The Trikon Deception

2 SEPTEMBER 1998 TRIKON STATION

It was worse than Lance thought it ever could be.

It was like there were two people inside his head. Just like the stories he used to see on video in Bible school when he was a kid: a good angel and a bad devil both talking to him, telling him what to do.

He knew that Carla Sue was bad, a temptress, evil. He knew he should have nothing to do with her. But he could not stay away. It was as if there was some power in his body that moved him no matter what his good angel told him.

Maybe I’m bewitched, Lance thought. Like Samson.

Talking with Freddy had been no help at all. Freddy just laughed at his fears and told him, “Forget about all that Sunday School crap, man! Nail her while she’s hot for you.”

Each time he saw Carla Sue he meant to tell her that he was finished with her; he wasn’t going to touch her or even talk to her again. Each time his resolve disappeared in an explosion of animal lust.

Becky will never want me now. She’ll know. She’ll sense it as soon as she sees me.

Still, he headed for Hab 1 the instant his shift was finished, looking for Carla Sue. He knew that her shift should be over, too. This time he would really tell her. Definitely. As soon as he saw her he would end this agony once and for all.

Kurt Jaeckle was in the corridor. Lance hung back, watching. Jaeckle floated right to Carla Sue’s door and tapped gently on it. No response. He slid the door open a crack. Lance started down the corridor toward him, fuming to himself. He’s not going to bother Carla Sue again. Not ever. Jaeckle looked over his shoulder and saw Lance approaching.

Both men felt flustered. Lance stopped himself a few feet before Jaeckle, his face set in a hard frown.

The scientist backed away from her door a bit. “Um, do you know where Carla Sue might be?” he asked.

“No,” said Lance.

“I received a message that she wanted to see me,” Jaeckle said.

Lance did not reply. If Carla Sue wanted to see him she would do it in the Mars module, he thought.

“Well. Um, if you see her, would you tell her that I got her message and I’ll be in my office in the Mars module. Please.”

Lance nodded. Jaeckle pushed off the wall with one hand and headed down the corridor. Lance watched his small, red-suited form disappear through the far hatch.

Then he started after Jaeckle. Sure enough, the scientist headed down the central tunnel and into the Mars module. Lance followed behind him, then hesitated in the open hatchway.

Jaeckle must have sensed him. He turned, looking curious, concerned.

“Do you have official business in this module, crewman?” Jaeckle asked.

“No, sir,” said Muncie. “I’m off duty now.”

“Then I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to stay out of this module. Unless you have time reserved in the observation blister, of course.”

“No, sir. Not at this hour.”

“Then…” Jaeckle made a small shooing motion with both hands. The exertion moved him backwards, away from Lance.

“Yes, sir,” said Lance. He turned and started back up the tunnel. But after only a few meters, Lance grabbed a handhold and turned back again toward the hatch.

Along the length of the Mars module’s central tunnel he could see Jaeckle swim past the door that led to his office and head straight to the hatch of the observation blister. He knocked sharply against the metal hatch once and it was opened from inside. By a woman. At this distance Lance could not be sure who it was, but he was certain there was a woman in there waiting for Jaeckle. Carla Sue.

There wasn’t any message and he didn’t go to his office. He’s in the blister with Carla Sue, Lance realized, his insides flaming. She was waiting for him.

It unsettled Jaeckle to have the burly, sulky crewman hanging around the hatch to the Mars module. I’ll have to speak to Tighe about this, he thought. We have protocols. His people are not supposed to be in my module.

He thought for a moment that he should have asked the crewman why he was there. But Lorraine was waiting for him in the observation blister and Muncie looked too glowering, too bellicose, to speak to without an argument erupting. Tighe’s probably sent him in here on some pretext or other. I’ll speak to the commander about it. Later.

He rapped on the hatch and Lorraine swiftly opened it for him. Putting on his highest-wattage smile, Jaeckle entered the observation blister.

Lorraine was not smiling. She backed away from his reaching arms.

“There’s no easy way to say this, Kurt.” Her voice was tense, her hands knotted into tight little fists.

“To say what?” he asked, gliding toward her.

“We’re finished,” Lorraine blurted. “It’s over.”

Jaeckle felt his breath catch in his throat. Finished? She’s telling me it’s over?

As she finally pushed herself away from the biochemistry bench, Carla Sue realized she was playing a losing game. Wearily she nodded farewell to the other late workers and headed back to her compartment in Hab 1. Even though she had spent two extra hours on the soil samples she could still find nothing to confirm Russ Cramer’s supposed discovery.

Worse than that, she was no closer to her goal of penetrating the arrogant, self-absorbed psyche that encased Kurt Jaeckle like a suit of armor than she had been when she first tried to seduce Lance Muncie. Her failure was not for lack of effort. She had spent every possible minute of the last three days in Lance’s dubious company. They ate meals together, exercised in tandem, and spent a well-advertised double session in the observation blister.

The rumor mill, which Carla Sue knew to be more efficient than the station’s computer system, seized on this morsel of gossip with its usual speed. Her fellow Martians whistled when she floated to the biochemistry workstation in the Mars module. Trikon techs smirked when they passed her in the connecting tunnel. Freddy Aviles peered out of the labyrinth of cylinders in the logistics module and flashed a smile dripping with forbidden knowledge.

Everyone on the station noticed—except Kurt Jaeckle.

Carla Sue’s resolve was beginning to ebb. Her choice of Lance seemed more blunder than brilliance. There was something weird about Lance Muncie. It was as if there were actually two of him: he was awkward, reticent, almost afraid to be alone with her—until she touched his body. Anywhere. Then he exploded in a passion of animal fury that left her gasping and a little frightened. Lance was a big guy; when he threw away his self-control he could hurt you.

Other than those wild bursts of ardor he was as dull as a wheat field. No, not dull, exactly. No matter how boring his conversation, or lack of it, there was always something lurking just beneath the surface—something scary.

I’ve created a Frankenstein, Carla Sue said to herself, trying to make light of her predicament. But then she thought of how Kurt must be laughing at her behind her back. That she could not tolerate.

Carla Sue finally reached her compartment. She slipped inside, but kept the door open a crack to peer down toward the aft end of Hab 1. Kurt Jaeckle would be coming down this way, heading for his own compartment. Carla Sue hoped he had nothing important planned for the rest of the day. She didn’t expect he would be able to concentrate once she finished with him.

Within minutes Jaeckle floated into view. Carla Sue pulled back her door. “Oh, there you are, Kurt.”

“Hello, Carla Sue,” he replied. He trailed his fingertips along the opposite door as if wondering whether he should stop. “I understand you want to see me.”

“I certainly do.”

“Well, I’m on my way back to the module,” he said.

“This’ll only take a minute.”

Jaeckle eyed her up and down, then looked past her as if suspicious of her intentions, wondering if she had already found out that his affair with Lorraine was finished. She was fully clothed and her compartment appeared to be in order. Satisfied that she was not bent on seduction, he decided to grant her a minute, no more. He turned his body to face her wide-open door, and pushed himself inside.

Carla Sue closed the door behind him. She switched on the viewscreen and turned up the stereo. Snow swirled on a New England countryside to the strains of Leroy Anderson’s “Sleighride.”

Jaeckle frowned with sudden suspicion. “Why do we need music?” he asked.

“You’ll understand the reason,” said Carla Sue. “I wanted to talk to you about LaVerne Nelson.”

“Who the hell’s that?”

“LaVerne Nelson was your housekeeper during your first marriage,” said Carla Sue. “I’ve been in contact with her. Not directly, through a private investigator. I know all about her role in your divorce proceedings.”

Jaeckle blinked several times, rapidly. Then he reached over and turned up the volume of the stereo.

“LaVerne Nelson is a pathological liar,” he said, leaning closer to Carla Sue to be heard over the cheerful music. “I fired her for stealing.”

“I don’t doubt that’s true, Kurt. But there is the small matter of the deposition she gave before you and your first wife decided to settle your differences out of court.”

“A deposition by a liar and a thief is not the most believable document in the world,” said Jaeckle. His lower lip quivered slightly. “Besides, that deposition is sealed by court order. I insisted on it.”

“Well, my investigator tells me that LaVerne’s memory is still very fresh. And she’s still in need of a few dollars.”

“Carla Sue, this is a poor way of getting attention.”

“I don’t want your attention, Kurt. I decided that long ago. I just don’t want you to forget me.”

“Forget you?” he said, summoning a smarmy smile onto his face. “How can I forget the times we had? The Cape. Do you think I could forget the time we—”

“You fool!” Carla Sue snapped. “I don’t give a damn about that sentimental guff. I want you to remember me when it comes to Mars.”

Carla Sue knew that Jaeckle regarded himself as the sole deed holder to Mars. Everyone else, even his colleagues in the Mars project, were squatters. Her statement had the desired effect: Jaeckle’s phony warmth was transmuted to a more authentic iciness.

“What do you mean?” he asked, like a professor quizzing a student.

“I want to take over Russ Cramer’s position, now that he’s gone. And when it comes time to pick the team for the first mission to Mars, I want to be the chief biochemist.”

Jaeckle had been unconsciously backing away from her. He thumped against the closed door; he could retreat no further.

“The standards for the real Mars crew will be very high,” he said, trying to regain his dignity.

“No they won’t, and you damn well know it,” said Carla Sue. “They’ll be just as cockamamy as they were for this project. Carla Sue Gamble in space? You thought that was funny at first, didn’t you? But I’m here. And now that I’ve come this far I’m going all the way.”

“Your work will have to…”

“Never mind my work! It’s good enough, we both know that. I want to be on the first team and you’re going to make damned certain that I am.”

“Carla, I won’t have the power to select the actual Mars team.”

“You know, you’re probably right,” said Carla Sue. “You won’t have any power at all once people start seeing your face plastered over every supermarket checkout in the country. I don’t think anyone would want a man who raped his own daughter to plant the flag on Mars.”

Even though she was in her own compartment, Carla Sue realized she had just uttered the perfect exit line. Exaggerating a smile, she opened the door a tad and slipped out.

Jaeckle was too dumbfounded to follow. He stared blankly at the video screen and replayed the conversation over and over again in his mind, oblivious to the music and the images of evergreens laden with snow. The stereo was playing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

He unfurled a handkerchief from a shoulder pocket of his flight suit and mopped at the film of sweat oozing across his brow. A minute later, his brow still wet, he realized that he had twisted the handkerchief into a knotty coil.

Hovering in the shadows by the hatch to Hab 1, Lance felt his skin crawling with hatred. He had been right. For two hours he had waited here watching Carla Sue’s compartment. Ever since he had seen Jaeckle go into the observation blister.

I was right, he kept repeating to himself. First they spend two hours in the blister and then they come straight back here to her compartment. They think they’re pretty smart, coming back separately. But they’re not smart enough to fool me.

Lance edged closer to Carla Sue’s compartment, his insides blazing. He saw that the accordion door was tightly sealed. Music played inside. Christmas music!

Something—someone—thumped against the door. Lance remembered Freddy’s comment the first time they had seen the observation blister: Newton’s Law.

Lance felt a surge of nausea as he hung in the aisle. A chill spread out from his spine. His mouth filled with bile. He thought first of the Hab 1 Whits; they were only a few feet away. But he wanted to be out of this module, as far away as possible from Kurt Jaeckle and Carla Sue Gamble and whatever was going on behind that door. So he bolted and threw up his guts in the Whit of Hab 2.

Dan Tighe ate alone at a table in the rear of the wardroom. As was his custom, he divided his attention equally between the food tenuously adhering to his tray and the people occupying the other tables. He was particularly interested in Aaron Weiss. The reporter had not developed into the pain in the ass Dan had expected. Except for the incident with Hugh O’Donnell, the only complaint had been from Jaeckle, who was insulted by Weiss’s lack of interest in the Mars Project.

Weiss was sharing a table with Stu Roberts on the far side of the wardroom. Roberts’s bony Adam’s apple was in constant motion, either from slurping his food or from whining about long-forgotten rock stars. Weiss looked as bored as a gelding at a stud farm, thought Dan with an amusement he barely could contain. If Weiss spends much more time with Roberts, he’ll beg to return Earthside. Not a bad idea. Maybe I should assign Roberts to escort him wherever he goes.

Jaeckle, Ramsanjawi, Oyamo, and Bianco ringed another table. A formidable quartet. Jaeckle orated, Ramsanjawi snickered, Oyamo listened politely, and Bianco drank it all in with a twinkle in his dark eyes. Good thing we’re in micro-gee, thought Dan. Otherwise the table might collapse from the combined weight of their egos.

Funny the way Bianco’s adapted to microgravity, Dan thought. Trikon’s Earth-bound medics had sent a long worried report about the old man’s ailments and medication needs. Yet since the moment he had come aboard the station Bianco had seemed strong, alert, healthier than some of the scientists half his age. Maybe it’s poetic justice, Dan said to himself. Bianco created this station; it’s treating him kindly. It’s as if he was always meant to be here.

Freddy Aviles was alone at an adjacent table. There was no sign of Lance Muncie or Carla Sue Gamble. More precisely, Lance Muncie and Carla Sue Gamble. Word was that the two towheads had fallen for each other.

O’Donnell sailed into the wardroom. He hastily prepared a tray at one of the galleys and joined Dan at his table. Dan had read Lorraine Renoir’s report on O’Donnell’s latest blood test. Negative. Dan felt relieved. Still, he found himself scrutinizing every movement of O’Donnell’s hands and analyzing every word of small talk.

“No darts tonight,” said O’Donnell.

“Work?”

“Yeah. I need to log more lab time.”

“Problems?”

“A few unexpected snags.”

“Sometimes it’s a good idea to step back when you’ve run into a wall,” said Dan. “Makes it easier to find your way round it.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” O’Donnell said. “Sometimes.”

There was a general shift in the wardroom crowd. Stu Roberts finished eating, to Aaron Weiss’s obvious relief. Oyamo rose from his foot loops, executed his patented micro-gee bow to each of his three dinner companions, then propelled himself toward the hatchway. Freddy Aviles checked his watch as if waiting for a train that was long overdue. After another minute, he departed as well. Three Japanese techs settled at a table adjacent to Weiss. They grinned at the reporter and he grinned back. Ramsanjawi and Bianco fell into a deep conversation that excluded Jaeckle and attracted the attention of Weiss from the far side of the room. The reporter stared at the scientists as if hoping to provoke an invitation to join them. Instead, Jaeckle moved across to Weiss’s table and started talking to him earnestly, urgently. Weiss stood it for a few minutes, then abruptly pushed himself away from the table and left the wardroom. Jaeckle glared after him.

In the midst of all the movement of bodies and clanging of trays, Lance entered the wardroom. His flight suit was askew and his hair was mussed as if he had just got out of bed. His skin was as pale as it had been his first day on board. But Dan paid less attention to these details than to the simple fact that Lance was alone. He looked at O’Donnell and mouthed the name Carla Sue. O’Donnell shrugged as if to say, Search me.

Lance hung in front of a galley for a full minute before attempting to remove a tray from the magnetized stack in the cabinet. He seemed to grab blindly at the first packets of food that his hands could reach, then stuffed them into the nearest microwave unit. He fumbled with the hot water jet, then missed his cup entirely and sent bubbles of scalding water spraying everywhere. All the while he kept glancing nervously in the direction of the entry hatch.

The bubbles of water floated up toward the overhead ventilator grill. The microwave pinged. Lance attached the meal to his tray and pushed himself away from the galley, still looking over his shoulder toward the hatch. There was one empty table and two others occupied by single people. But Lance chose the last available spot at the table with the three Japanese.

“You see what I see?” muttered Dan.

“Carla Sue’s dumped him?” said O’Donnell.

“I’d bet on it.”

“Do you think he realized she’s a shark?”

“That doesn’t take a hell of a lot of insight,” Dan said.

“It might for someone like Lance,” said O’Donnell.

Lance ate quickly and not very cleanly. The Japanese scrupulously ignored the fine spray of crumbs and gravy spiraling from Lance’s tray to the table vent. Lance suddenly grabbed the edge of the table. His stomach heaved and his cheeks puffed out like the throat of a bullfrog. He shot upwards, banged his head on the ceiling, then dove out the hatch.

“Young love gone bad.” Hugh shook his head sadly.

“What the hell,” said Dan. “Saves me from giving him some fatherly advice.”

Lance managed to keep his stomach under control long enough to reach the Whit in Hab 2, where he heaved a yellow-brown ball of gravy, bread, and bile into an airsick bag. This was his third attack since seeing Carla Sue and Jaeckle together. He wiped his face with a moist towelette and stared into a mirror. His normally cream-smooth skin was splotched and seamed like the surface of the moon.

When Lance exited the Whit, he found Lorraine Renoir waiting for him. He felt an immediate flash of anger.

“Commander Tighe sent you, right?”

“Actually not, Lance. I saw you rush in here. Are you okay?”

“No I’m not okay. I just puked like crazy.”

Lorraine reached out her hand to touch his shoulder, but he spun away. His arm slammed against the door of the Whit. The bang echoed throughout the module.

“Perhaps I should examine you,” she said.

Oddly, the impact calmed Lance. He was still angry at Dr. Renoir for meddling with his pain, but he found that stifling his anger was easier than swallowing back his dinner.

Lorraine brought him to her infirmary and told him to remove his shirt. His stomach, chest, and arms seemed terribly lean, as if he hadn’t eaten for a week instead of merely a day. Lorraine listened to his heart and took his blood pressure and stuck the end of a digitalized thermometer into his mouth.

“I believe you have a virus,” she announced.

Lance wanted to scream. He wanted to shout that he didn’t have a virus at all, that if anything he was heartsick at the thought of that bitch-woman Carla Sue lying to him, using him, and then betraying him. He was sick at the thought that right now she was with Jaeckle in her compartment, doing all the things she had done with him, that she had promised she would do with nobody else but him. What right did she have to draw him in, to use her body, to say the things she said? Didn’t words mean anything? Didn’t lovemaking mean anything?

But Lance kept quiet, partly because he didn’t want to call attention to his shame, mostly because he remembered Russell Cramer bellowing in the Mars module. He knew that if he said one word about Carla Sue, he would not be able to stop. He accepted a package of breath mints from Lorraine and nodded meekly at her admonition to stay in his compartment and drink plenty of liquids.

Lance slowly made his way back to Hab 2. Airsick bags billowed from his belt like animal pelts. People in the connecting tunnel stared at him with faces that looked like images in carnival mirrors. Lance felt another surge of anger, this time at the thought that everyone knew the real reason for his sickness. He crossed one arm over his stomach, tucked his chin against his chest, and pulled himself toward home with one hand.

Once inside his compartment, something stronger and more bilious than undigested food rose from his stomach to his throat. He punched his head into the sleep restraint.

“Bitch! You goddamned lying bitch!” he muttered into his dark cocoon.

He called her every filthy word he knew; every damning curse he had ever heard he spoke in the darkness, his voice murderously low, intoning anathema on Carla Sue like an ancient priest casting out a traitress, a villainess, a carrier of loathsome disease. He kept up his deadly chant until, exhausted, he fell asleep.

O’Donnell took Dan’s dinnertime suggestion to heart. But rather than return to the ex/rec area for a game of darts, he wandered into the Mars module. The observation blister was empty.

He had spent little time in the blister. The long hours he logged in his lab were more than enough solitude. On the few occasions he had signed up for R and R, he found the view to be overwhelming. He had heard about “second sight,” the unexplained ability of astronauts to discern increasingly minute surface features with the unaided eye, but he had not detected any improvement in his visual acuity. In fact, he rarely knew what the hell was down below. The real world did not display political boundaries and neatly lettered names trailing away from perfectly circular cities. But on this evening he knew exactly where he was: three hundred miles above the Andes, whose spiny backs looked razor sharp beneath the broken cloud cover.

One of those valleys corkscrewing through the green was the Huallaga, the coca-producing capital of the world. He remembered the short days and endless nights of his own addiction. He would read of the DEA or the border patrol seizing tons upon tons of cocaine discovered in safe houses or barns. The law of supply and demand should have pushed the street price upward after such massive seizures. But the price never rose; sometimes it even declined. Were the drug kingpins dumb? Did they fail to notice that oil companies routinely used the news of even a minor spill as a pretext for jacking up prices? No, O’Donnell finally had realized. There was so much shit around that a twenty-ton seizure was as annoying as a fly alighting on the back of a bull.

The Andes slipped below the edge of the wide window, their spines deepening in the dying sunlight. O’Donnell activated the control that closed the clamshell. The session in the blister had not lit a path around the wall that suddenly had sprung up in front of him. But he felt strong enough to resume bashing his head.

O’Donnell headed toward the lab by way of Hab 2. The turkey he had eaten for dinner had been tough and stringy. He could feel the strands between his teeth.

He anchored himself in front of a hand basin and worked his toothbrush over his teeth and gums. The toothpaste had a slightly milky taste and seemed grittier than usual, but he didn’t mind. The grittier the paste, the cleaner his teeth. He rinsed his mouth with a jet of water that he spit into the vacuum vent of the basin. He was ready to attack his lab.

A strange sensation coursed through his body. The air around him suddenly thickened to the consistency of gelatin. His legs went numb. His arms filled with sawdust. The aisle tilted upward.

By the time he reached his compartment, he felt as if a helmet had closed over his head. His vision diminished to a pair of blurry pinholes swimming in a sea of purple. He groped for the door latch and tumbled inside, crashing into the far wall with enough force to cause pain. But the impact of the metal on the base of his neck felt like a punch through a pillow. The toothpaste and brush bounced out of his numb hand, whirling in the suddenly dazzling light from the passageway outside his compartment. The light was so bright that it hurt his eyes. He pawed at the door until it somehow closed.

In a detached way he knew what had happened. Someone had slipped him some shit. Powerful shit, and a lot of it. He tensed his muscles, gulped air into his lungs, tried to keep those two blurry pinholes from dissolving into the purple.

But it felt so good. So damned good. Why fight it?

Fuck the lab, he thought. So what if I lose a day. So what if I miss the deadline. I’ve worked hard. So very very hard. I need to rest.

The words seeped slowly through his brain, like heavy oil through a ton of cat litter. They stretched like long, never-ending strands of taffy. All he wanted was to drift… and drift… and… drift…

The sound of laughter awoke Lance. He could not tell if it had been in a dream or real. His eyes snapped wide open in the darkness. His compartment felt like the inside of a coffin, too confined, too close to the other people who shared Hab 2. He heard conversations, laughter, music. He knew that if he could find a quiet place away from everyone else, he would feel much better. He eased himself into the aisle, still in his sleep-rumpled coveralls. At the aft end of the module, two Japanese techs spoke quietly as they waited to use the Whits. He did not return their waves.

The connecting tunnel was in its nighttime lighting mode. Circles of light played out from the hab and command modules. Lockers and compartments cast jagged shadows. Lance wanted to find the most secluded area of the station. He glanced at his wristwatch: 2107 hours. The ex/rec area usually was occupied well past midnight. The rumpus room was usually lit regardless of the hour. And the Mars module definitely was out of the question.

His eye caught a flash of movement. A lanky figure topped by a head of blond hair knifed through the alternating bands of light and shadow from the vicinity of the Mars module. Lance shuddered. She was coming. Carla Sue was coming. A thousand thoughts raced through his head, everything from tearful forgiveness to unbridled rage.

But Carla Sue proved to be a trick of the eye and the heart. As the figure moved closer, it resolved into one of the European techs. He waved cheerfully at Lance before turning into Hab 1.

Lance shoved off toward the labs. Jasmine was lit and occupied as usual, but both ELM and The Bakery were dark and empty. He decided on ELM for a start. He groped his way down the aisle and tucked himself into a cubbyhole beneath a workstation. He kept his eyes trained on the hatch. Occasionally someone flitted past, but no one entered. ELM was far more quiet than Hab 2, and for the first time since that afternoon he felt relaxed.

But he could not keep Carla Sue out of his mind. Eventually they would meet; the station was just too small. Scenarios played before his eyes like waking dreams. In each, he was a gallant warrior and she was a weak woman begging for forgiveness. His hair streamed in the wind and his narrowed eyes were fixed on a distant horizon while she clung to him from behind, weeping and bussing his shoulders with kisses.