Oxygen Series Box Set: A Science Fiction Suspense Box Set

by John Olson

  Kennedy’s eyes were bugging out. “What is going on here? What’s Nate talking about?”

  Valkerie quickly filled him in on the plan.

  When she finished, Bob took the mike. “Nate, this is Bob. We still need final answers on the questions I asked after the explosion. First, do you agree that this was a bomb—not an accident? Second, is there anybody else who could have placed it there?”

  Bob knew immediately that he’d hit a nerve. A frozen silence engulfed the Hab. Kennedy and Valkerie didn’t like the implications of his questions. But so what? He wasn’t trying to make friends at this stage. He was just trying to stay alive.

  “Ares 10, this is Houston.” Nate’s voice sounded tense. “For your first question, Bob, I’ve had a team go over all the data, including the video of your spacewalk up to the final frame when the CamBot got blown up. And our answer is an unequivocal yes. That was definitely an explosion, and there is no possible explanation other than some sort of bomb. There should have been nothing in that bay that could explode. So I believe the only explanation is sabotage.”

  Bob felt his pulse pounding in his throat. Please let it be someone down there.

  “As for the question of security,” Nate said, “we have not found any additional suspects. It has to be either me or Josh or one of you four. And ...” Nate’s voice cracked. “I hope you know it wasn’t me. Over.”

  Kennedy took the mike. “Nate, this is Kennedy. We have a big decision to make. We’ll think it over and get back to you ASAP. Over and out.”

  Bob could hardly believe the change in Kennedy. Ten minutes ago, he’d been acting like they were all on Death Row. Now, all of a sudden, he was Mr. Take Charge.

  Kennedy set the mike on its Velcro patch. “Okay, we need to think about this. Bob, I have to apologize to you. It looks like your initial idea was right—we’ve been sabotaged. First off, we need to figure out who it could have been. Then we decide who has to baby-sit the others until the rendezvous with the ERV. So. Who do you think did it? Valkerie, any ideas?”

  “Um ... this is kind of awkward,” Valkerie said.

  No kidding. Bob cleared his throat. “This is life and death.”

  Kennedy hesitated. “Okay ... How about if we each write down the name of our primary suspect on a piece of paper?”

  Valkerie floated to the CommConsole and pulled off three sticky notes and a pen. She handed out stickies to each of them.

  Bob sat there, frozen in horror. Who was the bomber? He knew the answer. Knew it in his head, but he still couldn’t believe it. But how could you fight the logic?

  Neither Nate nor Josh would kill their own crew. They just wouldn’t. Kennedy? A weasel, but an ambitious one. The road to glory for him lay through Mars. Lex? She was a Mars fanatic. She was willing to die to get to Mars—not the other way around.

  And Valkerie? Would she die for something—for some Cause greater than herself? Bob closed his eyes. Sidney Nichols. He’d used a bomb too. And he’d died for his cause. Had Valkerie been in on it?

  If there were any other answer ...

  But there wasn’t. And when you’d eliminated every possibility except one, then by Sherlock, you had the answer. Like it or not.

  Bob opened his eyes, scrawled Valkerie on his sticky note, and folded it over and over. Valkerie and Kennedy had already written something on theirs.

  Valkerie collected them all in a beaker, put her hand over the top, and shook it. As if that would scramble their handwriting.

  Kennedy reached into the beaker and pulled out a name. “Valkerie,” he read out loud, then showed it to the others. Bob recognized his own writing. Valkerie scowled at him.

  Kennedy pulled out another. “Bob.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Bob said.

  Kennedy held it up for all to see. Bob squinted at the large block letters, deliberately disguised. Was that Valkerie’s or Kennedy’s writing?

  Kennedy pulled out the last sticky and opened it. His face flushed. “Somebody doesn’t trust me.” He thrust out the sticky so they could see Kennedy in scratchy, thin letters.

  Obviously, Kennedy hadn’t voted against himself or against Valkerie. So Kennedy didn’t trust Bob. And therefore Valkerie didn’t trust Kennedy. Bob sat there digesting this information. The others were obviously coming to the same conclusion.

  “So,” Kennedy said. “We’ve got a little round robin. What do we do?”

  “If I may make a comment ...” Valkerie seemed hesitant.

  “Go ahead, Valkerie. Your comments are very important.” Kennedy reached out and touched her arm. “We’re all in this together.”

  Bob felt his blood pressure rising. Kennedy was already soliciting her vote, trying to get on her good side.

  “It seems to me, we don’t need a witch hunt, so much as we need an angel hunt,” Valkerie said. “Sure, it would be nice to know who put that bomb there. It’d be nice to know his or her motive. But motives are hard to figure out. The really important thing to know is who didn’t put the bomb there. That’s the person we want taking care of us and the ship until the rendezvous. If we can prove beyond all doubt that one of us is innocent, then that person should be chosen. Let’s find us an angel, not a witch.”

  Oh, nice thinking, Miss Angel-Face. Let’s see who’s holier than who. And while we’re doing that, let’s not forget what kind of people drank poison Kool-Aid in Jonestown to make a point. Or got themselves burned to death in Waco. Or who blow up abortion clinics every other month. Nice people. Solid, everyday, ordinary people. Because the sad truth is that nice people sometimes do horrible things—when they think it’s for a greater good.

  “Valkerie, that’s a very good idea,” Kennedy said, still using his agreeabler-than-thou voice. “Maybe the first thing we could do is agree to search the private stuff we each brought along. Any objections to that? You can search my things first.”

  Bob shook his head. “No objections from me.” He had nothing to hide. And besides, anyone who disagreed to that would be asked why. From now on, each of them had the burden of innocence. Good grief, it was going to be a righteous few days.

  Valkerie nodded. “By the way, I think it’s obvious that our final decision is going to have to be unanimous. As soon as any two of us can settle on the third it will be settled. So we should make it a rule that nobody is allowed to vote for himself until the other two have voted for him. That should prevent a deadlock.”

  “Of course,” Kennedy said in his most agreeable tone.

  That ticked Bob off. From now on, Kennedy would just be agreeing to anything Valkerie said—anything to get her to change her vote.

  “There’s just one problem,” Bob said.

  The other two looked at him.

  Oh great, now I’m the odd man out. Bob hesitated. “Even with that rule, it’s still logically possible to deadlock. What happens if we can’t make a decision by the time we’re finished with the synthesis? After that, we have to choose, and then we’ll be forced to take whoever’s got the best safety margin at the other end. Which would be Valkerie. So Valkerie can force herself as the choice, just by intentionally deadlocking.”

  Valkerie and Kennedy looked at each other. Obviously, they hadn’t thought of that.

  “We need to decide quickly. If we can’t agree in forty-eight hours, I say we bring Josh into it,” Bob said. “Let him decide, if we can’t.”

  “What if Josh is the saboteur?” Kennedy asked.

  Valkerie flushed. “Josh is not—”

  “Then it won’t matter who he votes for, because all of us will be innocent,” Bob said.

  “I want Nate in on the decision,” Kennedy said. “He’s the Mission Director. Let him and Josh decide together.”

  Valkerie frowned, but finally nodded. “Okay, we’ll let them be the arbitrators if we can’t decide. Good idea, Bob.”

  Bob felt a little surge of triumph. He knew how Valkerie felt about Nate, but she had to agree, because she was trying to curry favor with him. And
Kennedy would agree with Valkerie for the same reason.

  “You’re absolutely right, Valkerie,” Kennedy said. “I’ll notify Nate of that right away.” He went to the CommConsole.

  Bob and Valkerie waited quietly. Bob’s mind was churning. This three-way politics looked balanced, but it wasn’t. He’d just discovered the first instability in it. If you made a suggestion that was remotely reasonable, the other two would agree to it. They had to, because they were each trying to win somebody’s vote.

  Were there other ways to tip the scales? There had to be. And Bob was going to find those ways and use them.

  Because no matter what anyone said or did, he was not going to let Valkerie put him in a coma. Probability theory was the art of making decisions when you had insufficient information. Bob didn’t have nearly enough information, but the only data he had pointed straight at Valkerie. Ridiculous as that seemed. Nobody else was remotely possible. Every instinct in his body told him that he had to play the odds here, to follow his head and not his heart. If it came down to Valkerie in the end, then what was he going to do?

  He’d think of something.

  * * *

  Sunday, April 6, Year Three, 11:00 A.M.

  Valkerie

  “Kennedy, there’s nothing there. We searched her clothes a million times.” Bob sounded irritated.

  Valkerie rummaged through Lex’s toiletry bag for the third time. Where were her birth-control pills? It didn’t make sense. Why would they make me take them and not Lex?

  “Just trying to be thorough.” Kennedy held up a pair of panty hose. “Doesn’t it seem strange to you that Lex wasted her weight allotment on such impractical clothes?”

  “Who cares? Let’s get on with it. You still haven’t searched my room.” Valkerie stuck the toiletry bag to the wall and spun around for the door.

  “Wait.” Kennedy held up a hand. “We still need to interpret the messages on Lex’s computer.”

  “We haven’t got time,” Bob said. “Let’s ask Nate to track down this Anderson guy.”

  Valkerie followed the men to her cabin. She waited in the doorway while Bob and Kennedy went through her stuff. Kennedy was moving like a three-toed sloth on Prozac. He’d been stalling all morning. Every second he wasted was one more reason not to vote for Bob. The way things were going, they were going to deadlock. Nate and Josh would end up deciding.

  If Josh couldn’t vote for Bob, who would he vote for? The question had been haunting Valkerie all morning. She’d like to think that he’d vote for her—after all, she was the most qualified person to monitor the crew. But Josh had known Kennedy a lot longer, and he was the best choice to pilot the docking rendezvous. Plus he knew the ship better than Valkerie did. No, whatever she did, she had to keep Bob in the running. Josh would probably pick Bob over Kennedy. Bob knew the ship better than anyone, and there were still a lot of repairs that needed to be made.

  Bob pulled a packet of birth-control pills out of Valkerie’s toiletry bag and cast a sidelong glance at her. Like he was somehow … disappointed.

  Valkerie pretended not to notice, but her burning face gave her away. She looked quickly down at the floor. Where could Lex have hidden her pills—and why? It didn’t make any sense. Maybe Kennedy was right about it being strange to bring fancy clothes. But at least she could wear them. That was more than could be said for Kennedy’s baseball and glove. And what about Bob’s “optional luggage”? The mini-oxyacetylene torch she could understand. But beer and beef jerky? He’d brought enough beef jerky to get a homesick cowboy to Mars and back.

  “What are these?” Bob asked suspiciously. “Valkerie?”

  “What?” Valkerie looked up. Bob was holding out her bag of oil paints. “What do they look like?”

  Bob took the cap off one of the tubes and started to squeeze it into a towel.

  “Bob, no!” Valkerie yelled. “They’re just paints.”

  “What’s the matter? Something in here besides paint? See?” Bob showed the tube to Kennedy. “This tube’s been opened. Why would she bring paints that have already been used?”

  “Because they were my mother’s.” Valkerie reached for the tube of paint, but Bob jerked it away.

  “Please ... don’t waste them; they’re all I have with me.” Valkerie looked up into his eyes, forcing him to pay attention.

  Bob swallowed hard. He squeezed a little paint onto his forefinger and rubbed it with his thumb, bringing it up to his nose. “You realize we’ll have to analyze this?”

  Valkerie nodded. “Just don’t waste them. Please. I didn’t make you open your beer.”

  “But I offered—”

  “Hey! Take a look at this!” Kennedy pushed Valkerie’s computer in Bob’s face. “It looks like Josh and Valkerie are an item. No wonder she was willing to let him have a vote.”

  Bob’s eyes narrowed. “That’s okay. Give Nate the whole decision and keep Josh out of it.”

  “You can’t change the rules now!” Valkerie was indignant. “We already decided.”

  “We brought Josh in because we thought he would be impartial,” Kennedy said. “That assumption no longer seems to be valid.”

  Valkerie skimmed the portion of the e-mail message visible on the screen. “Is this what’s bothering you?” She pointed at the last paragraph. “ ‘I’m counting down the seconds until your return.’ Come on. We’re just friends. He’s just being an encouragement.”

  “Yeah, right,” Kennedy scoffed. “If he was that encouraging to me, I’d deck him.”

  “And he doesn’t end his e-mails to me ‘Love, Josh,’” Bob added.

  Kennedy held up a hand. “All in favor of making Nate the sole arbitrator say aye.”

  “Aye,” Kennedy and Bob chorused in unison.

  “I’m calling Houston.” Valkerie twisted around and pulled herself through the door.

  “Not so fast.” Kennedy followed her out the door and grabbed her by the arm. “We’re not finished searching your room, and we already agreed—we have to stick together.”

  “Go ahead and search. I can wait. But as soon as you’re done, I’m calling Houston.”

  Kennedy shrugged and turned to watch Bob, who seemed to be engrossed with another message on Valkerie’s computer. Kennedy searched Valkerie up and down and smiled. Valkerie backed away as he leaned in close to her ear. “I could change my vote about Josh—given the right inducement.”

  Valkerie went cold. “Not a chance.” She pulled herself away from Kennedy and retreated back into her cabin to float near Bob.

  Kennedy grinned at her triumphantly.

  Valkerie shuddered. Nate was almost sure to vote for Kennedy. If she couldn’t convince Bob of her innocence ... no, it was too horrible. She had to convince Bob. No way could she let Kennedy put her into a coma.

  Even if he wasn’t the saboteur, Kennedy was anything but innocent.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Monday, April 7, Year Three, 5:00 P.M.

  Nate

  NATE HAD SET UP A desk out on the floor of Mission Control. He wanted anybody and everybody to have access to him.

  And they were doing it. The line was finally down to three people. The first was a communications specialist named Hanson.

  “Sir, we’ve tracked down this person R.J. Anderson that Dr. Ohta was getting so many e-mails from.” Hanson held out a fact sheet. Ronald J. Anderson was an Air Force lieutenant colonel stationed near Sacramento. Graduated from the Air Force Academy, second in his class. Sports—scuba diving, basketball, volleyball, you name it. Marital status—single.

  Nate looked up at Hanson. “So what’s the connection to Alexis Ohta?”

  “We’re checking that now, sir,” Hanson said. “Lex graduated from the Academy the year after Anderson, and it appears that she knew him, but they didn’t run in the same circles. Other than that, we don’t see a connection. For some reason, Dr. Ohta put Anderson on her list of visitors for the last meeting the night before the launch.”

  “What about
Anderson’s political ties?” Nate asked. “Any contact with terrorist organizations? Or right-wing or left-wing political organizations?”

  “Sir, he has a top secret security clearance. He’s clean. He’s a registered Republican.”

  Nate leaned back in his chair. “Check their telephone records. See if they’ve been in voice contact. Then I want you to haul in Anderson and hit him with every fact you’ve got. Ask him point-blank what’s his connection to Lex. This is important.”

  Hanson nodded and left.

  Josh Bennett was next. His shirt looked rumpled, his hair hadn’t been combed in days, and he had a coffee stain on his left elbow. “Nate, I’ve got another idea on the catch-down problem—”

  A door slammed. “Mr. Harrington!” Crystal Yamaguchi’s voice.

  Nate looked up. Crystal looked excited. And scared. She rushed up and handed Nate a note. “Read this. I need to talk to you. Privately.”

  Nate opened the note and scanned it. His heart lurched. Josh? Josh Bennett? No. This did not compute. Somebody was letting their imagination go way overboard.

  “We need to talk,” Crystal said. “Right now.”

  “A breakthrough?” Josh said.

  Crystal tensed. Her eyes clearly said, Do not tip him off.

  Nate reached for the paper on his desk. “Josh, actually, I’ve got something important for you. The crew’s been asking about a certain friend of Lex’s, this officer Anderson. I need you to go read this info sheet to them.”

  “But—”

  “It’s important, Josh.”

  “Okay, fine.” Josh took the sheet.

  “And then you need to get some rest,” Nate said. “Four hours’ sleep. That’s an order.”