Star Cops

by Chris Boucher

  “I’ll be right here,” Nathan said, and when they had gone immediately began an ostentatiously awe-struck examination of the pool table. He rolled the balls, he felt the cushions, he carefully looked into all the pockets. It was a slightly exaggerated impersonation of the superstitious primitive confronted by a marvel of science. No-one in the room who noticed the performance was at all surprised when he crouched down to peer about underneath the table. No-one saw him place Box on the underside and murmur, “Box, I want you to tell me very quietly what we have here, and how much of an edge you can give me.”

  “I don’t know what else I can tell you, Ms. Goodman,” Moriarty said smiling patiently. Behind him, positioned so that any call to the office always had it in the field of vision, the image of the ‘see, hear, recall no evil’ president after whom the station had been named was smiling too, albeit vacantly. Even Pete Lennox had a weary smile on his face.

  Odile was not smiling. After a brief signal delay, she snapped, “You can tell me where my brother is, that’s what else you can tell me.”

  Moriarty looked at Lennox and gave a small shrug.

  “And never mind signalling your shit-heeled henchman,” Odile raged from the screen, though the inescapable pause took a little of the bite out of it.

  “My what?” Moriarty chuckled. “Ma’am we never heard of your brother. My… uh… my henchman has been through the records right back to when this station was first commissioned.”

  “What does that prove?” Odile demanded.

  “It proves he’s never been on the administration staff; he’s never leased a work module; there’s never been a Harvey Goodman here,” Lennox said. “As I tried to tell you.”

  “You’ll be trying to tell me next there’s never been a Harvey Goodman.”

  “Let us take a hypothetical example,” Jiang Li Ho said. “Let us say there has been a kidnapping.”

  Devis who, coming for more coffee, had stumbled into the official visit and was now stuck with it, said, “You mean taking someone against their will and holding them for ransom.”

  “Or for politics perhaps,” said Ho.

  “It’s not a very common crime out here for any reason,” Theroux said.

  Ho beamed. “That is why I chose it.”

  “I’m not totally sure,” Theroux floundered. “I think we’d need to discover the purpose behind the crime.”

  “Not necessarily,” Devis said, taking a malicious pleasure in making things difficult for Theroux, “a crime is a crime.” Maybe he’d think twice next time before he invited bloody politicians to the office.

  Ho seemed oblivious to Theroux’s difficulty. “But the purpose would be obvious, don’t you think?”

  Theroux hated this. What was he supposed to say? What was he supposed to know? He wasn’t trained in police procedure, whatever that was. You used your brain and you did what you had to do. He tried to sound more positive. “Only if the disappearance was accompanied by a demand. Without that, you might not be looking at a crime at all.”

  Ho would not be put off. “A kidnapping with a demand for money then. What are the first steps that you would take?”

  On the main communications screen, a message icon began to flash. “Saved by the bell,” Kenzy murmured as the soft electronic chime sounded a reminder.

  “Perhaps this will not be a hypothetical crime,” Ho suggested, moving quickly to stand behind Kenzy and watch her key the screen.

  “Star cops Headquarters,” she said. “How can I help you?”

  In the short delay between speech and response, Kenzy studied the face of the young black woman on the screen. While she waited, her face was thoughtful but then, when she spoke, her expression switched suddenly to anger. “My name is Odile Goodman,” she said. “I’m calling from Earth and I want to report the disappearance of my brother.”

  “Goddam woman keeps pestering us,” Moriarty said, “I don’t think she’s playing with a full deck.” He played a confident shot to break the balls which Nathan had set up. Nothing went down.

  “If it’s a problem,” Nathan said, “maybe we could deal with it for you.”

  “Hell, no, she’s an American.”

  Nathan smiled. “Thought I’d make the offer anyway.”

  “Nice try, Commander. It’s your shot.”

  Nathan made a tentative effort and watched a ball roll into a pocket.

  “Were you practising while I was gone?” Moriarty asked, grinning.

  “My dad used to say,” Nathan said, “that computers are solutions without problems.”

  “Weightlessness is a problem.”

  Nathan nodded. “Especially for pool players.”

  “It does have other applications,” said Moriarty, a touch defensively.

  “Pinball?”

  “It’s popular with our people. Don’t underestimate the importance of that.”

  “I don’t. Especially as I’m not. Popular with your people I mean.” Nathan surveyed the table. “What happens next?” he asked.

  Kenzy tried again. “You must understand, we have very limited powers to deal with runaways if they’re out here on legal work contracts. It would depend on his age, of course. How old is Harvey?”

  Now Odile looked genuinely confused. “How old is he?”

  “He’s disappeared from home and you reckon he’s run away to space, yes? You have checked with the Earthside authorities, have you? Only most kids change their minds and never make it out here at all.”

  “What is it with you people? Do you patronize all groundsiders, or just the women?” Odile snapped – and it struck Kenzy that this time the anger was different somehow.

  “I’m sorry, madam,” Kenzy said. “I seem to have misunderstood.”

  “My brother is forty-seven years old. He’s a scientist and he’s disappeared from the space station where he was working.”

  “What do they say about it?” Kenzy asked.

  Ho nodded excitedly at Theroux and Devis. “This is fascinating, is it not?” he whispered. “Perhaps I shall see at first hand your method of working.”

  On the screen, Odile said, “The guys I talked to said he was never there. They seemed to think I was some kind of flake.”

  “What station was this?” Kenzy asked.

  “Lucky you were here, Dr. Ho,” Devis whispered, with a small narrow eyed smile.

  “Indeed, yes,” Ho agreed softly.

  “It was the Ronald Reagan.”

  “That’s the main American station,” Kenzy said, glancing back towards Ho with a slight frown.

  “With a hypothetical all ready for discussion, too,” Devis went on.

  Odile said, “We’re Americans, where else would he have been working?” Then she paused, and asked suspiciously, “Is someone monitoring this? Someone there with you?”

  “Just give me all the details,” Kenzy said. “I’ll get it looked into for you.”

  “You did say a disappearance?” murmured Devis.

  “I believe I said a kidnapping,” smiled Ho.

  Devis looked thoughtful. “So you did.” He was no longer bothering to smile.

  “Once you get the hang of it, it’s not really a very complicated game, is it?” said Nathan, as he sank another shot. “Snooker for the tactically challenged.”

  Moriarty was getting irritated again. “Hubble was an American national working on an American station.”

  “Hubble was a Star Cop working for me,” Nathan said.

  “You people had no right to fire his ass without consultation.”

  “We consulted him. And I didn’t fire him, he resigned.”

  Moriarty snorted. “So did Richard Nixon.”

  “Not a bad parallel actually.” Nathan pointed at a ball with his cue. “They we
re both crooks. Four in the corner?”

  “They might have been sons-of-bitches, but they were our sons-of-bitches.”

  Nathan cued the four ball, and it rolled accurately into the pocket. “My country right or wrong?”

  “There are worse philosophies,” said Moriarty.

  “And most of them start with that,” Nathan said. “Six ball, centre.”

  “You and Theroux should get on real well,” Moriarty commented, just as Nathan was about to make the shot.

  Nathan straightened up. “I’m sorry?”

  “Your second-in-command is a little short on patriotism.”

  “I knew there was something I liked about him.”

  “He was a student radical, did you know that?”

  Nathan bent down to the shot. “Wasn’t everybody?”

  “No.”

  “If you’re not radical as a kid, where is there to go in your reactionary old age?”

  “Well, not onto our space program, that’s for fucking sure,” Moriarty said.

  Nathan struck the nominated ball harder that he had intended, but it hurtled unerringly into the pocket, scattering the remaining balls into clear shooting positions. “Your loss, maybe,” he said, trying to look modestly pleased.

  Moriarty was trying to look unconcerned. “This table’s really running for you, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Theroux’s developing into a good copper,” Nathan said.

  Moriarty said, “I preferred Hubble.”

  “Hubble wasn’t even a good crook. Seven ball, top left. The stupid bastard got caught.” Nathan lined up the shot carefully. “If you’re going to pay someone off you should always be sure they’re bright enough to make it worthwhile.” He struck the ball and again made the pot.

  “Someone paid him off?” Moriarty asked. “Why would they do that?”

  “To keep him quiet, I imagine.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Eight ball, centre,” Nathan said and potted the final ball.

  Moriarty stared at the table. “I do believe you’re the first person to beat me on this,” he said.

  For a moment, it seemed as though he might start to look for reasons for this setback. Nathan wasn’t sure how he would react to finding Box attached to the underside of the table monitoring and modifying the control system responses. “Best of three, Colonel?” he suggested quickly.

  Lauter came awake slowly. She knew she had snorted and that was what had woken her. She had suspected for a while that she snored these days, and she found it rather touching that Marty had said nothing about it. She yawned. “How are we doing, my lovely?” she asked.

  He switched off the book he was reading and said, “The trouble with long hauls without the fuel for a decent burn is that they turn into very long hauls indeed.”

  Lauter stretched and yawned again. “I just had a terrific dream about that module. We made enough off it to buy a nice little business back on Earth. A nice little agribusiness.”

  “We know sod-all about farming,” Marty said as the six hour warning chimed and he started to run the routine function checks.

  “We weren’t born knowing the scrap salvage business,” Lauter said.

  “No, we spent years learning it.”

  “A little house. Roses round the door. Chickens scratching in the yard.”

  “Years of grafting and we still can’t make a straight living.”

  “Oh stop moaning. We make a living.”

  Marty confirmed a full set of greens to the flight computer and accepted its acknowledgement. “You call this living? And anyway I said a straight living.”

  “You really are a guilt-ridden little soul, aren’t you?” Lauter said.

  Marty said, “It’s no fun winning if you have to cheat.”

  “Winning’s not supposed to be fun, sweetie,” she said. “If it was fun, everybody would be at it. No it’s just something you have to do. And it is something we are about to do in a big way.”

  “Yeah, right; chickens round the door, roses scratching in the yard.”

  Lauter switched on the cargo bay remote monitor camera. “I’ve got a feeling,” she said gazing at the module which filled the screen, “a definite feeling.”

  Marty looked at it too. “So what was in it?” he asked. “In the dream? What was in it?”

  “I never got to see,” she said. “But it was the end of all our troubles, I know that.”

  They both stared at the anonymous container they had gambled so much to find and reclaim. There was nothing to show where it came from, nothing to indicate what might be in it. They had deciphered some partially obliterated lettering on the welded-up hatch but Marty hadn’t been able to relate it to anything on the most recent Guild database – the most recent they could afford anyway – so it was no help. Of course, Lauter, determined to be optimistic, insisted that thirteen was a very lucky number, but Marty had always resisted such superstitious nonsense. If the cylinder, which he had come to think of as monstrous rather than huge, had been stencilled it must mean something but if that something wasn’t important enough to be registered anywhere… And whatever else it meant, of one thing he was sure: the marking OMZ 13 had nothing to do with luck.

  Though Nathan still disliked weightless showers – ‘boil-in-the-bag’ in current slang – he used them almost routinely now. Like weightless lavatories they were uncomfortable, inconvenient and potentially messy, but with practice you could cope. Experience did not help with some problems, however.

  “Morning, Commander,” Moriarty said, around a mouthful of breakfastburger. “You look like shit.”

  Nathan slotted into the seat opposite him and dialled up coffee and a blueberry muffin on the dispenser. “I’ll never get used to sleeping weightless, I’m afraid.”

  “We got a couple of guys working on that.”

  “Government research?”

  “Christ, no. They’re both from pharmaceutical houses. They’re probably duplicating each other’s research but, hell, they’ve got the funding.” He shrugged.

  “Do you do any government work?” Nathan asked, taking a bite out of the soft sweet sponge cake.

  “There’s some research funding,” Moriarty said, and then before Nathan could pursue the question, asked, “Say, what’s the story on this Chinese of yours?”

  “Chinese of mine?”

  “Jangley Ho.”

  “The Moonbase Co-ordinator?” He shook his head. “I’ve never even met the man.”

  Moriarty looked sceptical. He sucked on his drink pack. It was tea, Nathan noticed. The label proclaimed it to be British Breakfast Blend, and Nathan wondered if this was for his benefit. “You got the last guy fired,” Moriarty said.

  “Paton was a murderer. Possible murderer,” Nathan said.

  “So it was you got the Chinese his job.”

  “It was their turn.”

  Moriarty said, “You got it for them early. They’re in place two years early.”

  “Does that matter?”

  “Damn right it matters. We weren’t ready.”

  “What were you planning, Colonel?” Nathan smiled. “A ticker-tape parade perhaps?”

  Moriarty didn’t smile. “They were ready though. They had a guy trained and waiting back on Earth.”

  “Dr. Ho is a Nobel Laureate. His field is space medicine. It’s largely due to his work that we can come and go between Earth and space the way we do without major bone damage. You think the man’s a spy?”

  “Crude word,” said Moriarty. “They’re cleverer than that.”

  “You think I’m a spy?” asked Nathan.

  “I think you’ve been used.”

  “In other words, I’m stupider than that,” Nathan said. Then he added witho
ut pause or change of tone, “So what exactly is this government research that you do?”

  Moriarty’s reaction to a momentary confusion was aggression. “Say what?” he demanded.

  Nathan smiled again. “Any word from the State Department?” he asked mildly.

  “They turned you down flat.”

  Nathan nodded. “I can’t even replace Hubble. Any reason?”

  “They are, quote, ‘not in favour of international policing’, unquote.” Moriarty was smiling now.

  “They changed their minds,” Nathan said, “when they looked up ‘international’ and discovered that it didn’t just mean ‘Americans abroad’.”

  Moriarty detached himself from his seat. “You ready for the tour?” he asked.

  Dumping the remains of the muffin in the disposal, Nathan drained his coffee and said, “You need us, Colonel.”

  “We can take care of our own crime.”

  Nathan released himself from the seat and followed Moriarty across the mess. No-one was bothering with the walking Velcro here, clearly the floating taboo only applied to Mess Room One, so Nathan carefully heel-and-toed his way to the exit hatch and high-hopped through it.

  Moriarty was waiting in the corridor link. “Do you always do the opposite to everyone else?” he asked.

  Nathan took his feet off the floor and glided along beside him. “Suppose I prove that you can’t take care of your own crime?”

  “You give me real good odds, and I still wouldn’t bet money on it.”

  “You’re a gambling man,” Nathan said.

  “Goes with the territory. You don’t know that, you got a lot to learn about the people who come out here.”

  “Ever play cards with Hubble?”

  “Couldn’t say offhand. I’ve played poker with a lot of guys.”

  “You’d remember playing Hubble. He has to be the best there is.”