Star Cops

by Chris Boucher

  Devis’s face appeared briefly on the console screen. “Star Cops, how can I help you?” was all he said before the connection was sharply broken.

  Moriarty continued fiddling with Box in the hope that he could get it to do more than identify itself as the property of Nathan Spring. Not that there was much doubt about that – it sounded exactly like the guy. Finally he gave up, and said, “It’s getting away from us, Pete.”

  Lennox frowned wearily from the screen. “Without the woman, they can’t prove a thing.”

  “We underestimated this guy. I should have realized when he pretended he couldn’t play pool. Sonofabitch is a hustler.”

  “There’s no evidence. I’ve been real careful.”

  “There’s always something left to find,” Moriarty said, pocketing Box. “This guy Spring knows I paid off Hubble. I think he knows it all.”

  “He’s bluffing, M-M,” said Lennox. “What’s his second-in-command doing here?”

  “Following you, dummy.”

  “Yeah, right. It sure looked like he was expecting me.”

  “I don’t imagine he was expecting you to bounce a bottle on his head. Is he going to be okay?”

  “I didn’t hit him that hard.”

  “What are you going say when he comes to?”

  “I thought he was an intruder.”

  “That’s real convincing.”

  “He had no business in the house.”

  “And you do?”

  “Okay so what do you suggest?”

  Moriarty paused, as if giving the question thought. It was one of his conceits. In reality, they both knew that he had made up his mind already. “All bets are off, Pete,” he said. “Time to make a deal.”

  Nathan accepted Box with a small nod of thanks, but otherwise without comment or reaction. Moriarty, floating in the entrance hatch to the cabin, could not maintain a similar poker face when he saw Kenzy. She was working at the free-access personal computer terminal but he was clearly unimpressed by that. Leering he called to her, “Unit in your cabin non-functional, honey? Should’ve said. Could’ve used mine. I got the biggest on the station.” He smirked conspiratorially at Nathan and murmured, “You didn’t say she was a private game. Hell, I wouldn’t blow on another man’s dice.” Nathan remained expressionless. Moriarty’s smile faltered slightly. “I’ve been thinking about the replacement for Inspector Hubble,” he said.

  “You’ve decided it’s a good idea,” suggested Nathan.

  “Absolutely.”

  Nathan smiled to hide his surprise, and said, “Come inside, Colonel.”

  Moriarty glided past him and tried to get a look at the computer screen. Kenzy closed down the link to the Moonbase files she had been searching on the off-chance of a reference to Odile Goodman, and said, “Are you saying you’ll support our case, Colonel?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “For three officers,” Nathan said.

  “Two.”

  “Three.”

  Moriarty gave a small shrug. “Three.”

  Nathan offered his hand. “I knew you were a reasonable man.”

  Moriarty shook hands warmly. “So if I support you, I assume I can rely on you to support me?”

  Nathan said, “That’s why we’re here. I can’t think of a better summary of what it is we’re about, M-M. May I call you M-M?”

  “Okay, Nathan, we’re talking mutual support generally, and Goodman investigation in particular, am I right?”

  “What Goodman investigation?” Nathan asked casually.

  Moriarty nodded. “So we’re both reasonable men,” he said.

  “I’m not.” Kenzy was looking directly at Moriarty. “The Goodman investigation is mine,” she said. “And I’m not a reasonable man.”

  “Nathan, do we have a deal or not?” asked Moriarty, suddenly uncertain.

  “A deal as in…” Nathan prompted.

  “As in you stay the hell away from the Harvey Goodman thing, or your outfit stays the hell away from this station.”

  “I think we can do better than that, sir,” Kenzy said politely and took the micro-recorder from the breast pocket of her coverall. Carefully she disconnected the optic thread which linked it to the lens in the name tag above the pocket.

  “As in you stay the hell away from the Harvey Goodman thing, or your outfit stays the hell away from this station,” the laser-clear image of Moriarty said on playback through the free-access terminal.

  “That is unauthorized surveillance,” Moriarty blustered. “Illegal recording and a major violation of my civil rights.”

  Kenzy said to Nathan, “I try to learn from my mistakes. Even the really stupid ones.”

  “You fucking people are in deep shit,” shouted Moriarty, as he snatched the bugging kit from Kenzy. “And this is state-of-the-ark. I cannot believe you got this piece of crap onto my station. I want to know how you got it past the security scan.”

  Nathan smiled thinly, “Red thirty-four is a construction cargo bay,” he said. “It’s so far out, there is no security scan.”

  “You have to be careful when you’re scoring cheap points, sir,” Kenzy said. “You can get to like them so much they can cost you the game.”

  “You can’t authenticate it,” Moriarty offered. “An obvious fake? Christ, you couldn’t buy a court that’d accept it.”

  “I’m prepared to give it a go,” Kenzy said, pokerfaced. “If that’s what you want, sir?” Moriarty’s momentary hesitation betrayed him and she pressed home her advantage. “So, do you want to volunteer your version of what happened to Harvey Goodman? Or would you prefer something more formal, sir?”

  Harvey Goodman loaded the next sample into the small electron microscope and adjusted the screen brightness. He yawned. “Sample two seventy-four,” he said.

  The picture quality was reasonable but the high angle made it difficult to see the detail of what he was doing and it was impossible to see what the microscope was showing.

  “Why didn’t you have the computer do a feature and enhance?” Kenzy asked.

  Moriarty said, “Oh, sure. We were looking to give as many people as possible a chance to get in on this.”

  Goodman was peering at the microscope screen. After a moment he began to dictate, “And after twenty-four hours exposure to the full vacuum what we’ve got are endospores…”

  Nathan said, “But you kept the accident monitor pictures?”

  “Insurance,” said Moriarty. “Some gambles you don’t take.”

  “…no wait, strike that…those aren’t endospores those are clusters…”

  “You understand what he’s doing?” Moriarty asked.

  Kenzy said flatly, “A space bug. He’s engineering a space bug.”

  Nathan wondered if she was as certain as she sounded and whether he himself had already spotted it, or had he realized only now that she said it? “A virus that would survive the vacuum,” he suggested.

  Moriarty shook his head. “A bacterium,” he said. “A killer that thrives in the vacuum.”

  “…mycoplasmas?… strain two seventy-four?… can’t be…” Goodman was saying as he adjusted the microscope again.

  “The process,” Moriarty went on, “is called transduction. He used a specially engineered bacteriophage…”

  “No they are bacteria…”

  “…that’s a virus that invades bacteria, to transfer genetic material from one strain of bacterium to another.”

  “The strain has continued fission in the vacuum but the daughter cells are greatly reduced in size. My God you were tough little suckers, weren’t you..?”

  “You seem to know a lot about it,” Nathan said.

  “Only because he kept notes in his cabin,” Moriarty said.r />
  “Only convenient,” said Kenzy.

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Moriarty said and nodded at the screen.

  “Whoa,” Goodman’s posture was suddenly tense. “What’s happening here? My God, they’re still dividing…”

  “The specimen was still alive?” Kenzy asked, incredulously.

  Moriarty smiled sourly. “Seems it didn’t register on the stupid bastard that if he bred a superbug, it might be tough to kill.”

  Goodman began to dictate more urgently. “Fission continues and now at an accelerating rate…an exponential rate…oh Christ, they’re…”

  “And that was all she wrote,” Moriarty said as they watched Goodman’s corpse drift away from the microscope. “Can you imagine what would have happened if whatever it was he developed in there had gotten out into the station?”

  “What did you do with the module?” Nathan asked.

  “Had it detached and welded tight. Dropped it towards the sun.”

  “Nobody queried that?”

  “Contract workers don’t give a shit so long as they’re paid, and records can be amended.”

  Kenzy frowned. “I still don’t understand why all the secrecy.”

  For a moment Moriarty looked uncertain whether to laugh or cry. “Jesus,” he said finally. “Lennox was right. You really were bluffing.”

  Nathan said, “You didn’t want Goodman’s work made public.”

  “That stuff wasn’t official. The bastard was supposed to be doing research in protein crystallography. Something to do with immunotoxin molecules. The sonofabitch wasn’t supposed to be working on germ warfare, for Chrissakes.”

  “No problem, then,” Kenzy said.

  “Do you think anyone would have believed us if the story had gotten out?” Moriarty demanded. “Your Chinese buddies would’ve had a field day.”

  Nathan nodded and said, “So you decide to make Goodman a non-person. He doesn’t exist. He never existed.”

  “It’s not as dumb as it sounds. Man had no family. No-one would miss him enough to check, and even if they did,” he shrugged, “it was a computer bug. It’s happened before.”

  “Might never get sorted out,” Nathan agreed. “You thought of everything, didn’t you? You even paid off our man Hubble to make sure he kept his mouth shut. Pity about that. It was your payments to him that interested me in the first place.”

  Kenzy said, “The sister must have been a major embarrassment.”

  “Yes,” Nathan said. “How did you miss her?”

  Theroux still looked groggy, despite the intravenous medication which the health centre’s computer was administering as they talked. “It was where she called from,” he said, “but she doesn’t live there.”

  Pete Lennox moved so that he was in the field of vision and said, “She never lived there. The place has been up for sale for more than a year. I talked to the realtor, the neighbours.”

  “Nobody’s ever met the woman,” Theroux said. “Odile Goodman doesn’t exist.”

  On the bedside communications screen Kenzy, clearly impatient, shook her head. “The computers say she does,” she said.

  Beside her Nathan said, “And Harvey Goodman does exist, and the computers say he doesn’t.”

  Theroux rubbed his aching eyes. “If she’s not his sister, then who the fuck is she?”

  “Someone who wants the incident out in the open?” Nathan said. “Who would benefit from that, I wonder?”

  Ho was playing games – that much was obvious to Devis. The ‘charming Chinese’ routine was being pushed for all it was worth, which was not a hell of a lot as far as he was concerned. Privately, he had already christened the Base Co-ordinator ‘Wangley Ho’. “The Commander has not yet returned, sir,” he said stiffly.

  Ho’s smile was unwavering, as always. “Is he still with the Americans? Has something occurred to delay him?”

  “Was your business urgent, sir? Perhaps I can help?” Devis said.

  “Assuming he is still with the Americans,” Ho said.

  “Assuming you need to assume.” Devis interrupted, barely polite.

  “Is his return imminent?” Ho finished.

  “When he gets back I’m sure you’ll be the first to know, sir,” Devis said watching to see if this time the man would take offence. But the smiling good humour was unaffected and Devis’s mistrust grew accordingly.

  “If you truly believe that I know everything, Colin,” Ho beamed, “why do you make such an effort to give nothing away?”

  “It’s no effort, sir.”

  Ho said, “I am here to enquire of the developments in the Goodman case. Have there been developments?”

  “I can offer you coffee,” Devis said, going to the percolator.

  “I am tempted, but regretfully there is insufficient time for such a pleasure.”

  Devis poured himself a cup. “Don’t let me delay you then, sir,” he said.

  The burn was a risk, but Marty calculated the delay would have been more dangerous. As things had been going, he was fairly sure that Lauter’s impatience would get the better of her eventually, at which point she would take a portable cutting torch to the module and end up killing them both. He had no more idea than she had what was inside the thing, but he didn’t share her eager optimism about it. When they opened that monster up he wanted his feet on rock, his hands on a fully remote cutting rig, and all of him behind as much blast protection as he could get. So under the circumstances it seemed reasonable to use their remaining fuel reserves getting back to Moonbase as fast as possible, even though it did leave them without the legally required safety margins. That should have been no problem. Until now, they had always got a straight orbit injection on line and synch for immediate download to the workshops. Until fucking now.

  “Approach vectors and orbit are allocated,” Moonbase Traffic Control repeated with weary patience, “subject to priority override.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Marty demanded angrily.

  “It means we have a lot of traffic booked, and it’s building up all the time, and what can I tell you?”

  “You can tell me,” Marty snapped, “that we’re not going to get bumped to make way for some flashy corporate flag carrier. Time is fuel, and at these prices, indies can’t afford to waste it.” He glared at Lauter.

  “You can’t blame me, dear heart,” she said looking hurt and innocent. “Not for this one.”

  “No?”

  “It’s hardly my fault if you let your impatience get the better of you, is it?”

  Nathan stood, and stamped his feet. It was cold. He turned the collar of his coat up and stared out across the chilly park. In the pale shadows cast by the low sun there were patches of frost, and a thin fog hung in the trees. Somehow, he had lost touch with the changes of season. Winter had been a surprise. He hadn’t expected one-G to be this oppressive, either.

  It was an odd feeling being back. Odd and oddly disappointing. Perhaps his ties to Earth were more fragile than he imagined. Perhaps he hadn’t missed home as much as he thought he should have done.

  He stamped his feet a couple more times. It looked as though it ought to have been warmer. The sunshine was sharply bright and the sky was blue. Suddenly he found himself remembering how much Lee had loved this time of year, and he was instantly overwhelmed by the melancholy beauty of it all. He wiped tears away with the heel of his hand and sat back down on the park bench. As he hunched into his jacket, he told himself it was the cold making his eyes water.

  Behind him, someone said, “I got your message. Have you been waiting long?”

  He was irritated to realize how dangerously preoccupied he had been.

  “Long enough,” he said, without looking round. “I began to think you weren’t coming.”

>   “I considered it. But then I figured you might not leave it at that. How did you find me?”

  Nathan said, “Friends in low places.”

  “I guess you ran a trace on my user codes, didn’t you? That’s not strictly legal, you know.”

  Nathan gave a small noncommittal shrug, and said nothing.

  “Come now, Commander, I thought you wanted us to meet out here so we could be candid with each other.”

  “You can be candid first,” Nathan said, still gazing at the frozen landscape.

  “Winter sunlight is the saddest thing, it’s the memory of childhood, and the colour of passing years, it’s loneliness and loss and all the people who are gone. You should avoid it as far as is humanly possible. You should never dwell on winter sunlight for too long; and never dwell in it at all… Do you know who wrote that?”

  Nathan said, “I assume it wasn’t your brother?”

  “I never had a brother, Commander,” Odile Goodman said, sitting down beside him, “as I think you know.”

  The visits were becoming more frequent and more irritating by the day but Devis couldn’t find a way to stop them. Wangley Ho wouldn’t take a hint, and it began to look as though physical violence would be the only way to dissuade him from dropping in whenever the mood took him. Like now, for instance. Devis tried the reasonable approach one more time.

  “Sir, you really haven’t got any right of access to this office.” The man’s snooping was getting beyond a bloody joke. It was blatant. This time he wasn’t content with peering over your shoulder or poring over anything that was lying around, this time the bastard actually seemed to be trying to power up the spare workstation.