Bones Burnt Black: Serial Killer in Space (17 page)

Kim jumped over the lintel and into the room. “What’s
going on here?”

“He’s dead!” Tina screamed, “Gideon’s dead!” and
immediately abandoned Mike to grab Kim in the same bear hug. She proceeded to
give Kim the same treatment she’d given Mike, except of course that Kim was not
tall enough to bang her head on the chair.

This freed Mike long enough to yell, “Where?”

Without looking, Tina pointed at one of the two large
windows—the control booth had one for each of the ship’s twin hangars.

Taking the three short steps to the window, Mike
directed his flashlight out into hangar number two: a large room with stainless
steel walls, big enough to contain two terrestrial school buses parked
side-by-side. At the center of the hangar’s floor, Mike saw a pod suspended
upside-down—from his viewpoint—by its docking grapples.

The pod was approximately level with the window. But
looking downward slightly, since the hangar had a ceiling fourteen feet high,
Mike saw the reason for the screams. Six or seven feet below the pod’s round
white hull, lying next to a pile of black plastic bags, Gideon was face-down in
a puddle of blood.

Still looking out the window, Mike asked, “Did you see
anyone?” By
anyone
he meant Nikita: the only person still at large.

Tina had become silent. Mike turned to look at her. She
had her face buried in the junction of Kim’s shoulder and neck; the shaking had
stopped but the rocking continued. Kim seemed to be trying to comfort her. A
muffled answer came out: “No.”

“Did you hear anyone?”

The muffled voice rose in pitch. “No.”

Kim frowned and shook her head at Mike.

Mike nodded back.
She’s going to start whimpering
again. Better wait before asking more questions.
He turned back to the
window.
We’re running out of decks. We’re running out of time.
He looked
at Gideon.
And we’re running out of people.

He felt a strange urge to punch the window. It wouldn’t
break; it was designed to hold tons of air pressure inside the control booth
whenever the hangar was in vacuum. Still, punching it would be every bit as
stupid as it would be futile.
Where are you hiding, Nikita?

Hoping for clues, he let his eyes wander around in the
hangar. They stumbled across red smears on the—
No, not smears.

On the ceiling on the far side of Gideon’s body, words
had been painted.
A poem?
He couldn’t see them well enough to tell.
Gideon’s torso hid some, and those he could see he couldn’t read from this
angle. He turned to Kim. “I think I see a poem in there. I’m going in.”

“It’s not safe. She might still be in there.”

“I’ve got to.” He glanced around the little control
booth. Storage lockers covered the wall on both sides of the door to the
horizontal hallway. Rummaging through them, he found a twelve ounce ball-peen
hammer. He swung it through the air a few times.
This feels like a weapon.

After closing and locking the door to the hallway—in
case Nikita was out in the hall—he gave Kim the traditional grim but determined
look. She returned it.

Pulling open the inner door on hangar two’s airlock, he
stepped inside, then closed and bolted the door behind him. There was no
difference in air pressure between the hangar and the control booth at the
moment so there was no need to run the airlock through its pumping cycles—a
good thing since, without electricity, the airlock’s controls, indicator lights
and pumps were all dead. Mike unbolted the outer door, swung it open, leaned
out and looked down.

Someone, Gideon most likely, had dragged two storage
cabinets—one large and one small—into place under the airlock door for use as a
crude staircase. Crude was the key word. The steps were terribly oversized,
averaging two feet in height, but were far better than nothing. Without them
there would be a six foot drop from the airlock door to the hangar ceiling
below.

Could it have been an accident? Could the words just
be smears of blood?
Mike looked at Gideon.
No. He’s too far away to have
died by stumbling down these stairs.

Stepping out of the airlock door, Mike eased his weight
onto the taller of the two cabinets. It swayed under him, but not alarmingly
so. He stepped onto the smaller cabinet. It didn’t sway at all. Stepping onto
the ceiling, he glanced nervously around the large room as he approached the
body and the poem.

There isn’t any place for a killer to hide in here,
except in a storage locker.
He looked up.
Or inside the pod.
The
craft’s little round hatch was closed.
I’d probably hear if it swung open.

He paused to look at Gideon before moving on to the
poem. From the puddle beneath Gideon’s head two parallel lines of blood flowed
toward the hangar’s large exterior door: one line was thin and flowed slowly,
the other was wider and flowed faster. Gideon’s skull had been crushed. There
were at least three wounds clustered together on the back of the man’s head
just behind his right ear.
Must have snuck up behind him and hit him with
something heavy.
Mike looked at the hammer in his hand.
Something like
this.

He glanced up at the pod’s hatch again, then looked
once around the hangar before reading the poem. It read:

Apollo is over

and Richard long dead.

Hair was my weapon,

still not enough said?

Hair was my weapon.
Mike’s shoulders drooped as
he sighed.
I guess there’s no room left for doubt: it’s one of the Apollo
Smugglers. And that can mean only one thing: they’re here to kill me; just me.
Anyone else who dies will die only because they’re in the way.

Mike didn’t like the tone of his thoughts. Once again
it sounded as though he were giving up; admitting defeat in advance. He stood
taller and looked around the room in defiance.
So it was you who killed
Richard; and now you’ve come for me. Well, maybe I’m not ready to die. Maybe
I’m going to be ready for you. And maybe, just maybe,
I’ll
be the one
writing the next poem.

Chapter Thirteen

Mike woke from a restless sleep filled with dreams that
ended inside a blazing fire. That he and the others were all going to die
during solar passage and that there was no way to prevent it or avoid it or
escape it was finally beginning to worm its way in through his thick skull.

He climbed to his feet but slouched rather than
straightening to his full height to avoid bumping his head on the pod suspended
upside-down directly above him. His caution was unnecessary. The pod did not
hang down low enough to be a danger. It missed him by three inches.

A day and a half of living in the nearly two gees of
deck seven, rather than exhausting Mike, seemed to have invigorated him, though
he felt slightly faint each time he stood up too quickly.

Opening his pocketsize, he whispered—to avoid waking
the two women sleeping in the pod—as he described a new simulation he’d just
thought of. As this simulation ran, he stared intently at the little display
surface and paced, but only within a very limited area of the hangar’s ceiling.
He was confined within a tent of black plastic garbage bags which he and Kim
had painstakingly taped together with gray duct tape.

Lopsided and irregular, the tent resembled a gigantic
cobweb. When viewed from outside, it appeared to be trying to swallow the pod
since one of its edges was taped in a large circle all the way around the pod’s
rear entry hatch. The rest of its edges were secured to the hangar’s ceiling,
floor and one wall.

Mike didn’t care how ugly it looked. It kept the pod’s
tiny lifesupport system from having to scrub carbon dioxide from all the air in
the great cavernous hangar. If the lifesupport machinery were to become
overworked enough to break down… Well, maybe even that didn’t matter. Not with
solar passage less than twenty-four hours away.

The flashlight Gideon no longer needed was now a floor
lamp near Mike’s feet. Its glow inside the tent was soft, almost shadow-less.
Most of its beam shone on the pod’s white hull above Mike’s head; the rest
traveled up past the pod’s rear hatch and hit the very topmost portion of the
tent: a few square feet of bare hangar floor.

As Mike paced the short distance back and forth, the
makeshift tent’s thin plastic walls bulged and waved slowly in response to the
shifting air currents surrounding his body. “Damn!” He stopped walking
suddenly. “That won’t work either.”

“Just as I told you,” his pocketsize said softly.

“Okay, Okay.” He started pacing again. “How about if we
all get in the pod, launch it out of the ship and use the pod’s mechanical arms
to hold a section of Corvus’s mirrored surface as a shield against the
sunlight?”

This proposal the pocketsize didn’t even dignify with a
simulation. “Assuming the mirror would reflect enough of the sun’s light to
provide meaningful protection—which it won’t—the pod’s mechanical hands, which
would be holding the edges of the mirrored section, would be unprotected. The
hands would absorb heat until they melted, and once melted the mirror would be
free to drift away or turn edgeways exposing the pod to the full heat of the
sun.”

“Damn.” Mike rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. “What
I need is a better shield! Maybe one that could melt and still provide—” He
stopped pacing, even stopped breathing. He became so immobile he could feel his
heart beating in his chest, it was the only motion within him, and it was
accelerating.

Of course! How could I have been so stupid?
He
made a fist with his free hand.
But will it work? Will it really, really
work?
He squinted and turned his head as though examining something with
his mind’s most critical eye. Then, already watching the simulation run inside
his own head, he whispered mechanically, “Pocketsize, I have a new simulation
for you.”

_____

Mike’s effort to remain quiet was unnecessary: the two
women were not asleep and not in the pod. As his computer ran a simulation of
his newest idea, Kim plunged herself and her immediate surroundings into
complete darkness by pressing a palm over the lens of her flashlight. Careful
not to make a noise—wearing only socks on her feet helped considerably—she
crept to the ninety degree bend in the horizontal hall outside the hangar’s
control booth and peeked around its corner.

A woman was walking away. Her shapely silhouette was
made visible in the darkened hall only because it obscured the oval of
illumination which swung lightly to-and-fro in her path. This oval originated
from the flashlight in her hand.

Watching closely, Kim remained alert: ready to pull
herself back at the slightest hint Tina might glance around and see her
following.
Where is she going? Why did she sneak out without waking Mike?
And why did she arrange the blankets to look like she was still sleeping?

Tina stopped and turned slightly.

Kim jerked herself back and held perfectly still, fully
expecting to see an oval of light flash across the hallway wall in front of
her. Her muscles tensed to the point of twitching. After thirty seconds of
nothing, she risked another peek around the corner.

Farther down the hall and walking away again, Tina
pulled a vertical hallway door open, shone her light inside, stepped in and
disappeared.

Is she going up or down?

Kim slid her flashlight’s lens across her palm until
its light was blocked by her fingers, then eased her index finger away from her
middle finger enough to let out a thin sliver of light—just enough to light her
way as she padded quietly down the hall to the vertical hallway.

The door was still open. After turning off her
flashlight, Kim leaned her head in while looking down and up, hoping to see
Tina’s flickering light before Tina spotted her.

There!
White shoes and bare legs climbed
steadily three decks away.
Looks like she’s heading up to deck ten. No,
eleven. No—
Kim yanked her head back.

Tina had stopped and begun turning herself
around—exchanging her feet for her head. She’d reached the center of the ship’s
rotation; beyond that point the gees would be reversed.

Leaning through the door again, Kim watched the top of
Tina’s bobbing head as the woman climbed all the way to deck fourteen before
exiting.

Kim slipped her flashlight into a thigh pocket, felt in
the blackness for a rung and started climbing. She counted the rungs to
estimate which deck she was on and paused periodically, feeling for doors, to
verify her count.

Maybe I shouldn’t be following her; at least not
alone. She might be in league with the killer. Hell, she might even
be
the killer.
Kim smiled.
Tina: a killer? She’s stupid, incompetent and
scared of every—
Kim frowned.
She doesn’t seem scared now. Why isn’t she
scared? She damn well ought to be. Stupid woman. Wandering around in the dark
with a killer on the loose.

The gee forces acting on Kim’s body gradually dropped
to zero. She’d reached deck eleven: the center of the ship’s rotation. Turning
herself around end-for-end, she continued traveling in the same direction,
though it now felt as though she were climbing down rather than up.

Kim felt along the wall for the door to deck thirteen.
When she found it she eased it open. If Tina came back suddenly, and it became
necessary to retreat, there wouldn’t be time to climb all the way back to deck
seven, and opening a door in haste might make a sound.

Deck fourteen’s door was ajar. Kim peeked through it
into a room that was dark except for a single oval of light which wandered
about and occasionally illuminated a pair of white shoes walking on the floor.
On this deck it was the floor upon which one walked. The centrifugal force in
this half of the ship—the lower decks—caused everything to fall in the
direction the ship’s architects might actually have called
down
.

The wandering light moved along the base of the cargo
doors on the far side of the room as though searching for something.

Cargo doors? Then why aren’t there any sunbeams?
Kim strained to see if the cargo doors had little round windows like those on
other decks and if so had the windows been covered but the darkness was much
too complete. She shrugged and returned to watching the movements of the oval
of light.

That Tina was seventy feet or more away eased some of
Kim’s nervousness and allowed her to notice things other than Tina—such as the
air. The air in this deck, Kim found confusing. The group had never visited
here, had never corrupted it by their prolonged communal breathing, yet it
smelled and tasted awful.

The wandering light found something: a lumpy pile of—
No, it was a body. Kim stared as Tina knelt and dug through its pockets.

Dead a long time, by the smell in here, but who is
it?

Tina moved its limbs and rolled it onto its side in
order to dig through more pockets. After removing two items, she stood and
directed her light onto the body’s face.

Jesus Christ!
A wave of sweat spread over Kim’s
back. It soaked through the wrinkled cloth of her uniform and, on contact with
the cool dry air, chilled her.
A redheaded woman! Mike said the killer is a
redhead named Nikita.

Kim’s arms began to shake so hard she feared losing her
grip on the rungs. The shaking wasn’t from the chill, but from her rising
panic. Hooking an arm over a rung, she held on by the crook of her elbow.
If
the redhead’s dead the only one left to be the killer is Tina!

Arms shaking badly, Kim began to retreat: climbing back
up toward deck seven.
Jesus, help me! Jesus, help me! Jesus, help me!

When she felt the gee force weaken, she knew she was
nearing deck eleven. She wasted a second or two glancing back at the door to
deck fourteen.
Jesus, don’t let me fall. Jesus, don’t let me make any noise.
And please, please, please, please, please; Jesus, keep me safe until I can
tell Mike.

_____

Tina felt no particular emotion as she stood over the
dead woman and casually examined the details of her face: dead eyes staring up
at nothing; mouth hanging limp; lips parted slightly, pale from lack of blood
circulation.

Stupid woman,
Tina thought.
I never thanked
you for running away. That was perfect. Everyone was so ready to believe you
were the killer. I wouldn’t have bothered hunting you down if I’d felt certain
that you would never return. But alas, that was a danger I could not risk.

Tina sighed.
Seven down; one to go.
Then she smiled.
Once I have him all to myself, that’s when the real fun begins. Once we’re
alone, then I get to watch him die: slowly, painfully.

She glanced about suddenly, thinking she heard a noise.
Listening intently, she scanned the room with her eyes open as wide as their
lids would stretch.

The scanning was useless. Her flashlight was still
trained on Nikita so the room was consumed in darkness. But she dared not wave
the light about for fear of directing unwanted attention to her wayward
wandering self, and especially to this room with its compelling evidence that
Nikita was not the murderer.

Tina’s fear eased when fifteen seconds passed without
additional noises to confirm the first. Looking down again, she resumed her
thoughts.
Thanks for the weapon, fool.
The revolver glistened, shiny and
new, as she lifted it into the light.
Probably never even been fired. Well,
I’ll fix that.

She paused to glance at Nikita’s eyes again and display
disgust.
Stupid woman.

To get a feel for its weight and power—two unrelated properties
which somehow seemed magically synonymous—she pointed the gun at several
imaginary targets in the dark. Smiling, she tossed back nonexistent long hair
and turned to walk to the vertical hallway.
Time to kill that stupid
Kirkland woman.

_____

Mike stopped pacing. “Of course it’s risky!” he
whispered to the pocketsize in his hand. “But what choice have we got?”

The pocketsize responded, “Do you think the others will
agree to something that in ten runs of the same simulation only ended in
survival three times?”

Mike shrugged. “Thirty percent is a billion times
better than zero.”

The computer did not attempt to refute this fact. “When
will you tell them?”

“If Kim’s awake, I’ll tell her now.”

A chain ladder hung down from the pod’s open hatch. He
grabbed a couple of its tubular rungs and climbed up five of them—just enough
to lean his head into the pod and see if Kim and Tina were still asleep on the
pod’s somewhat bowl-shaped ceiling.

The soft glow from the floor lamp below was all the
weaker for having to enter the pod through its hatch. But even in this dim
light Mike could see that Kim’s covers had been tossed aside, and that the pod
contained no Kim. Tina’s blanket on the other hand remained in place, and the
gently rolling hills it hid from view indicated as well as anything that Tina
was sleeping within, safe and sound.

Guess Kim couldn’t sleep. She must’ve woke before
me. I didn’t see her get up.

He climbed back down, stepped off the ladder and paused
to think.
Funny: I haven’t heard her walking around out in the hangar.
He stroked his cheek with his palm.
And I’ve been awake for over fifteen
minutes.

Pushing the tent flap aside reminded him how dark it
was outside, so he stepped back inside long enough to grab his flashlight. He
then searched the hangar: all around the outside of the tent and into each of
its dark corners. In one corner—the one far from both the airlock and the
hangar’s large outer door—he saw the blanket that hid Gideon’s relocated dead
body. But he saw no Kim.