Star Cops

by Chris Boucher

  Theroux heated a coffee pack and looked blearily at the other six zombies who were working the second-eight shift. Clutching coffee and the products of industrial food processing, they were attaching themselves to the seats of the cramped mess module. None of them was a cheerful breakfaster – least of all Simon Butler who seemed this day-start to have settled only for the ‘unlimited choice of premium beverages’ option.

  “Not hungry?” asked Theroux, as he settled next to him.

  “Egg’n’baconmacburger? What’s that got to do with being hungry?” snapped Butler.

  “There’s other stuff on the menu.”

  “An egg’n’baconmacburger by any other name. I still can’t work out how your countrymen got the catering franchise on the European station.”

  Theroux shrugged. “It’s called competitive tendering,” he said. Then, as the coffee hit and he began to feel better, he added, “It’s the good old reliable, capitalist way. I thought you were all in favour of that.”

  “I bet the Japanese don’t have to put up with that stuff.”

  “Egg’n’whalemacburger, they tell me. You want some more coffee?”

  “It’s tea, and no, I don’t. Thank you.”

  Theroux looked at his friend solemnly, and then smiled. “They re-allocated your cabin too, huh?” he said, taking a bite of the breakfastburger bun and chewing stoically.

  “Is that a guess,” asked Butler, “or did you have something to do with it?”

  Theroux swallowed the piece of bun and shook his head vigorously. “Uh-uh. Ain’t no way I’d get involved in any of that. Cabin allocation? Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love. But for cabin allocation? You bet your ass.”

  Butler did not smile. “I’m not sure they can treat someone of my grade in this fashion,” he said, his languid Englishman pose slipping towards pompous petulance. “Proper cabin facilities are a specified part of my contract. There were no riders about giving them up for politicians and cops.”

  “I bet your union’s hopping mad,” Theroux said, as he opened the remains of his bun and peered at the contents. “How can this shit be nutritionally optimal if you can’t eat it?” he asked of no-one in particular.

  Butler ignored him and went on, “That bloody Lancine woman has gone too far this time.”

  “If it’s any consolation,” Theroux said, “I’m sharing with two of the cops.”

  “No. It isn’t any consolation.”

  Theroux gave up on his examination of the breakfastburger. “With my luck, they’ll snore. Or barf everywhere. God, I hate chasing vomit globules around the place. Still, it beats eating this crap, I guess.” He shoved the breakfastburger into the disposal bag. “Have you ever noticed how really disgusting sick smells as an aerosol?”

  He grinned at Butler who finally remembered that whining lacked style and said, “I suppose if one of them was a rampant sausage jockey –”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “If one of your bunkmates turned out to be a fudgepacker, it might be some sort of consolation.”

  “An introduction, is that what we’re talking here?” Theroux asked, with an open-faced innocence which was only just overdone.

  Butler smiled thinly. “Perhaps industrial action is the answer,” he mused. “If I withdraw my labour, the bastards couldn’t get here at all which would make stealing my cabin somewhat problematical for them. And Shakespeare doesn’t count, by the way. In case you were looking to turn a small profit from my discomfiture?”

  Theroux looked blank. Butler said, “Men have died, and worms have eaten them?”

  Theroux grinned. “Oh that. I was just showing off.”

  “Shall we go to work?”

  “You were impressed, I can tell.”

  Theroux and Butler detached themselves from the mess table. Around them, the other workers were dumping the remains of their breakfasts into the disposals and preparing to make a move to their various workstations. As they filed out, everyone used the cramped heel-and-toe step which kept at least one of their Velcro soled slippers in contact at all times with the walking strip on the floor. Nobody floated.

  It was a convention, in most of the orbit stations, that regular personnel never floated in the presence of others when it was possible to walk. This had started as a professionals’ game, a demonstration of skill, but quite soon it became a routine which was used to separate the clumsy groundsider from regular off-Earthers. Once this had happened, it was only a matter of time before the routine became a ritual, a question of good manners and proper etiquette. To be an off-Earther was not yet to be a member of a new social class, but the professional group which earned its living in space was working on it.

  “At least,” said Theroux, as he and Butler waited their turn to file out, “they gave us fair warning.”

  “Well woop-de-doo,” Butler murmured sourly.

  “Politicians have been known to creep up on targets like this. ’Specially creeps like Hendvorrsen.”

  Butler scowled. “Nobody creeps up on the climbing frog,” he said. “She’s one of Nature’s planners.” Then he suddenly smiled a small, self-contained smile. “But we still can’t rule out the possibility of it all going pear-shaped for her, can we? I mean, there’s nothing to beat a few groundsider tourists to fuck up the best planned operations.”

  On the completion of his course, Nathan was issued with a Certificate of Space Flight Competence. This CSFC did not mean he was competent to undertake a space flight, but it was required if he was to get legal insurance cover to leave Earth.

  The training had been intensive but brief, and at the end of it he was aware of how little he could remember of what he had been told. Suit pressure adjustments, warning telltales, emergency systems, elapsed time equalizations, RT procedures, self-medication requirements and dosages: the list was long, clearly essential and deeply boring.

  “How much of this stuff am I actually supposed to remember?” he had asked at one stage.

  “All of it!” the instructor had shouted, and then added, “If you didn’t need to know it, we wouldn’t be telling it to you now would we, sir?” with that ponderous irony which Nathan thought never to hear again once he’d graduated from the police college.

  Initially it struck him as odd that these high frontier trainers were so old-fashioned. He found himself wondering whether the criminals out there were just as traditional, and what that might mean for the ISPF and its methods.

  When he thought about it, the idea of crime in space began to intrigue him, and he would have found the exploration of such case histories as there were mildly interesting if it was not for one serious drawback.

  And he was sitting in a major element of that drawback right now.

  The midday shuttle to the European Space Station Charles De Gaulle was close to lift-off from the Kourou spaceport in French Guyana.

  The countdown was in its final stages:

  T minus sixty seconds and counting.

  In contrast to the tropical humidity outside, it was cool and fresh in the passenger cabin, but that was all there was to recommend it as far as Nathan was concerned. He would have been more than happy to forgo the benefits of air-conditioning for the rest of his life if he could have got back onto the ground right now.

  T minus fifty-five and counting.

  Of course, that would not be too much of a sacrifice, since, as far as he could see, the rest of his life was going to be a fairly short period of time.

  Time was what he lacked now.

  Time was eroding, second by second.

  His life was being counted out, second by second.

  And he could see it happening in front of him, and he was helpless to stop it or control it, or very soon to control himself…

  T minus forty-five and counting.<
br />
  It was customary for the final countdown to show on the liquid crystal display above each seat. Most passengers preferred to know how the count was progressing, but for those who did not, the individual information and communications consoles had control panels set in the arms of the seats. Each infocomcon had an array of displays available: entertainment, news, down-line computer links, interactive voice/vision channels.

  T minus thirty-five and counting.

  It was possible for a passenger to talk to friends, family, psychotherapist, priest: or the meter-a-medic, dial-a-divine public paycall equivalents.

  T minus twenty-five and counting.

  They could take care of business, or relax to soothing sounds and images.

  T minus twenty and counting.

  And yet, with all these options open to them, most people sat silently watching the countdown tick away.

  T minus fifteen and counting.

  How many of them were fighting panic – as Nathan himself was – and how many were actually interested, it was difficult to judge.

  T minus ten and counting.

  Nathan had the feeling

  nine

  that it would only take one person to lose it

  eight

  and begin to yell and

  seven

  the whole damn

  six

  passenger compartment

  five

  would become

  four

  a seething mass

  three

  of

  two

  scrambling

  one

  bodies

  ignition sequence

  he just hoped it wasn’t him

  lift-off

  who broke first.

  The thrust hit, slamming Nathan back into the shock-absorber padding of the acceleration seat. He closed his eyes and thought of England as his stomach sank and his weight rose. The noise of the engines was surprisingly low but the vibration – ‘You will experience some vibration in the initial phase of the flight, this is quite normal’ – pushed up towards a teeth-shattering intensity which nothing could possibly…

  “Is there anything I can get for you, Chief Superintendent?”

  He opened his eyes, and looked up at the flight attendant who was standing in the aisle, feet gracefully braced, one hand lightly holding the grasp rail on the side of the seat. The vibration had stopped. Everything had stopped. It was quite eerily quiet. The flight attendant smiled her professional smile. “Is there anything I can get you?” she repeated.

  Nathan tried to smile back, but had the feeling that what twisted his face was more grimace than grin. “Are we out of parachute range?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid so, sir. Would you care to visit the flight deck perhaps?”

  The thought of having to move from his seat sent a wave of nausea through Nathan, leaving his face damp and chilly. He swallowed his smile, breathed deeply, swallowed again and said, “Somebody breaking the law up there?” as he forced the smile back into place.

  “One of your colleagues expressed an interest in seeing it.”

  Irritation overcame his motion sickness. “My German colleague, I imagine.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” said the flight attendant.

  “And presumably Representative Hendvorrsen is on the flight deck already?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Must be getting pretty crowded up there.”

  “Your Spanish colleague… Superintendent Sanchez? …he is planning to join them.”

  “Got to be against the rules surely,” asked Nathan hopefully. “Flight safety regulations or something?”

  “It’s entirely at the captain’s discretion.”

  “Then thank the captain for me, but I think I’ll just stay here and die.”

  “If you change your mind, just let me know,” said the flight attendant, and moved on down the aisle. Nathan noticed that the heel-and-toe walk which kept her feet anchored to the walking strip gave her bottom an appealing extra wiggle. At least, it would have been appealing if he had been feeling a little better. He had read somewhere that seasoned space-workers never floated if they could walk. He wondered vaguely if that was why.

  “Eurostat, Eurostat, this is Euroshuttle five inbound on green two, twelve minutes flight time remaining, estimated docking twelve zero one GMT confirm please.”

  Butler glanced across at Theroux and raised his eyebrows slightly. “We’re very formal today. Who’s flying, do you know? It’s not that piss-artist Johnson is it?”

  Theroux shrugged. “Didn’t sound like him.”

  “Do you copy, Eurostat?” persisted the shuttle pilot.

  “No, that’s not Johnson,” said Theroux.

  “You can do the honours,” Butler said.

  “Me?”

  “They’re your coppers.”

  “You sure this doesn’t make me a strike-breaker?”

  Theroux switched on his throat mic. “Euroshuttle five Euroshuttle five this is Eurostat, confirm green two, ETD twelve zero one GMT. Very formal today guys, and almost on time too. Who’ve you got running the railway now, Mussolini? Hey, you haven’t put in for another salary review, have you?”

  “Eurostat, Eurostat, this is Euroshuttle Five, listening out.”

  Theroux flicked off the mic and frowned. “Was it something I said?” he asked looking at Butler who suddenly said, “When is Hendvorrsen supposed to be due?”

  Before Theroux could answer, the shuttle pilot came on again. “Eurostat, this is Euroshuttle five.”

  “Copy Euroshuttle five,” Theroux said.

  “Sorry about that. Representative Lars Hendvorrsen and a couple of brown-noses were on the flight deck.”

  “Shit!” said Theroux over the open mic.

  “That was pretty much my reaction.” The pilot’s voice was amused. “We didn’t get any notice either.”

  “I knew it,” muttered Butler in the background. “That sneaky bastard!”

  “He isn’t due for another two days,” Theroux said.

  “How does ten minutes grab you?” asked the pilot.

  Butler cut across the transmission. “It doesn’t do a lot for us,” he said gleefully, “but it’s going to be a joyful surprise for our esteemed station manager.”

  Theroux closed his mic. “You gonna let her know, or am I?”

  Butler was smiling broadly. “Why don’t we wait ten minutes or so, and let her find out for herself?”

  While Nathan waited for the shuttle to complete its approach manoeuvres, he experimented with weightlessness by floating a coin in front of him and poking it around. He immediately formulated another theory about why experienced people avoided floating: looking at it did not help your feelings of queasiness at all. He also revised his attitude to crime in space. It couldn’t happen. No-one could function well enough in this miserable environment to care about wealth or power or love in its many and destructive forms. You needed motives for crimes. Out here, who could possibly sustain a motive? ‘Where there’s living, there’s policemen’ was what he had always maintained. Well, clearly, this was the exception that proved the rule. Except that it wouldn’t be. And he knew it wouldn’t be. What he didn’t know was that crimes set in motion long before he left Earth were developing even now, and that the first was going to happen very soon and very close.

  Chapter 7

  “Theoretically, anyone who ’as been issued with a CSFC is competent to undertake a spacewalk. But theory and practice are not the same thing.” Françoise Lancine glared across her desk at Lars Hendvorrsen. She could not decide what mistake it was that he was trying to force her to make. He had arrived two days early without any warning an
d now he was insisting that while he was here he wanted to inspect the progress of the new construction.

  “I have taken all the necessary courses in Extra Vehicular Activity,” he insisted. “My instructors congratulated me on my instinctive understanding of the procedures.”

  “I’m sure they did,” Lancine said, not quite managing to keep the scorn out of her voice. “For obvious reasons, they very seldom tell VIPs they are a menace to themselves and everyone around them.”

  Hendvorrsen looked bored. “You may trust my judgement on this,” he said. “I know when I am being told the truth.”

  “Then you will know that I am saying the truth when I tell you that EVAs are not for amateurs.”