The Trikon Deception

3 SEPTEMBER 1998 TRIKON STATION

Dan Tighe announced over the intercom that all Trikon personnel and Martians were free to leave the rumpus room. Everyone quickly obliged. Most of them were still in the connecting tunnel when Dan and Freddy guided a groggy Hugh O’Donnell out of the command module.

Everyone stopped and flattened against the tunnel walls, staring. No one asked a question; no one spoke. Everyone was too unnerved by the sight of O’Donnell, trussed and helmeted, with his eyes rolled back in his head and his mouth trailing tendrils of drool.

“Aft bulkhead,” said Dan as they squeezed through the entry hatch of the rumpus room. Lorraine Renoir and Lance Muncie, who had joined the procession along the way, followed them inside.

Dan secured his bonsai animals while Freddy hooked a strong arm around O’Donnell’s waist. O’Donnell grimaced and groaned but did not break through into full consciousness until after he was tethered to the bulkhead.

“…the hell …” he muttered. His gummy eyelids opened. “Dan… Doc… what the hell?”

“That’s what we want to know,” said Dan.

“Feel like shit.” O’Donnell shook his head as if testing the limits of a headache. Then he realized that he was bound. “Why am I tied?”

“Aaron Weiss is dead,” said Dan.

“Huh?”

“Murdered. A broken neck.”

“What?”

“Outside your lab. Sometime around midnight.”

“So what…” Realization flickered in O’Donnell’s eyes. “Dan, you don’t think—”

“Doesn’t matter what I think. Constellation will be here in a few days with a team of investigators. They’ll do the thinking.”

“My job…”

“You’re finished with it.”

“But—”

“You did it too well, if you ask me.”

“There is another factor,” said Lorraine. “The fentanyl you ingested.”

“Fentanyl? What?”

“No sense lying about it,” said Dan. “We tested your blood. You had enough in you to send half the station into never-never land.”

“But I didn’t—”

“Save your breath,” said Dan. “I’ve already made my decision. You’re staying right here until Constellation arrives. Then the investigators will take over.”

He spun away and motioned for Freddy and Lance to join him at the far end of the rumpus room. O’Donnell looked at Lorraine. Without his glasses, his eyes seemed small, watery, pleading for help. Lorraine bit her lip.

“You knew the rules,” she said.

“Someone must have slipped it to me.”

“You can’t charm your way out of this one,” she said. “Sorry, Hugh.”

Like all the others, Fabio Bianco had been stunned by the announcement of Weiss’s death. But when he saw the station commander towing Hugh O’Donnell, bound and unconscious, down the tunnel toward the rumpus room, Bianco immediately leaped to a conclusion: Weiss had been murdered and O’Donnell was suspected of being the killer.

Making his way slowly back to his own cubicle, Bianco played the evidence of his eyes over and over again in his mind. Weiss was too young and healthy to just suddenly die of natural causes. The reporter was not in the best of physical condition, true, but the flinty look on Commander Tighe’s face clearly said that Weiss had been murdered. And O’Donnell was bound hand and foot, like Samson taken by the Philistines.

Murder. Aboard Trikon Station. Murder in this haven of peace and scientific research. I created an Eden for them and they have fouled it with the most heinous crime imaginable. Murder. Here. On my station.

By the time Bianco reached his compartment he could hardly see for the tears that filled his eyes.

Chakra Ramsanjawi gazed down the length of ELM through the open door of his office. There was little activity in the module. Scientists and technicians occupied the various workstations, but no one was doing anything constructive. Some stared at blank computer monitors or at racks of colored vials. Others whispered to each other. Death is like that, thought Ramsanjawi. It sobers people quickly.

The death had sobered Ramsanjawi himself, though not in so philosophical a manner. He was scheduled to report to Sir Derek, and for the second consecutive time he had no data to send. The pace of research had not merely been choked off to a trickle; it had screeched to a halt. He had hoped Aaron Weiss would discover something significant, perhaps a cache of data that O’Donnell had been hiding. Now he had nothing, not even Weiss. And every possible avenue of espionage had been sealed by Tighe.

Ramsanjawi removed a tiny booklet from its hiding place at the rear of a storage compartment. The booklet contained the code Sir Derek had devised. He placed it under his kurta, then looped a leather belt around his waist. Ramsanjawi swam through ELM without acknowledging any of his underlings. The two public telephones in the command module were unoccupied. Ramsanjawi sealed himself into one of the booths and unhooked the sleek handset from the wall. It was dead. He tried the handset in the other booth. That one was dead as well. He poked his head out the door. The only person in sight was the doctor, Lorraine Renoir, who was just exiting her office.

“These telephones are not operating,” he said.

“All the comm links are blacked out until further notice,” said Lorraine.

“Is that wise?”

“It’s Dan’s order,” she said.

She dove out the hatch before Ramsanjawi could say another word. He ignored her rudeness. Engaging the female doctor in an intelligent conversation about station procedures would have been a futile activity. He sank back into the booth and contemplated the pitfalls that had suddenly opened in his path. The pace of research had fallen off; O’Donnell, undoubtedly the culprit, had been “arrested” and his lab sealed; Aaron Weiss, the contact he had cultivated, was dead; and now the phones were shut down.

He remembered a boyhood Christmas, soon after his arrival in England. Sir Walter had ordered motorized bicycles for both Derek and Chakra, but the merchant had cocked up the order and delivered only one. Sir Walter was properly angry at the merchant and properly embarrassed in front of the two boys. He suggested that they take turns at riding the bike on the path that wound through the gardens behind the manor house. Derek rode first and relinquished the bike after one tour through the garden. However, his subsequent turns lengthened until he completely disobeyed his father’s admonition to share the toy. Chakra turned to Lady Elizabeth. She placed her arm around his shoulder and smiled down at him.

“Derek is silly,” she said. “Be patient. Good things happen to those who wait.”

Those words had followed him into his manhood. Her assessment of Derek was correct, but the rest seemed to be pure rubbish. His experience had not borne out the idea that good things happened to those who waited. He had waited and he had been royally screwed up the arse, swearing fealty to the adopted brother he despised in order to return to his rightful place. His last chance might now be slipping away. He already was too old to wait.

Dan found Fabio Bianco waiting for him in the command module. The old scientist looked as shriveled as a dried pepper as he hung in a micro-gee crouch outside the door to Dan’s office. He smoothed his hairnet over his wispy tonsure.

“May I have a word with you, Commander?”

“I was hoping for the same with you.”

“I suppose we have an even exchange,” said Bianco.

Dan anchored himself in front of the communications console, realizing even as his feet slipped into the loops that the desire to attach himself to something solid was becoming a habit. He wondered what the psych-types on the ground would think.

“Okay, Professor, who should begin?” he said.

“I defer to you,” said Bianco. “In this realm, you outrank me.”

Dan grunted in cautious agreement. “You probably gathered that I am holding Hugh O’Donnell under suspicion of murdering Aaron Weiss.”

“I had assumed as much.”

“I also suspect that O’Donnell’s work was the reason. That is, Weiss wanted to investigate it and O’Donnell wouldn’t let him.” Dan paused to gauge Bianco’s reaction to his words. He saw nothing. The old man was as blank-faced as a Mafia don in front of a Senate investigating committee.

Tighe continued, “No one seems to know exactly what he’s doing here: not me, not Dr. Renoir, not the American scientists, not the ground. Do you know?”

“I regret that I do not.”

“You’re the Trikon CEO and you don’t know what O’Donnell’s doing here?”

“I am CEO, not Il Duce,” said Bianco. “There are things that pass under even this nose.”

“I suspect he is working on an experiment to test how people in orbit react to certain drugs.”

“Trikon is conducting no such work,” said Bianco. “That I can say with confidence.”

“I didn’t say Trikon, Professor.”

Bianco shrugged. “I am very saddened about Mr. Weiss. He was a good man. Had you ever seen him on television?”

“A long time ago,” said Dan, sensing that Bianco had dug in his heels.

“He struck me as someone who could be very diligent in his pursuit of the truth, though not always well advised in his actions. He was learning something up here. I could see it in his eyes when we spoke. They started out as laughing eyes, as if nothing we did here could impress him. But he was impressed, Commander. He was in awe of our work.”

Dan mumbled noncommittally.

“You do not seem overly concerned with our work here, Commander Tighe.”

“I didn’t sign on to conduct experiments, Professor.”

“What did you sign on for?”

“Uh-uh, Professor. You’re not going to get me to say that this is the last frontier. The last perfect environment where man still can dream and all that crap.”

“Isn’t it?”

“It is and it isn’t.”

“I agree with you, Commander. Our work is what it is and Aaron Weiss’s untimely end is what it isn’t.” Bianco smiled. “I did not come here to trade philosophies with you. There is concern among our coordinating scientists. I told them I would request a meeting with you.”

“Is that why you wanted to see me?”

Bianco nodded.

“No need to be so formal, Professor. I’m at your disposal.”

The meeting took place in the area outside Dan’s office and included the three coordinating scientists, Bianco, and Kurt Jaeckle. There was some discussion among the scientists about whether Jaeckle should be allowed to participate since he technically was not a Trikon employee. Bianco pointed out that Jaeckle’s presence could be helpful because he had been on the station longer than any of the other scientists. So Jaeckle remained.

As the meeting was about to begin, Freddy Aviles poked out of the utilities section. Dan motioned for him to stick around. Thora Skillen was the first to speak.

“We have requests and recommendations regarding this newest development.” She had been the most strident in her dislike of O’Donnell, and she fairly quivered as she fought to contain her I-told-you-so grin. “We had to rearrange The Bakery to accommodate O’Donnell’s lab. And as you know, space is at a premium.”

“His lab is not to be disturbed in any way until the investigators arrive on Constellation.” Dan nodded toward Freddy. “My crew will enforce that order. Anyone violating it will be sent down on Constellation. I don’t care who it is.”

Dan looked to Bianco for support. Bianco picked up on the cue and nodded.

“And after that, I assume O’Donnell’s lab may be dismantled,” said Skillen.

“Lab space is an issue for Trikon, not me,” Dan replied.

Hisashi Oyamo raised his hand. “What about O’Donnell’s data?”

“The data would be ours,” said Skillen.

“With all due respect, I disagree,” said Oyamo. “First, O’Donnell has been treated as an outcast the entire time he has been on Trikon Station. Second, this project is a cooperative effort, which indicates that whatever data he has obtained should be shared.”

Everyone’s eyes instinctively turned toward Bianco.

“I am not sure who would be entitled to O’Donnell’s files,” said the old scientist. “It should be subject to prior review.”

“Do we hear you correctly?” asked Oyamo, plainly astonished. “Fabio Bianco, the champion of international cooperation, siding with the Americans?”

“I have not sided with anyone,” Bianco said. “I simply expressed doubts pending a further determination.”

Oyamo turned toward Chakra Ramsanjawi. The Indian had been completely silent since the meeting began. His kurta was belted and his clasped hands rose and fell with each breath that passed through his nostrils.

“What do you think?” asked Oyamo.

Ramsanjawi looked for a long moment at each of his Trikon colleagues. He deliberately ignored Jaeckle, Dan, and Freddy.

“I defer to the wisdom of Professor Bianco,” he finally said.

Skillen and Oyamo started to protest, but Dan cut them off.

“Is there anything else that concerns me or the crew?” he said.

“There is,” said Jaeckle. “What precautions have you taken to protect us from O’Donnell?”

“He is bound and tethered to the aft bulkhead of the rumpus room. That’s where he’ll stay. He also has a full-time guard.”

“You had Russell Cramer bound and tethered and guarded,” said Jaeckle. “And you saw fit to have him drugged, too. And he hadn’t even killed anyone.”

“Different situations,” said Dan. “At the time, we thought Cramer was suffering from Orbital Dementia, and the medical officer sedated him to prevent any injury to himself and others. O’Donnell ingested a huge amount of fentanyl. Lorraine believes sedation at this point could be harmful.”

“What do you mean that you thought at the time Russell Cramer was suffering from Orbital Dementia? Was there another cause for his behavior?”

“I meant exactly what I said.”

“You mean you don’t think so now?” Jaeckle pressed.

“What I think and why I think it is no concern of yours.”

“Russell Cramer is one of my people.”

“Russell Cramer is no longer aboard this station, which makes him completely irrelevant to this discussion,” said Dan. He pulled loose from his foot restraints and glided toward the open doorway of his office. “Any other requests or suggestions?”

No one said a word. The only sound was Jaeckle snorting angrily at having been rebuffed.

“Good. I have work to do.” Dan pulled himself through the doorway and slid the door shut. He was pissed off himself. A few moments later, as the voices of the scientists receded toward the tunnel, he thought about his reference to Lorraine. In connection with Russell Cramer, she was “the medical officer”; now she was just Lorraine. He wondered what the psych-types on Earth would think about that.

Activities in the Mars module had returned almost to normal. Cautious, fearful talk about the murder of Aaron Weiss soon enough gave way to more animated discussions of Mars-related experiments. Kurt Jaeckle, however, felt anything but normal as his mind circled endlessly within the narrow confines of his office. Unlike his colleagues, neither Mars nor Aaron Weiss was uppermost in his mind. His main concern was Carla Sue Gamble.

Throughout his entire life, Jaeckle always had been careful in his dealings with women. His watchword was power. Never allow a woman to have power over you. Be charming and gallant, witty and intelligent. But never reveal the part of yourself that is most important to you. Knowledge is power, and what every woman wants is power over men.

Now Carla Sue had the power. She had disguised her all-consuming jealousy as a desire to travel to Mars, but the fact remained that no one wanted—no one deserved—to stand on the surface of the red planet as much as he. And now, in this empire that bore the imprint of his hand, in this first way station on his lifetime journey to Mars, he was being victimized by the most primal of human instincts.

The communications blackout might actually be beneficial, he thought as he cracked his accordion door for a peek at the module. He had time to reason with Carla Sue before she could set any foolish plan in motion.

Jaeckle closed the door and booted up his computer. Carla Sue had been working on a long-term project of trying to cultivate terrestrial bacteria in samples of Martian soil returned by the unmanned space probes. The purpose was to determine if earthly life-forms could survive under the subzero temperatures and desert-dry conditions on Mars. If they could, it would be important evidence that native life might exist in those frozen red sands. It would also be a warning that astronauts from Earth could contaminate the planet’s soil with their own microbes.

Her progress seemed to vary in direct proportion to his interest in her. It had lagged seriously during his ill-fated affair with Lorraine Renoir.

Jaeckle summoned Carla Sue’s project files to his computer screen and hastily reviewed her work. A thrill coursed through his body. The microbe-growing project was completely stalled. He quickly tapped out a message for Carla Sue to report to his office immediately. She did not acknowledge, but two minutes later there was a sharp rap on the doorjamb.

Carla Sue had her hair pulled back and knotted, which made her face resemble a beachball with a face painted on it. It was not a happy face as she eyed Jaeckle with her arms folded in front of the hint of breasts that puffed out her uniform shirt.

“I think we have a problem,” said Jaeckle. “I’ve been reviewing your microbe contamination project. Your work has been inadequate.”

“In what way?” said Carla Sue. “I surely haven’t conclusively proved that bacteria can grow under Martian conditions. But I didn’t expect to at this point. You didn’t expect it, either.”

Jaeckle fought the impulse to wince as Carla Sue spat an almost exact quote back in his face. He immediately reversed field.

“That isn’t the point,” he said. “You haven’t logged any tangible results in the past several days.”

“The hell I haven’t, Professor Jaeckle.”

“The computer doesn’t lie,” said Jaeckle, directing her attention to the screen with an arrogant wave of his hand.

Carla Sue squinted at the data display. “That’s all wrong.”

Jaeckle laughed. Without asking permission, Carla Sue brushed past him and quickly typed in a set of commands. The screen changed several times, showing page after page of fresh data.

“You obviously didn’t look at my work very closely, did you, Kurt?” she said. “I guess even my scientific work is yesterday’s news in your book.”

Jaeckle’s embarrassment blossomed into raw anger. He envisioned his face on supermarket tabloids, the brutality and depravity of his private life at once trumpeted and trivialized along with stories of UFOs, alien kidnappings, and Bigfoot. He grabbed her by the shirt just above the bump of her breasts.

“Listen to me, goddammit!” he hissed.

Carla Sue, six inches taller, managed to slip a foot into an anchoring loop. She brought her hands up between Jaeckle’s arms and, with a snap of her wrists, broke his grip. He sailed backward into the rear partition of the office.

They stared at each other—Jaeckle with the horror of realizing he had just lost his composure, Carla Sue with a measure of sad understanding, even pity. She opened the door and slipped out of the office.

Jaeckle did not pursue her. There was no sense in losing his dignity in front of the rest of the Martians. He waited until he knew she would be at her workstation, then keyed an urgent, heartfelt apology into his computer. The stress of the mission was beginning to take its toll, he stated. He was only human.

The more he typed the better he felt. Grabbing Carla Sue was not the end of his world. It was a minor faux pas, something he certainly could repair with politeness, a few well-chosen words, an exaggerated respect for her scientific abilities.

He almost convinced himself.

Fifteen meters away, Carla Sue saw the apology gushing across her screen. She had realized when she embarked on her gambit that her position among the Martians would be changed forever. But she was surprised that Jaeckle had overreacted so quickly.

She wiped Jaeckle’s words from the monitor and stared at her keyboard, wondering whether she should respond.

You’ve already rolled the dice, Carla Sue, she said to herself. You’re in this for the duration.

Her fingers moved across the keys: YOU HAVE JUST PROVEN LAVERNE NELSON’S ALLEGATIONS.

Satisfied, she transmitted the words to Jaeckle.

Now I need to get me some protection, she thought.

O’Donnell did not even attempt to speak during the first few hours of captivity in the rumpus room. His body seemed to be processing the last remnants of the fentanyl in spasms. At different intervals his limbs went numb, his vision blurred, and his whole body shuddered.

In between these episodes, he tried to piece together what had happened. The last thing he remembered was brushing his teeth. The toothpaste had tasted funny, and as an ex-coke addict he knew that the gums were efficient at absorbing drugs into the bloodstream. But the method was less important than the motive. Who would want him drugged? Did that same person want Aaron Weiss dead? And why?

By the time O’Donnell felt well enough to speak, Lance Muncie was on guard duty. Lance did not come very close, preferring to hover near the variable-gravity centrifuge. Although nothing seemed to occupy him other than his thoughts, he pointedly refused to meet O’Donnell’s eyes. Still, O’Donnell decided to venture a question. “What happened, Lance?”

“I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

“Who told you?”

“Commander Tighe. It’s his orders.” Lance pulled himself to the other side of the centrifuge.

“You mean you people are going to keep me tied up here and no one’s going to tell me what’s going on?”

“You already know.”

“The hell I do.”

“I can’t talk to you.”

“Then listen to me. Dan thinks I killed Weiss. Now why would I do a thing like that?”

Lance did not answer. He positioned himself on the carpeted surface of the jogging track and began to run. He moved slowly at first with bent legs and a stooped torso.

“You know me, Lance,” continued O’Donnell. “We did the Cape together. We bounced around in the Vomit Comet together. We flew up here together. Do I look like a person who’d kill someone?”

Lance’s strides grew longer and more fluid. His posture straightened as he gained speed.

“Just shake your head, Lance. If you can’t say I didn’t do it, at least let me know you hear me.”

But Lance ran on. His thundering feet created such a racket that O’Donnell gave up trying to prod him into conversation. Lance eventually slackened his pace. He hunched forward and bumped the heels of his hands against the running surface to dampen his momentum. As Lance drifted in a long lazy circle around the inside of the track, O’Donnell noticed Carla Sue hovering in the tunnel. Lance saw her at the same time.

“This module is off limits,” he snapped.

But Carla Sue squirmed her sleek body through the hatch.

“Lance, I just need to see you for a minute.”

“It’s off limits,” he said. “No exceptions.”

“Well, you’ll just have to make an exception for me.” Carla Sue pulled up in front of him and arranged her lips in a pucker. Lance dodged her kiss.

“My, my, we’re all business, aren’t we?” she teased.

“What do you want, Carla Sue?”

“I was scared, what with all this talk about murder and such.”

“There’s nothing to be scared of.” Lance nodded in O’Donnell’s direction as if to say the situation was under control.

“Well, I was worried about you.”

“Worried about me?” Lance blurted.

“Why, yes,” she said, rubbing both hands along his biceps. “I know you’re a big strong man, but I worry just the same.”

“You can’t stay here,” Lance said. He was virtually pleading.

“I’ve booked an hour in the observation blister,” she whispered, patting his chest. He grabbed her wrist, then quickly released it.

“Okay, Lance,” she said. “I won’t trouble you none. But when you’re off duty, come to the blister. I’ll be waiting.”

She gave him a quick peck on the cheek and flew out of the room. O’Donnell could see that Carla Sue’s visit had shaken Lance. His face was flushed as if he had just been sitting in front of a raging fire.

“What’s she into you for?” called O’Donnell.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You remember the bartender at the Cape,” said O’Donnell. “He said Carla Sue belonged to Jaeckle.”

“She does not.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know about that,” said O’Donnell. “But he made sense when he said to keep away from Carla Sue.”

“She’s okay,” Lance said.

“If she’s so okay, why did you chase her out of here?”

“Orders.”

“Orders my ass. If I had someone like her puckering those lips at me, I’d forget orders pretty damn quick,” said O’Donnell. He paused to let the words sink in. “Unless of course I thought she was using me too.”

“She’s not using me,” said Lance.

“I guess you’d know,” O’Donnell said with a smile.

Lance suddenly flew at him. He crashed into O’Donnell’s chest with his shoulder, then grabbed two wads of O’Donnell’s shirt.

“You think it’s funny, huh?” he yelled. “You think it’s funny she used me!”

Lance braced himself on the floor and punched O’Donnell squarely in the stomach. O’Donnell’s head snapped forward. A gasp of saliva shot out of his mouth and the top of the helmet banged against Lance’s cheek and jaw, opening a large red gash.

“Son of a bitch!” screamed Lance.

O’Donnell felt Lance’s knee explode into his groin. Stars obliterated his vision, and he sagged away from the bulkhead as far as the tethers would allow. A hand grabbed his chin as if lining up his head for a haymaker.

“Lance!”

Through his blurry vision, O’Donnell saw Dan and Freddy hurtling toward them. They pulled Lance away.

“What the hell is going on here, Muncie?” Dan barked.

Lance sniffed back a wad of snot and tamped his sleeve against the gash on his face.

“He suckered me, sir. Said he couldn’t breathe and wanted me to loosen the tape a little. When I tried to, he butted me with his head.”

O’Donnell was gasping desperately, eyes rolling with pain. Could he be that crazy? Dan asked himself. Start a fight with his hands tied? Can drugs scramble your brain that badly?

“You damn fool,” Dan said to Muncie. “Go get cleaned up.”

By midafternoon, the people on Trikon Station had returned to a semblance of their normal daily routines. Stanley relieved Freddy, who had relieved Lance, and accomplished the tricky maneuver of feeding O’Donnell from a collection of squeeze bottles. O’Donnell, still smarting from Lance’s attack, meekly cooperated.

At 1500 hours, Dan called Lance and Freddy to his office. He had attended several meetings, both in person and over his comm link Earthside, since the discovery of Weiss’s body early that morning. He hoped that this one would be the last.

“Keeping O’Donnell in the rumpus room is causing logistical problems,” he said. “And some of the scientists are concerned for their own safety.”

“Like who?” Freddy asked.

“Jaeckle, for one.”

“Wimp,” said Freddy. He looked at Lance and nodded.

“Maybe he has a valid point for a change,” said Dan. “Anyway, I’ve decided it’s best to move O’Donnell.”

“Where to?” said Freddy.

“The observatory.”

“Ain’t that going a little too far?”

“Not after this latest incident,” Dan said. “Putting him in the observatory poses the fewest logistical problems and requires the least manpower,”

“Hokay,” said Freddy. It was obvious he disagreed with the decision, but it was just as obvious that Dan would not be swayed. “Who gonna move him?”

“I don’t want to leave the station and Stanley’s had some EVA problems lately. That leaves you two.” Dan leveled his steel-eyed gaze at Lance. “There will be no repeat performance, right?”

Lance stared at the floor.

“There will be no repeat performance even if O’Donnell provokes you. Correct, Mr. Muncie?”

“Correct, Commander,” said Lance without raising his eyes.

“Get going,” said Dan.

Freddy dispatched Lance to the wardroom to assemble a four-day supply of food and water. Meanwhile, he toted an EMU into the rumpus room and started to prepare O’Donnell for transfer.

“I gonna release you,” said Freddy as he snipped the duct tape with a pocket scissors. “You fuck aroun’ and what Lance did to you feel like a massage. Right?”

“Sure, Freddy, no fucking around,” said O’Donnell. He watched the suit tumbling slowly in the air behind Freddy, like the victim of an ax murderer: disembodied head, legless torso, disconnected legs. “Where are we going?”

Freddy pulled a pair of eyeglasses from his shirt pocket and handed them to O’Donnell. “To look at the stars.”

They initiated the transfer procedure as the station passed out of the Earth’s shadow, to take full advantage of the light. Freddy was the first to exit the airlock. O’Donnell, with tethers attached to his suit, was second. Freddy gripped the tethers while Lance backed in to one of the six MMUs docked to ports along the outer skin of the tunnel. Then Freddy backed into one of the flying armchairs and felt its latches click into place against his suit. O’Donnell was not to be given his own MMU. Freddy and Lance pulled him along between them.

Jesus Christ don’t let go of me, O’Donnell begged them silently. He gaped at the emptiness that stretched out forever, the gleaming Earth so far below, the black infinity of space swallowing his tiny frail being. His breath caught in his throat. He could hear his pulse thundering in his ears. He saw himself spinning into the dark yawning void endlessly, spiraling out into nothingness, cast away until the end of time. For the first time he could remember since childhood, Hugh O’Donnell found himself praying.

But Freddy and Lance held him firmly for the several minutes it took to cover the two hundred meters between the raft of modules and the observatory. As they slowed to a stop outside the airlock, Freddy radioed Lance to remain in his MMU while he took O’Donnell inside. Lance acknowledged with a thumbs-up.

Freddy and O’Donnell sealed themselves in the airlock, waited for the pressure to equalize, then opened the inner hatch to enter the observatory itself. Freddy was more familiar with space suits than O’Donnell and removed his helmet quickly. O’Donnell tried to detach his own and spun into a tumble. Freddy eventually pried it off, dislodging O’Donnell’s glasses in the process.

“So this is exile,” said O’Donnell, reattaching his glasses and looking around the cramped quarters. He shuddered slightly, remembering his terror outside. “It’s cold in here.”

“I gonna level with you, man,” said Freddy. “I know you didn’ kill Weiss.”

“Thanks for your confidence, Freddy. Why the hell am I here, then?”

“Commander don’ wan’ you hurtin’ anyone.”

“Like Lance? He attacked me, pal. That kid is nuts.”

“Well, he ain’t gonna attack you no more,” said Freddy. “You an’ me got a big problem, man.”

“You’re half right, anyway.”

“I’m all right. I’m with Welch.”

“You’re what!?”

“With Welch, man. I’m supposed to watch you. Make sure you do your work. Make sure no one fuck around with you. And we both fucked up, man. You because you had that shit stuffed down your throat, me because I didn’ stop it.”

“This is a helluva time to tell me!”

“Orders, man,” said Freddy, unhappily. “They don’ want you to know you got a security man with you. They figure you give us both away if you knew.”

“Shit,” O’Donnell muttered.

“In spades.”

“What exactly happened?”

“Don’ know exactly. I found Weiss outside your lab aroun’ 0115 hours. He already dead and somebody, maybe him, tried to get in your lab by removin’ the hinges. I fix the door and hide Weiss in a canister in the logistics module until I figure out what’s goin’ on. Then I look for you. You trashed in your compartment. I din’ know why, so I fix you in your restraint and hope you wake up. Lance found the body and Tighe called everybody into the rumpus room. When you don’ show, we go look. I found you where I left you, but you still trashed.”

“So why does Dan think I killed Weiss?”

“You the best bet, far as he can see. He knows your lab tampered with and found a button ripped off Weiss’s shirt outside it.”

“That won’t hold up as evidence.”

“We ain’t in court, man.”

“So who do you think did it?”

“Don’ know. Same guy gave stuff to Russell Cramer, prob’ly.”

“How did you know that Cramer had drugs in him?”

Freddy tapped his temple with a finger. “I had a talk with Cramer before they sent him down. He wasn’ much help. I think he got it directly from Roberts. But I don’ know where Roberts got it from.”

“Roberts? That twit?” O’Donnell said. Then he took a breath. “I guess there aren’t too many possibilities.”

“There’s enough. We don’ have much time.”

“Say that again. So someone tried to fuck me up because they know what I’m working on.”

“Maybe. Anything possible with these lulus.”

“Weiss?”

“Nah. Too stupid. An’ we ran a check on him. Somebody use him, if you ask me.”

“What about my lab?”

“Sealed it myself. Copied all your computer files, then crashed the system.” Freddy patted his chest to indicate the disk. “Rest of the stuff a problem. Skillen wants the space. Oyamo wants the data. They all think you working on the toxic-waste superbug. But no one doin’ anything till the shuttle get here.”

“Then what?”

“Don’ know. I gotta have a little talk with Bianco, case things get outta hand later. Meanwhile, I gotta report to Welch. Make sure he can get some friendlies on the shuttle.” Freddy thumbed an encryption chip from his flight suit pocket and pressed it into a slot on the comm console. “This’s the only link I left open, besides Tighe’s down in the command module. You wanna talk to Welch?”

“Nah,” said O’Donnell. “I never liked the bastard.”

While Freddy reported the situation to Welch, Lance remained parked outside the airlock. He was suspended between the dazzling beauty of the Earth and the cold, star-specked darkness of the firmament, but he paid little attention to either view. Freddy seemed to be taking an awfully long time in the observatory. Maybe O’Donnell had tried to overpower him and right now they were banging around inside.

Lance felt a tingle as he remembered his own battle with O’Donnell. The sensation was not unlike what he had felt with Carla Sue, before she proved to be a dishonest, lying, cheating slut. He had not merely punched O’Donnell. He had smote him as if his own hand were the hammer of God.

Lance decided to swing around to one of the observatory windows. His right forefinger accidently touched the MMU’s pitch control, and a jet of cold nitrogen gas sent him into a tumble. Blue-white Earth and deep black space flashed past him like a giant stroboscope, bright-dark, bright-dark, until he nudged a series of opposite thrusts to arrest himself.

Wow, he thought, that was fun. He jetted away from the observatory and tried it again. And again. And again.