“Difficult things, probabilities,” Devis said, mildly patronizing now. “Best left to computers, all that sort of thing.”
Best left to computers, Jesus Christ. “It could have been the breakthrough you’ll never come up with,” Nathan said, furiously.
“Oh yes!” Devis mocked. “With one mighty bound. Am I right? A crank call, you rush off and get seven shades of shit kicked out of you, and abraca-fucking-dabra the case is solved. That’s real talent, Commander, I’m definitely impressed. I can certainly see why you got to be such a high-flyer.”
Nathan stared at him and saw the disappointed man, overweight for a career copper, overage for a rank he was never likely to better, and faced with a murder he didn’t have the equipment to solve. A high-flyer? That wasn’t bad under the circumstances. “Do you want a drink?” he asked, indicating the Scotch.
“Thank you,” Devis said, looking round for a glass.
Nathan got up and went, a little unsteadily, to fetch one. When he sat back down and slid it across the table with the bottle he said, “He claimed to have done it.”
Devis pulled up a seat. “Ask yourself: is it likely?” he said, and poured himself a very generous measure.
Nathan felt a sudden kinship with this unsubtle man. It seemed like a compliment, in some obscure way, that Devis didn’t feel he had to be polite. Never trust a man who doesn’t drink – was that W.C. Fields? Well, whoever it was, it was his father who had added, especially if it’s your liquor he doesn’t drink. Nathan topped up both their glasses, spilling Scotch on the table. I’m missing something, he thought – apart from the glass, something basic to all this has got past me. “I’m missing something. Apart from the glass,” he said.
“You lost a friend,” Devis said, draining his glass and pushing it back towards the bottle. “That’s good stuff. Single malts are on the pricey side for me.”
Nathan filled the glass again. “No point in cheap vices,” he said. “If you’re going to hell in a handcart, it should at least be well-sprung.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Devis, creasing his face into what passed for a smile.
“D’you ever get the feeling you’re being pushed, Devis?” Nathan asked.
“All the time. Why?”
Nathan sighed and thought, No, he wouldn’t know what I was talking about. I don’t know what I’m talking about. He said, “Are you going to need me for anything more?”
Devis shook his head. “Not really.”
“I think I’ll go back to my high flying, then,” Nathan said.
Devis took the bottle and filled up both their glasses. “That’s what I’d do in your place.”
“Leave the ground work to you?”
Devis raised his glass in a small salute. “You’re not as stupid as you look, Commander,” he said.
Nathan raised his glass in acknowledgement, and said with a tired smile that hurt his swollen mouth, “I wish I could say the same for you, Detective Chief Inspector.”
For the first time, Devis smiled a genuine smile. It gave his face an unlikely, cherubic look.
It proved to be impossible to persuade the Dædalus’s onboard computer to permit an explosive release of atmospheric pressure. The safety systems would not even allow a controlled cracking of the airlock’s outer seal while the inner hatch was open. But the cargo pods once again provided the solution. A whole case of seismic cartridges intended for the next phase of the Martian Geological Survey were primed and placed, half of them against the outer hatch and half against the inner. The microwave triggers were parallel-linked, so that the jury-rigged program would set them all off at the same instant. It was crude, but analysis suggested that the computer would interfere with any more precisely engineered firing sequence as it tried to compensate for a first disastrous failure.
Mike and Lara had said their goodbyes to Moonbase.
“And David, you might suggest to Professor Paton that when he works on the Mark 2 units, he gives some thought to a double capsule. These things look lonely.”
“If your happy band of boffins have miscalculated this lot we’re going to be severely miffed, you understand. We may never speak to any of you again.”
“I can’t think of a dream that’ll last seven years without getting boring. Unless it’s a nightmare…”
“We’ll see you when we see you. On my mark, time to firing will be twelve hours twenty-five minutes and counting… Mark.”
Then, leaving the communications link open, they had finally gone from vision.
After that there was no way to tell whether the cryogenic capsules worked. The explosion worked though. At the completion of the countdown the detonation thudded through the ship, followed briefly by the strident hootings of the Airlock Failure and the Major Life-support Integrity Failure warnings. When the atmosphere had fully vented, the klaxons ceased to be audible. The simulation had estimated this interval at two minutes nine-point-three seconds.
“We timed it at two minutes ten-point-four. After that, the automatics started broadcasting the standard mayday. And that was all she wrote.” Theroux switched off the recording and waited.
Nathan was wandering round his new headquarters wondering if the ISPF Establishment budget would run to full eavesdrop screening. “The rescue beacon’s on self-contained power?” he asked to cover the fact that he hadn’t really been listening.
“Twenty year’s worth. Capsules’ll run for twenty-five. If they run. And long range tracking claim seventy percent that they’ve got the ship picked out and on the predicted course. If that’s true, then there’s only one thing we know nothing about. Whether Mike and Lara are just cargo-jocksicles–”
“Or the first successfully preserved adult human beings, yes,” said Nathan, who for the moment had lost his sense of humour about death. “It’s a pity that. Seven years is a long time to wait to decide on what the charge should be.”
Theroux said, “That’s how come I almost missed it. I was looking for the wrong crime.”
Nathan shook his head. “Right crime, wrong motive,” he said and thought, Come on you got it right, don’t spoil things by misreading what you did. And then it struck him: that’s what he’d been doing himself. “Fuck,” he said softly.
“What?” asked Theroux. “What is it? Did I miss something anyway?”
“I did,” Nathan said. “I missed it.” Motive, he thought. That had to be it. Whatever’s left, however improbable… “They’ve deliberately been keeping me off-balance. That has to have something to do with the motive.”
“It does?”
“It has to. It’s all that’s left. It’s got to be the key to Lee’s death.”
Theroux frowned. “You lost me,” he said.
Nathan stared into the middle distance. “Motives are never simple,” he said vaguely, unaware of Theroux’s growing concern at his ramblings, “and sometimes there isn’t a motive for the act, because sometimes the act is the motive. What look like cause and effect are the same thing. Cause. We’re still waiting for the effect.”
“You want to float that by me again?” Theroux asked, loudly enough to get Nathan’s attention back.
“Case in point,” Nathan said – but then he was interrupted by the door sliding open. Got to get some way of controlling access to this place, he thought, as Roland Paton hopped elegantly across the threshold. “Co-ordinator,” he said, rising to his feet. “I’ve been hearing all about your giant leap for spacemankind. Congratulations.”
Paton inclined his head slightly. “Thank you indeed, Commander. But I did very little.”
“You’re too modest. David tells me it was all your idea.”
“Oh, mais non. David thought of the mode of propulsion. Is that not correct, David?”
“With a little prompting from you, sir,” Theroux s
aid and smiled.
“When did the possibility first occur to you?” Nathan asked, his interest polite, casual.
Paton grimaced slightly, and shrugged a small but eloquent, Gallic shrug. “At the eleventh hour, as you would say.”
Still polite, Nathan said, “No, I don’t think that’s what I would say. Please sit down.” He indicated a workstation seat which had been pulled out from behind the unit.
Paton declined, with a slight shake of the head. “I think better on my feet.”
“Sit down, M’sieur Paton,” Nathan said, his voice suddenly harder.
Paton hesitated, then sat down. “I was told there was something you wished me to see.” Theroux perched on the end of the workstation. Nathan remained standing where he was. Paton found he could no longer take in both of them with the same look, but would have to turn his head from one to the other if he wanted the conversation to be three sided. “As Moonbase Co-ordinator,” he went on, “I have no time to waste on –”
Nathan cut across him. “As a biochemist, I assume you must be aware of the Brussels Accords – on animal and human experimentation?”
“Of course. Why do you ask?”
“You’ll be familiar with the regulations arising,” Theroux said, offering him a flimsy volume of official hard copy.
Paton said, “Yes,” but he did not take the book or even acknowledge it was there.
Theroux dropped it onto the workstation. “Under which regulations, you were refused a license for the human experiments that you are currently –”
“It is not an experiment!” Paton interrupted.
“The crew of the Dædalus will be glad to hear that,” Nathan said.
Paton turned to him. “It was an emergency. It was their only chance.”
“So it was. I repeat: when did the possibility first occur to you?”
“What possibility?”
“That ship didn’t go rogue,” Theroux said. “The main engine burn happened exactly as it was supposed to happen. Someone had reprogrammed the navigation computer.”
“This is not a possibility,” Paton remarked contemptuously. “This is an absurd fantasy.”
“That someone, whoever it was,” said Nathan, “had enough authority for unquestioned and unremarked access to the ship, to cargo assembly areas, to the computer that was putting together the manifest…”
“C’est ridicule, ça!”
“As ridiculous as sending experimental cryogenic equipment to the Mars colony?” Nathan asked.
Theroux punched up the Dædalus’s cargo listing on the workstation screen and said, “Not exactly essential stores.”
“It was my intention to go to Mars when my tour here is over,” Paton said.
Theroux set the list scrolling. “Could be, you should have told them,” he said. “You see, sir, the stuff’s on the ship’s manifest okay but it’s not on the Mars colony’s print out.”
“They don’t seem to be expecting you, or your equipment,” Nathan said.
Another shrug from Paton, this time disdainfully dismissive. “A computer failure.”
“A flaw in the plan, Professor,” said Theroux. “Our theory is that you didn’t update their end, because you didn’t want to risk drawing attention to what you were doing.”
Nathan said, “Otherwise, it wasn’t a bad try. You targeted a notoriously careless crew. There wasn’t much chance of them noticing anything anomalous about the cargo.”
Theroux said, “And when the shit hit the life-support, it didn’t matter.”
Nathan said, “Until it did matter.”
Theroux said, “Then everyone was – ‘just glad the things happened to be there at all’ – isn’t that the way your friend Fox put it?”
Nathan said, “And to encourage a policeman to come up with the possibility of a rescue. That was inspired.”
Theroux said, “That was pushing it. That you’re going to pay for Paton.”
Paton did not look at either man, but stared steadfastly at a midpoint somewhere between the two of them. “Even if what you said was true, and it is not, no-one has been hurt.”
Theroux’s expression was incredulous. “No-one has been hurt?” he said softly, his voice a fierce whisper.
For a shuddering moment, Nathan was back in the park, back in the apartment, back at the time when Lee stopped being. He cleared his throat and said harshly, “If they turn out to be dead, you will be charged with murder.”
“They are not dead,” Paton stated flatly. “And what you do not understand is that this work is of major importance. It is a breakthrough. Those people will be famous.”
“If they turn out to be alive,” said Nathan, “I imagine they will bring civil suit against you. Whatever they decide to do, I shall certainly bring the appropriate criminal charges.”
Paton got to his feet. “I did not expect men of your profession to appreciate the significance of what is happening.”
Nathan smiled. “I’m sorry we disappointed you.”
Paton began to lose his temper. “You can prove none of this,” he said, his voice rising. “None of it!”
“Oh, we’ll prove it,” said Nathan.
“I warn you, Commander Spring, I am a man of influence. If you pursue this, or if you speak of your ridiculous theories to anyone, your career will be over. Tu comprends?”
“Perfectly.”
“Be sure that you do.”
Nathan watched Paton hop haughtily towards the door, and as he reached it, said, “In the meantime, it would save a lot of unpleasantness if you’d keep us informed of any journeys you might plan. In the next six or seven years.”
Paton left without comment and without looking back. When the door had shut behind him, Theroux snorted. “Yeah, right. Keep tabs on him for seven years? What did you have in mind: tag his butt with a tracer chip?”
“He’s a man of influence, David. Like the prize-fighters used to say, he can run but he can’t hide.”
“Well, perhaps hiding is not quite accurate.” Vanhalsen looked mildly embarrassed. It was during his shift as duty controller that whoever was now holed up in the orbit station’s Star Cop office had got onto the Charles De Gaulle. “But they won’t identify themselves, and they won’t come out.”
“You’ve no idea what they want?” Nathan asked.
“I don’t even know how they got in there.”
“Okay, we’ll leave as soon as we can get launch clearance. Nobody goes near them in the meantime, all right?”
“Don’t worry, Commander,” Vanhalsen said. “You’re the professionals. Everyone here is more than happy to leave dealing with an armed intruder entirely in your hands.”
During the flight from Moonbase, they discussed ways of dealing with what Vanhalsen had referred to as ‘a situation’, but they both knew that neither of them had much idea of what to do. Tactics for handling an armed siege in the weightlessness of a space station were not included in any of the training courses that Nathan’s had been obliged to attend. Theroux’s experiences with weapons had been mercifully limited and had convinced him of only one thing: they were fucking dangerous. It had become an article of faith with him that anyone who seriously believed ‘guns don’t kill people, only people kill people’ was a sad asshole with a tenuous hold on reality.
“I was never much good with these things,” Nathan remarked as he checked the clip in the small automatic again. It was the pistol that they had taken from Simon Butler, and as it turned out, it was the only gun to which the ISPF presently had access. “It still doesn’t seem like a sensible weapon. Our options could be a bit limited, though.”
Theroux nodded and said, “And I got the strong feeling that swearing in a batch of deputies is not among them.” He mimicked Vanhalsen’s well-spoken, reserved,
and apologetically ironic tones, “Everyone here is more than happy to leave dealing with an armed intruder entirely in your hands.”
“You don’t buy a dog and bark yourself, as Brian Lincoln used to say.”
“Simon Butler used to say that since the Dutch spent their formative years below sea-level, it was hardly surprising they were wet.”
Vanhalsen was waiting for them at the main entry lock. “They are still in there,” he said.
“Have they said what they want?”
“There’s been no further contact.”
Nathan checked the automatic’s clip once more. He suddenly felt self-conscious about it. It was a silly little gun, but a bigger gun would be even sillier. “Okay. I’ll want that area cleared of personnel. If anything goes wrong, you may have to seal off the damage.” Probably better not to think too closely about what that means, he thought.
“It was cleared as soon as you were confirmed in transit,” Vanhalsen said.
Theroux said, “Five’ll get you ten there’s at least two pressure hatches between there and the nearest civilian.” He was surprised that a word which separated him and them came so easily now.
“I should like to go with you,” Vanhalsen said.
“I don’t think so,” said Nathan, glancing at Theroux for a reaction to the offer.
“I can distract them, maybe, while you make the arrest,” the Dutchman persisted.
“We use you as a shield, is that it, Willem?” asked Theroux.
“That’s not quite what I had in mind.”
“You sure? It works for me,” Theroux said, and grinned at him.
Vanhalsen smiled unhappily. “I am not pretending to be a hero, David,” he said. “I feel responsible, that’s all. It seems unjust that I should not share the risk arising from my mistake.”
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