Murder in Orbit Read online

  Anyway, since it was largely a biochemical process, I could always tell myself it was professional curiosity.

  Making sure that my mask was secure, I peered into the tank. Nothing very interesting—just the usual mixture of kitchen scraps and fecal matter slowly rolling over in response to the giant paddles rotating at the bottom of the tank.

  As I was turning to the second tank, something at the edge of my vision caught my attention. I felt a message from my brain telling me to look again, that something wasn’t quite right.

  I turned back to the first tank and cried out in horror.

  A man’s body was floating facedown in the chemical soup.

  For an instant I couldn’t move. I just looked from side to side, as if I expected somebody to step forward and take over.

  But there was no one else in the room.

  I was alone with the corpse.

  Finally I ran to get a gaff hook to pull the body out. But when I returned to the tank, I caught my breath and fell to my knees. The action of the paddles had rolled the body over and I could see the man’s face. His features were blurred by the action of the chemicals. His eye sockets were hollow. His skin was the color of luncheon meat.

  The sight was too much for me. My stomach began violently emptying itself. Suddenly my protective mask became my enemy.

  Choking, I clawed at it. Finally I managed to pull the mask away from my face. But the sickness had splashed into my eyes, and they burned with the acid of it.

  Blinded, I staggered toward the shower. (Safety Regs require one where people work with strong chemicals.)

  I didn’t make it. Stepping in some of my own vomit, I felt my foot slip sideways. It pulled my bad hip with it. I cried out in pain as I crumpled to the tile floor. Then I was silent. At least, I assume I was, since I cracked my head against the floor and went out cold.

  Oblivious to my troubles, the paddles in the tank drew the dead man back into the devouring chemicals.

  Chapter 3

  Witness for the Decayed

  When I first woke I was too disoriented to think clearly. I put my fingers to my forehead, which was throbbing from the smack I had given it. I drew them back in disgust as I realized my skin was still coated with vomit.

  At least that took care of the question of what to do first. Hobbling to the shower, I stripped off my clothes. Then I stepped in and turned the water on full force.

  I yelped as the spray hit my skin. It felt like liquid ice.

  It was a cry of shock, not surprise. I knew the water would be cold. (You’d never use warm water for a chemical accident, after all—it would only speed things up.) But knowing and feeling are two different things. So it was still a shock.

  But the cold water helped to clear my mind. Considering what was going on, I wasn’t sure that was such a blessing. I might have been happier if my brain was still foggy. And even after the shower I didn’t know what to do next. I suppose if I had been on Earth, I would have called the police. But we don’t have a police department up here.

  We never figured we’d need one.

  After all, if you’re going to put 25,000 people in a tin can in outer space and expect them to form a productive society, you’re going to be pretty choosy about who you let on board. That’s why every colonist selected for ICE-3 had been triple-checked. First we were given a psychological workup, to see if we could withstand the pressures of living in space. Then the colonial administration used its computer to compare the psych profiles, to avoid “explosive personality combinations.” Finally the computer did a background check that was so thorough it could probably have told you embarrassing secrets about your grandmother when it was done.

  The point is, if we didn’t all get along perfectly, at least we were sure we didn’t have any muggers or murderers on board.

  Or so we thought.

  That was part of what was so horrifying about finding that body, If I had been Earthside, I doubt it would have bothered me so much. I mean, I get the impression that in some cities down there you’re lucky if you can get through a whole day without tripping over a corpse. But up here we never expect to see something like that. So when I found that body in the tank it left me feeling like my world had been turned on its ear.

  My father used to have a sign over his desk that said EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW IS WRONG. That was how I felt now. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation. In fact, it was downright frightening.

  “Get a grip on yourself, Rusty!” I yelled, grabbing my head and squeezing it. (God only knows what good I thought that would do.)

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. That was more helpful. As I calmed down, I realized my first step should be to call Dr. Hadley, my supervisor for this job.

  Unfortunately, Dr. Hadley wasn’t available. And Dr. Twining had told me he would be tied up in some political meeting.

  Now what?

  I decided to call the Office of Dispute Management. Even though this wasn’t really up their alley, I figured they would be my best bet.

  Dispute Management is the closest thing ICE-3 has to a police force, although the people who work there prefer to call themselves “Ombudspersons.” I guess that’s fair, since their work is more diplomacy than enforcement; usually they don’t deal with anything more serious than two scientists squabbling over lab time. Still, their job was to solve problems. And a problem was definitely what I had.

  A man with steel-gray hair appeared on the screen.

  “Office of Dispute Management. Can I help you?”

  “I want to report a murder.”

  The man looked as if he had swallowed something that was still alive. And wiggling. “What did you say, young man?”

  “A murder!” I shouted. “I want to report a murder!”

  The man looked angry. I guess people don’t like having their day shaken up like that.

  “If this is a prank …”

  “There’s a dead man in the Waste Disposal Tank! Are you going to do something about it or not?”

  “What’s your name?” asked the man.

  “What difference does that make?” I yelled.

  “I have to make out a report.”

  I rolled my eyes in disgust. “Will you get somebody over here? We can make out the report later. If we don’t get that body out of the tank soon, there won’t be anything left of it.”

  “Where’s your supervisor?”

  “I can’t reach him.”

  “What do you usually do in case of an emergency?”

  “We’ve never had one.”

  “Well, what would you do if you did have one?” snapped the man.

  “If it was bad enough, I’d shut down the system.”

  “All right, if you’re telling the truth, and there really is a body there, you’d better shut down the system. But if there isn’t, you’d better be prepared to suffer the consequences.”

  “Thanks for nothing,” I snapped. I slapped the Off switch and took some pleasure in seeing the jerk flicker out of sight.

  Then I went and shut down the system.

  It wasn’t long before I heard from my boss. The shutdown had set off an alarm he carries with him wherever he goes.

  “Rusty!” cried a voice from the ceiling. “What in Sam Hill is going on?”

  “You’d better get down here quick, Dr. Hadley!” I yelled. “There’s a dead man in Tank One!”

  He started to ask me a question, thought better of it, and said, “I’ll be right there!”

  And he was, too. Showed up just about the time the guy from Dispute Management got there.

  I really don’t want to describe what happened next. Let’s just say they both yelled at me. Then they started yelling at each other. Then they took turns yelling at me and each other. After a while someone finally got the bright idea of looking in the tank to see what I was talking about.

  It was too late, of course. By then, the body was gone—completely dissolved. They decided to drain the tank. It didn’t do any good;
there wasn’t anything left of that guy that you couldn’t have bought at your local chemical supply store.

  “Okay, lad, I think you’d better come with me,” said the man from Dispute Management. His name was Dyvach Jones, and we weren’t getting along in person any better than we had over the phone.

  “What for?”

  “A lot of things. I’ll want a statement from you. We’ll need a formal description of this ‘body’ you thought you saw. And I want to run a few blood tests on you.”

  I knew what he was getting at, and I didn’t like it. “I’m not on anything,” I said tersely.

  “I’ll vouch for that, Jones,” said Dr. Hadley. “Rusty’s not that kind of kid.”

  “They never are,” Jones said gruffly. “But I happen to believe in Occam’s razor. And the idea that this kid has been sniffing, snorting, or popping something one of his friends cooked up with their home chemistry set is a lot easier for me to swallow than that someone in ICE-3 is a murderer.”

  Dr. Hadley shrugged. “Have it your way. I’m sure you won’t find anything.” He looked at me, and I could see the question in his eyes: You’re not going to make a fool of me on this, are you?

  I looked straight back at him and shook my head just a fraction of an inch.

  He smiled. “You better just do what he says, Rusty. It’ll be easier that way.”

  I shrugged and headed out the door after Jones.

  I figured at least this way I wouldn’t have to clean up the mess.

  Just shows you how wrong a guy can be. There’s more than one kind of mess and more than one kind of cleaning up. I spent the next hour and a half trying to keep from losing my temper while Jones worked me over from six different angles.

  I really don’t think he ever believed my story. Even the fact that his tests didn’t show a trace of anything in my veins but my own blood didn’t slow him down. All it did was change his theory. He decided if I wasn’t on drugs, I must be pulling some kind of prank.

  The last straw came when the computer check he had ordered on the current status of the colony came back saying, “All persons present and accounted for.”

  “What do you have to say to this?” snarled Jones, waving it under my nose.

  I didn’t say anything. What could I say? As far as I was concerned, the report meant one of three things:

  1. The computer was wrong.

  2. There was someone up here we didn’t know about.

  3. I was losing my mind.

  All things considered, the third possibility was probably the least frightening. After all, we depend pretty heavily on the computer. We have a lot of backup systems, of course. Even so, it’s a major part of our lives.

  If the computer really had made an error, I could see three possible reasons:

  1. There was something wrong with it.

  2. Someone was tampering with it.

  3. It was being fed faulty data.

  Again, considering the degree to which the colony relies on the computer system, I didn’t find any of those ideas particularly appealing.

  What about the idea that there was someone up here we didn’t know about? If there was, it had to be one of two people: the killer or the victim. Or maybe both. In any event, I didn’t find the idea of someone sneaking into a closed colony 240,000 kilometers from the nearest planet all that reassuring. I began fantasizing that we had been invaded by some strange space creatures.

  The brief daydream seemed to give a lot of strength to my third theory: I was losing my mind.

  “Well,” repeated Jones. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Look, by now you’ve made it through three chapters of this thing. So I hope you’ve decided that I’m not totally stupid. (Though I suppose you may change your mind when you read about some of the mistakes I made in the next few days.) Anyway, I was never one to get a lot of pleasure out of banging my head against a brick wall. Deciding I had had enough self-torture for the day, I dropped my head and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  Please note—I didn’t say what I was sorry about, which was mostly that Jones was too stupid to see I was telling the truth. At that point I just wanted to get out of there. I had wasted enough energy on Mr. Dyvach Jones.

  It was time to take things into my own hands.

  Chapter 4

  The Colony

  It’s about two kilometers from the Office of Dispute Management to our apartment. I skipped the rolling sidewalks and went on foot. I figured the exercise might help me let off steam.

  And boy, did I need to let off steam. I was still boiling from the lecture Jones had given me after I apologized—a ten-minute tirade on foolish pranks and wasting other people’s time. (I know it lasted ten minutes, because I timed it. If I was just going on the basis of how long it felt, I probably would have said three hours. Or longer. It seemed as endless as those tasteful Iranian miniseries my parents are always watching on our wall screen.)

  Even worse than Jones’s lecture were the threats he made when he was done. All kinds of things about what would happen if I ever dared, blah, blah, blah, etc., etc., etc.… I’ll tell you, it was a good thing I’d already thrown up once that day. Otherwise his desk would have been in real danger of getting a puke bath.

  After I had meandered past a few of my favorite shops, my stomach began to remind me that it was extremely empty.

  I stepped into a fast-food joint.

  Since we don’t have enough room to raise grazing animals, our primary meat source out here is the cuddly but rapidly reproducing rabbit—which means our fast-food shops tend to specialize in things like the Double McBunny Burger.

  I had two.

  If you’ve never tasted one, stop laughing and wait until you’ve tried it.

  Then you can laugh.

  Actually, I kind of like the things. I’m certainly glad I’m not like my father, who’s been known to get so desperate for a piece of red meat he’d consider swapping his mother for a slab of prime rib. He’s not alone. One of ICE-3’s biggest political controversies is over whether we should use some of our precious land area to raise cattle.

  Believe it or not, people have enormous fights about this.

  Personally, I think it’s an awful lot of fuss over whether or not someone gets to chew a piece of dead cow every once in a while. I’d just as soon stick to rabbit.

  Once I had finished my bit o’ bunny, I wandered out of the shopping area and through the Altair Park orchard, which took me to the base of our apartment complex. I stopped to sit on my favorite rock and enjoy the view.

  I have to keep reminding myself of what my grandfather said—I mean about not assuming you know what this is like. The view from my rock is so natural to me it seems silly to describe it. But maybe you’ve never seen a picture of the inside of an ICE wheel.

  If you haven’t, hang on to your hat. This gets a little complicated.

  The first thing you have to remember is that since we’re too small to have much real gravity, we use centrifugal force to make a kind of fake gravity. An ICE wheel spins on its axis once every sixty seconds or so, depending on its size. That “throws” everything outward (swing a yo-yo around your head and you’ll have the basic idea). In a way, it’s almost the opposite of gravity. Instead of being sucked in, we’re being thrown out. But the end result is the same: a sensation of weight.

  What does that have to do with the view from my rock? Well, to begin with, it means once you’re inside the colony, “down” is in the direction of the outside edge.

  I know, from watching newcomers, that it’s hard to get this straight. When you look at the wheel from the outside, with the mirror on one side and the spindle on the other giving you a sense of “up and down,” it’s hard to realize that people inside the wheel aren’t walking on the “bottom,” but on the sides.

  Think of one of those exercise wheels people have for hamsters and mice. Now imagine laying that wheel on its side. And imagine that instead of the wheel turning, the hamst
er can run all the way around it. That’s the way it is here. We can walk all the way around the edge of our wheel. And when I sit on my rock, I know there are people on the other side of the wheel, over three kilometers away, with their heads pointing at me. But they’re not upside down, any more than I am.

  You have to remember that while planet dwellers live on the outside of their world, we colonists live inside ours. Here the horizon curves up. When I sit on my rock I can see about 200 meters in either direction; then the view disappears upward, around the bend. If I start walking, I’ll walk uphill all the way, no matter what direction I go. (That sounds pretty strenuous, but in reality the slope is so gentle you hardly notice it.) And if I walk about seven kilometers, I’ll end up back where I started.

  (Some people have a hard time with that. It drives them space-wack to be able to walk around the world in just over an hour.)

  Anyway, from my rock I could see a broad band of land, about 200 meters across. To my right was a large, parklike area filled with fruit trees. (It’s important to have parks—but they have to pay their way.) The colony’s air circulation system carried the sweet fragrance of the trees to where I sat.

  Beyond the park was an area filled with small shops and restaurants, and beyond that was a science and research area, where I could see one of the six spokes. A silvery tube some twenty-five meters wide, it rose straight through the colony, drawing my eye upward, toward our “sky,” where the light bounces in from the big mirror. A little past that, the horizon curved up and out of sight.

  I thought it looked pretty neat.

  But of course it wasn’t the view that was on my mind.

  It was the body in Tank One. Apologizing to Dyvach Jones hadn’t changed the fact that I had seen it there. Something was terribly wrong in ICE-3. And since it didn’t look like anyone was going to believe me, I was going to have to handle this on my own.