Star Cops

by Chris Boucher

  Theroux snorted. “He’s no friend of mine.”

  Nathan said, “Hold that thought.” Though, on reflection, it was clearly an unnecessary comment.

  Susan Caxton did not hide her surprise. “This is the Base Co-ordinator’s private suite,” she said glancing around the unusually spacious quarters. The personal items were few, but looked carefully chosen and precisely placed.

  Dr. Andrew Philpot settled himself comfortably into Ho’s chair. “I have the use of it.” He rested his elbows on the desk and steepled his fingers, waiting for the young black woman to finish checking light and backgrounds. “You do appreciate,” he said finally, bored with the silence and irritated at being ignored, “that I am not expecting any surprises in this interview, Susan.” The use of her first name was meant to be friendly and informal, but sounded merely clumsy and patronizing.

  She continued to set up her equipment. “Is it possible to expect a surprise, Dr. Philpot?” She had only the faintest trace of an Australian accent; like most things about her, it was distinctive without being extravagant, attractive without being intrusive.

  “Don’t chop logic with me,” he snapped, abandoning the friendly approach for something more appropriate to his superior status. “You know exactly what I mean.”

  Susan Caxton was good at her job, part of which was to avoid outright hostility in the people she interviewed, at least until the recording was running. “This is ideal for our purposes,” she said sitting down opposite Philpot, crossing her legs demurely and smiling. “And I’m ready if you are, so let’s just clarify, shall we? I’m going to ask you about the deal which the Holdy Museum has made to buy the Martian.”

  “You will not mention figures, of course,” Philpot put in. “That is commercially sensitive. Extremely sensitive, in fact.”

  “An undisclosed sum,” she agreed. “I shall express surprise, however, at the whole idea. ‘Can you really buy a Martian?’ That sort of thing. And I may ask why a museum should be regarded as an appropriate custodian.”

  Philpot said, “And you will then give me the opportunity to explain that the Holdy intends to make it available to the scientific community, without delay or condition.”

  She smiled a warm, friendly smile. “Not quite without condition. I mean, nobody else is allowed to see it, are they?”

  “Once the world’s research scientists have completed their work, it will go on display at the Museum.”

  “But until then, Doctor, it remains firmly under wraps. In fact, the whole deal depends on that – or have I misunderstood?” She smiled her beautiful, emotionless smile.

  He smiled back. “No, you’ve understood perfectly.”

  “Not perfectly. Your museum doesn’t exactly have a cash-flow problem, does it?”

  “It’s hardly my museum, Susan.”

  “Why are you insisting on the exclusive rights to display and publication? The Holdy doesn’t need the money.”

  “It’s for precisely that reason,” he said smoothly, “that the Holdy is the ideal guardian. We can ensure that the Martian is not the subject of tawdry exploitation. That it is treated with proper dignity.”

  As an answer it was obviously well-rehearsed, but this was not the time to challenge it – and so, equally smoothly, Susan Caxton said, “I think that will probably be an appropriate note to end on. Any problems with that, Andrew?”

  “None that I can see,” said Dr. Philpot.

  The action in the operations module had maintained its frantic pace, but actually the manager seemed no more tired than before. It occurred to Nathan that ‘exhausted and on the edge’ could be her preferred working condition, but he waited more patiently this time anyway. “Svenson, for fuck’s sake,” she was shouting, “is that load complete or not?”

  “How should I know?” an irritable voice responded from the control board speaker.

  “By checking,” she said, dropping her voice almost to a whisper, and then bellowing at the top of her lungs, “Now, you idle moose-fiddler! I want you to check it now!”

  She turned and shrugged tiredly at Nathan. “It’s obviously a computer foul-up either at the Martian end, or,” and she made a wry face, “just possibly, here. Unlikely as that may seem.”

  “You’re sure about it?” Nathan prompted.

  “Do I look sure about anything? Listen, Mars base says those two were pilot and co-pilot of a freighter which is still en route. A physical impossibility. Ergo they must have been flying a different freighter which left some time before the one the computer says they’re flying.”

  “Accidental or deliberate?”

  She shrugged again. “Could be either. But trust me, we’ve made bigger cock-ups than that when things were quiet.”

  “I trust you,” Nathan said. “Last question. Have the traffic offices been broken into recently?”

  “They’re never locked. It’s a twenty-four hour service, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Constantly manned?”

  “Give or take a shift change and the odd meal break.”

  “Easy to search, then. Would a search have been noticed?”

  “How?” She gestured round the impersonally untidy cubicle.

  “I have checked,” a voice, presumably Svenson, reported over the speaker. “The load is complete.”

  “Well, bravo,” she said, “and about time.”

  “But it is being off-loaded again for customs spot check inspection.”

  “You are fucking joking.”

  “We moose-fiddlers have no sense of humour.”

  “Thanks,” Nathan said and started to go.

  “Why should it have been searched?” she asked suddenly.

  “Someone’s running through a logical list,” he said, and left before she asked the question he wasn’t ready to answer.

  Why the hell was she here? Kenzy eased herself into a less cramped position and yawned. It wasn’t her function in life to follow up on Nathan’s hunches, especially not when he was so unforthcoming about what exactly they were. Around her, the remains of the crashed shuttle were piled up in the darkness. She yawned again. If Nathan Spring wanted someone to stand guard… well to sit guard… in this bloody storage bay then at least he…

  Why me? Everyone else is busy or on rest breaks which is what I could do with…

  Would you rather process the extradition papers on our drugs barons?

  Or on rest breaks which is what I could do with…

  Kenzy jerked awake. She had no idea how long she had been dozing, but it was not dark now, not totally dark anyway. Was it dawn? Wake up stupid, this is the Moon and you’re underground. The safety lights. The safety lights had been switched on and were glowing dimly.

  As her mind began to make sense of things, she started to get to her feet slowly. Somewhere close by, there was noise. It was a stealthy sort of noise. Pieces of the wreckage were being moved. She groped for the gun she had shoved into her equipment pouch and, crouching slightly, moved towards the sound.

  She pulled the gun and said in her best hard-case voice, “Okay, you mongrel. Get your arse out here; you’re nicked.”

  A storm of debris flew at Kenzy. She tried to fend it away. Abruptly, everything was back to black.

  She was bruised. Her face was cut, but that looked worse than it was, according to the diagnostic examination. The concussion was mild. There should be no lasting effects, no scars. Her pride was hurting but Nathan was in no mood to sympathize with that. “You weren’t expecting anyone to show? Why the hell do you suppose I wanted it staked out?”

  She got off the scanner couch and began to dress quickly and angrily. “I have no idea. You didn’t exactly confide in me. You didn’t go into what might be called detail. Or did I miss a meeting?”

  “How much detail do you
need, Kenzy?” Nathan demanded, trying not to notice her body. “Anyone touches that shuttle wreckage, you arrest them. It was a simple enough order, for the love of Christ!” He knew he was overreacting, and he had a pretty good idea why, and there still didn’t seem to be anything he could do to stop himself.

  “Yeah, well,” she was saying, as she keyed her acceptance of the medical data update, “I’ve never been very keen on simple orders. Next time –”

  “Next time,” Nathan interrupted her, “they won’t be so careless. Thanks to your incompetence, they’ll know for sure we’re onto them.”

  “They’ll know a bloody sight more than I do then,” Kenzy snapped.

  Nathan said angrily, “Try concentrating on the job in hand instead of a promotion you don’t deserve and aren’t likely to get.”

  “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on,” she said, and left the treatment suite without a backward glance.

  In theory, once the customs seals had been put on a freight cage no-one could touch the contents again. Loading and off-loading were handled by remote control. Direct access was forbidden to any and all personnel. That was the theory. In practice, there was little surveillance and no physical barriers of any significance to protect such cargo from interference. Which was how six of the seismic cartridges in the carton containing the statuette came to be primed, and the microwave triggers stolen. The number and location of these explosives was confirmed by the detailed reconstruction of what happened, as it was modelled by the best forensic computer available. Of course, the cargo security systems were tightened up after the disaster – but that would be too late for Nathan.

  He found Kenzy sitting alone in the executive mess. Her table screen and all the wallzacs were showing the live interview which Susan Caxton of WNS was conducting for the news pool with Dr. Andrew Philpot, billed as “a senior curator” at the Holdy Museum. Interest in the Martian was now so intense that a rather dull interview was getting a lot more attention than it deserved. As Nathan crossed the small, almost luxurious turn-of-the-millennium style space, an out of vision Caxton was saying: “As I understand it, there are at least six universities that have a legitimate right to examine the Martian?”

  “May I sit down?” he asked.

  Without taking her eyes off the screen, Kenzy gestured to the seat opposite her.

  Philpot smiled graciously into camera. “There are a number of separate scientific communities who will have to be given access, it’s true, yes,” he said with a modest politeness that was almost humble.

  “So it may be years before the public gets to see it?”

  “That’s possible.”

  “Anything’s possible, if you’re wealthy enough,” Kenzy said.

  Nathan said, “Even the rich have to die.”

  “Why isn’t that any consolation?”

  “Tell me, Doctor. why is the Holdy Museum insisting on the exclusive rights to display and publication? They don’t really need the money that will generate, do they?”

  “I’m sorry,” Nathan said. Kenzy looked directly at him for the first time, but said nothing. “I was worried about you,” he went on. “I think I resent being worried about you.”

  “It’s precisely for that reason that the Holdy is the ideal guardian. We can ensure that the Martian is not the subject of tawdry exploitation.”

  “A good officer worries about his people,” she said. “Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?”

  “That it is treated with proper dignity.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Nathan said. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  “With a proper respect.”

  A reverse shot showed Caxton looking quizzical, amused, not quite sceptical. “Respect? Dignity?”

  “Concepts not entirely alien in this day and age, even to your profession surely,” Philpot said, momentarily allowing his normal arrogance to show.

  “You’ve never forgiven me for that lapse, have you?” Kenzy asked.

  “I have trouble seeing corruption as a lapse,” Nathan said, uncomfortable with how pompous that sounded.

  “People change,” Kenzy said.

  “But surely Doctor, we are not talking about a sentient creature, are we? Or are we?”

  “I came to say goodbye,” Nathan said. “The freighter’s almost finished loading. It’s my embarkation time.”

  “That’s not a question I’m in any position to answer, Susan.”

  “Already? Jesus, that’s a bit quick.”

  “Can you say whether it’s alive at this time?”

  “No. I can’t.”

  It sounded to Nathan as though she was genuinely upset. “I can’t postpone it. Not if I want to stay with that statuette.”

  “Though let me offer you this thought.”

  Nathan stood up and offered his hand. “I think you probably do deserve that promotion,” he said, “but I’ve left it to David to decide. It seemed the best way under the circumstances.”

  “It is not only the living that deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.”

  She stood too and shook his hand. “Take care of yourself, Nathan,” she said.

  “As an expert on ancient cultures, I can understand how you might feel like that.”

  “You too, Pal.” There was something in what he had just heard that meant more than what he had just heard. He did not let go of her hand and she made no attempt to free it. He wondered whether to pull her into his arms. He badly wanted her in his arms.

  “Thank you for talking to me, Dr. Philpot.”

  Then he heard his own voice saying, “You have very little time left Nathan. Lucifer Seven lifts to its fuelling orbit in seventeen minutes.”

  “This is Susan Caxton for Worldwide and newspool affiliates on Moonbase.”

  “Thank you, Box,” he said and released Kenzy’s hand. As he turned away, he said, “I’ll miss you,” – and then left quickly, before she had time to say anything. He seemed to have done a lot of that recently.

  With cargo pods secured and a full load of fuel, the Mars freighter Lucifer Seven disengaged from the bunkering shuttle at 22.28LST and was given clearance for minimum thrust on vector one six. Among the usual last minute communications traffic was a farewell from Star Cop headquarters to Commander Nathan Spring which read: “Tell the little green men that where there’s living, there’s policemen.” It has been suggested that, by some cruel irony, it was during the transmission of this message that the ship vanished from the navigation radars. This is not true. Nor is it true that there were any eyewitnesses to the huge flare in which the ship was destroyed. No-one was working on the lunar surface at the time, and though the silent burst of chemical brightness would have been visible from the Earth’s surface, the Lucifer Seven was hidden by the Moon when it died; lost on the darkside.

  “…which is why it took so long to confirm the loss. Even now no-one understands exactly what happened,” Daniel Larwood, said to camera, “still less can they really believe it.”

  Watching the broadcast in the Star Cop office, Kenzy said flatly, “They can believe it. It’s dangerous out here, you moron. Why are we listening to this shit?”

  “Because it’s better than silence,” Devis said, and poured himself another Scotch from the soft-drink carton which shuttle repair provided.

  Larwood’s story cut to an interview with the duty operations manager. She looked tired and close to the edge. “Operations is over stretched, under-funded, undermanned,” she was saying. “Something had to go, sooner or later.”

  Holding her cup out for more of Devis’s Scotch, Dana Cogill said, “He should not have gone on that flight. It was an unnecessary risk.”

  “Were corners being cut?” Larwood asked.

  “And all this little green men crap that you people s
tirred up hasn’t helped!”

  “Would you say that corners had been cut?” Larwood persisted. “In safety, for example?”

  “Corners? I’d say whole fucking streets had been eliminated,” the woman raged.

  “’Least she’s honest,” Devis commented, to no-one in particular.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Kenzy demanded.

  “Cheap costs,” the manager went on furiously, “and sooner or later, someone has to pay for it.”

  “Christ, Kenzy, will you shut the fuck up?” Devis said.

  “But it’s never the greedy bastards who are actually responsible!”

  “He wasn’t getting at you, Pal,” Cogill offered.

  “And you shut the fuck up too,” Devis said, taking another drink.

  Kenzy said, “Where the hell does honesty get us? The man’s dead.”

  As if on cue, the screen was suddenly showing pictures of Nathan and Larwood was saying, “Among the dead was Commander Nathan Spring…”, beginning what was obviously going to be an obituary.

  Kenzy left the office hurriedly before it got under way.

  Theroux was waiting for Jiang Li Ho at the sub-surface disembarkation airlock. The Co-ordinator was at his most inscrutable and showed no sign of surprise when, after the routine courtesies were over, Theroux said, “Tell me about the Martian.”

  “The Martian?” Ho repeated.

  “The one that’s coming to Moonbase,” Theroux elaborated patiently, though obviously they both knew what he was talking about.