily, of course, then it would be seen to be a trick of the light or a chance coincidence in clothing and it was a stranger that was being stared at. Once, indeed, almost spoken to: a jaw-clenching memory. What could be said now that could not have been said all those years ago?

  The top-floor office was impressive, the size of the antique wooden desk perhaps even more so. Richardson tried to estimate its worth, but gave up at ‘a lot’. One wall of the office was a ceiling-to-floor window out of which Richardson could see the city of Geneva glowing in the late afternoon sun. The Alps lined the distant horizon. The man behind the desk was small, neat and full of energy. Richardson recognised him as Director Chang, head of the United Nations Space Agency and, with the current migration programs in full swing, one of the most powerful men on Earth.

  He came around the desk to welcome Richardson warmly. “Inspector Richardson, thank you so much for coming,” he said. Richardson smiled thinly. He had not been aware that he had any choice in the matter. “I suppose that this must all seem very strange to you. You must wonder why you’re here.”

  Richardson nodded. “The question had crossed my mind,” he said.

  Chang waved his assistants out of the room and then typed a short code into his wrist computer. The lights in the office flickered once.

  “We are now secure,” Chang said. “What I am about to tell you is beyond any sort of secrecy classification. You heard that a survey crew has reached the site of the Prometheus Lander?” Richardson gave a brief nod. “Well, they found that every electrical circuit on the lander had been burnt out. There is no way this could happen naturally or by accident. That crew was murdered.” When Richardson remained silent, processing the information, Chang continued. “This is now a murder case and a police matter. We need to find the murderer.”

  “Why me?” Richardson asked.

  “Well, the jurisdiction is a bit uncertain,” Chang replied slowly. “But it was an Australian crew and all the possible suspects now live in or near Melbourne, so I thought I’d give it to the Australian police.”

  “It was a UN ship,” Richardson pointed out.

  Chang nodded. “As I said, the jurisdiction is a bit uncertain, but I have made the decision that it is an Australian Federal Police case and I would like you to handle it personally.”

  “You’re confident that it was the crew then, no other possibility?” Richardson asked. “I seem to remember that there was talk at the time of Martians or other aliens.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Director Chang said with a wry smile. “Mars is, and always was, as sterile as an asteroid – more sterile than some of them. No, the murderer is one of the crew in the orbiter. You simply need to find out who.”

  “In that case,” Richardson said, “I must ask you, Director, what you were doing when the incident occurred and if you know of any tensions among the crew. As I remember it, you were, in fact, the commander of this mission. Were you not?”

  “Yes, I was,” Chang replied, “and you’ll find that I, along with most of the crew, had neither the means nor the opportunity. At the time of the incident, for example, I was giving a video mission report to Earth. This murder would have been difficult to carry out and there are very few of the crew who could have done it. I can make your task a bit simpler. This could only be done by those who had access to the Mars Microwave Sounder. No one else could possibly commit murder from orbit.” Chang noticed Richardson glancing reflexively at the disabled data terminal on his wrist. “I will make sure that you have full access to all the mission data and the inquest transcripts,” he said. Then he paused thoughtfully before continuing. “As to tensions among the crew, of course there were some: jealousies, personal dislikes, differences of opinion … all the normal things. This is only what you’d expect. The crew weren’t chosen for their compatibility. They were chosen because they were very, very good at what they did. They all had big egos and strong, professional agendas. However, they were also all highly disciplined, goal-driven people and none of these tensions seemed out of the ordinary. There was nothing that I would’ve thought could lead to murder.”

  “Motive?” Richardson asked.

  Director Chang spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Again, I can’t help,” he said. “I guess we all benefited to some degree. The lander was stuck on the surface and we had been ordered to stay in support until they could be rescued. It would’ve been a delay of about six months, but when their radio went silent, we were told to come home. So I guess we all got home early and could get on with our lives. The only one who didn’t was poor Sam Carter. He was in charge of the maintenance of the lander and his life was pretty much torn apart by the questioning at the inquest. Everyone else was grateful not to have to spend another six months marking time in Mars orbit. I, for example, went on to train for my next command mission, Frank Steinway started his engineering firm and Lisa Proctor started that consultancy, one that has made her a very rich woman. Even Charlie Freeman wrote that landmark paper on what we now call the Freeman Effec
t … and so on.” The director gave a small smile. “Another six months and it might have been called the Kim effect. Anyway, we all benefited a bit, but I can’t see a motive for murder in any of this. All of these people, all of the crew, including me, were very good at their jobs. Six months might have slowed their careers a bit, but not much – not enough to kill for. I’m sorry, Inspector, I can tell you that the murderer must’ve been one of the crew but beyond that I can’t help you.” Richardson looked far from happy but he made no comment. “I gave a very complete testimony to the inquest at the time,” the director said, “and that will all be in your data package.”

  Richardson sighed. “Thank you, Director,” he said as he got out of his chair and prepared to leave. All through this conversation, the director’s manner hadn’t changed. It was professional, apparently open and earnest – but then he was a world-class politician and administrator. He was giving nothing away. As he shook hands, Richardson was thinking that this was a long way to come for a short and rather pointless interview. He was on his way to the door when he stopped and turned around.

  “Director, how many people know the exact mode of the crew members’ deaths?”

  “Very few,” the director answered. “On Earth? I had the message given to me via a very secure channel and I have now told you. No one else knows.”

  “I’d like to keep it that way, if you don’t mind,” Richardson said.

  “Consider it done,” the director replied. Richardson smiled as he walked out of the office – perhaps it hadn’t been that pointless after all.