Bones Burnt Black: Serial Killer in Space (5 page)

Mike was familiar with headups from their
manufacturer’s promotional campaign. They were a new type of personal computer;
one shaped exactly like a traditional pair of eyeglasses. A headup’s clear
glass lenses were capable of displaying full-motion color images over any or
all of its wearer’s field of vision, and displaying them in flawless 3-D.
What’s more, the display was completely private: no one could see it except the
wearer. After a great deal of advance promotion, headups had been marketed in
eighty-four cities worldwide. They proved to be even more popular than
expected. The initial supply had sold out in only one day.

“It was a gift. My mother sent it to me.”

“I’ve been wanting a headup for weeks. I was gonna’ try
to buy one as soon as we docked at Von—” He forced his eyes closed.
I’m off
track again!
“How much free memory does it have?”

“15 Gig.”

“How do you know?”

“It just told me.”

“I didn’t hear it say anything.”

“It has very small speakers mounted near my ears.”
Tina’s smile was fading into a bored and restless pout. The flirtation game was
over and her side hadn’t won.

“But you didn’t ask it.”

“I’ve instructed it to anticipate my need for
information.” She crossed her arms. “It heard
you
ask.”

“OK, OK.” Mike looked away from her. “Pocketsize, will
15 Gig hold the rest of the data?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Download the data and split the storage task
between you and Tina’s headup.” He looked at Tina. “If you have no objections.”

“No,” she said with a shrug. “That sounds reasonable.”

“Good.” He turned back to his pocketsize and started
pacing. “When you get the data I want you to look through it for anything that
can be used to rescue the captain and/or slow the ship’s tumbling. Maybe by
leaking a liquid or gas through some kind of exhaust port or something. See
what you can come up with. I’ll listen to even the wildest ideas.”

“Download is complete,” the pocketsize said. “I am now
searching the data, as instructed.”

Mike looked at Tina. “I suggest you have your computer
do the same.”

She stepped over a black fiber-optic cable to reach a
large rectangular ventilation duct covered with blue foam insulation which just
happened to be the perfect height to sit upon. She turned herself about and
sat. “It has already begun discussing its ideas with your pocketsize.”

“Good.” Mike looked up at the writing above their
heads. “I wonder if the poems—” but he was interrupted by a new voice coming
from his pocketsize.

“Michael Tobias McCormack,” it said, “this is the
ship’s computer speaking.” Its pronunciation was crisp, intelligent and matter
of fact—a genuine no-nonsense kind of voice. Its tonal range and level of
inflection were balanced exactly between those generally associated with men
and with women. It didn’t sound artificial or sexless but it could easily have
been mistaken for either a male or female voice.

Mike looked down at his pocketsize. “Yeah, this is
Mike.”

“The captain has recalled the assistant flight
engineer, Frank Walters, as you suggested. He will be joining you shortly.”

Mike continued looking at his pocketsize, though its
display remained black. “Where was he?”

“You were correct. He had been sitting in pod number
one, apparently doing nothing, for several minutes.”

“Figures. How’s Larry?”

“The captain has lost consciousness again. His
breathing is weak and I do not know the extent of his internal injuries. I am
trying to revive him by flooding the bridge with pure oxygen. If I cannot revive
him soon—or if he dies—command will fall to the only remaining crewmember: the
assistant flight engineer.”

Mike felt that same dark mist once again trying to get
into his throat. His voice took on an anguished, pleading tone. “We can’t let
Larry die. Is there anything I can do to help?” Mike’s free hand became a fist.
“Anything?”

“No,” the ship said. “At this point there is nothing
you can do for him.” But then it added something Mike had never before heard a
computer suggest as a serious option and never would have expected from a
machine. “That is,” it said, “unless you know how to pray.”

Chapter Four

Five minutes later, Tina—still sitting on her
foam-covered ventilation duct—was filing her nails with a nail file she’d dug
from the lowest depths of her travel case.

Mike stood with his back to her, hunched over his
pocketsize, watching as it ran simulated experiments of various ideas he and
the little machine had been discussing—ideas that were intended to slow or stop
the ship’s tumbling but which so far didn’t look promising.

The ship’s voice once again surprised him by coming out
of his pocketsize. “Mister McCormack,” it said briskly, “before the captain
lost consciousness he insisted that I show you all the recorded images of the
chief flight engineer’s work on the engines in the minutes before she was
thrown from the ship. Do you wish to look at them at this time?”

Mike wasn’t sure if he was ready to see what amounted
to Kim’s death. He tried to express this. “I’m not sure.”

“For some reason that I am not aware of, the captain
feels it is important that you, more than anyone else, understand how this
crisis developed.”

Mike swallowed hard. “OK. Show me.”

“Very well,” said the ship. “I will begin a few minutes
before the leak started—at 1:41pm, 13:41 Universal Time—one hour and twenty
three minutes ago. At that point the chief flight engineer was attempting to
discover why the engines had gone into automatic shutdown.”

The display on Mike’s pocketsize became a split-screen
view. One image was of Larry sitting quite normally in his command chair on
Corvus’s bridge; the other—actually a cluster of several overlapping
images—must have been what Larry saw as he looked up at the domed ceiling.

As far as Mike could tell the image cluster was composed
of at least four separate images: a status diagram of the ship’s subsystems; a
map of the Earth/Moon system with Corvus’s location and projected path within
it; a clock with a sweep second hand; and a pair of green-gloved hands
loosening the bolts on, Mike guessed, one of the ship’s fuel pumps.

These were definitely Kim’s hands. Her three vacuum
suits were the only ones aboard ship with green on them. Her suits were white
with green gloves, boots and decorative striping, while Frank’s were white with
yellow and Mike’s were white with red.

The view of green-gloved hands was approximately the
same view Kim must have been seeing herself, and was the only image of her work
the captain would have access to as long as she remained near the engines and
inside the rad-shield.

No digital cameras could be permanently mounted inside
the rad-shield. Video chips—indeed, any computer chip—if exposed to the
constant flux of gamma rays given off when the fusion engines were running
would quickly deteriorate into non-functional garbage.

Protecting the ship, and all those aboard, from this
gamma ray flux, was the rad-shield: a large gray object of foamed lead alloy
shaped like a shallow cereal bowl. A cereal bowl ten feet deep and fifty feet
wide—half the width of the ship.

Corvus’s twin engines sprouted side by side from the
rad-shield’s basin. If the shield was thought of as a valley, and one pretended
that the engines pointed upward, then it was easy to imagine that the engines
resembled a pair of large metal trees. In such a metaphor, each tree’s complex
root system was fully exposed and made-up of its hydrogen fuel lines, coolant
lines, valve actuator lines and hydrogen pre-heat lines; as well as the safety
valves, feed-pump and fuel filter. The two fusion chambers, being fat
cylinders, would probably be considered the tree trunks; and the huge exhaust
nozzles would have to play the part of the great spreading masses of leaves and
branches.

Flanked by an empty command chair on both his right and
left sides, the captain sat alone on the bridge. Mike noticed the captain
massaging his forehead with his fingertips as he watched Kim’s hands at work.

The image of Kim’s hands originated from a pair of tiny
cameras mounted on the communication headset she wore inside her vacuum suit
helmet.

The captain pursed his lips, then said, “Ship?”

“Yes, Captain?”

To Mike, the ship’s voice seemed smaller and farther
away than when it had been speaking directly to him only moments ago, yet both
times the same voice had emanated from the same little speakers in the same
little computer. Mike decided to ignore this and continued watching in silence.

The captain removed his fingertips from his forehead
and placed his hands on his padded armrests. Mike could tell from the way the
captain moved as well as from the way his clothes draped and hung on his body
that the bridge was in zero-g. The ship had not yet started tumbling.

The captain said, “Show me a diagram of a fusion
motor’s liquid hydrogen fuel pump.”

The image appeared on the dome.

“Enlarge it.”

It became larger.

“Animate it.”

Its moving parts began to move. There were only two: a
pair of toothed gears enclosed in a stationary housing. In the animation, the
two gears rotated in opposite directions; their teeth meshed between them.

“I don’t get it,” the captain said, as he stroked his
clean-shaven chin. “The thing’s so simple, how could it break down?”

“Is that intended as a rhetorical question?” the ship
asked.

“I was just mumbling.”

The ship responded with, “Captain, one of your
passengers is calling. Specifically: Tina Jennifer Bernadette.”

The captain smiled a tight-lipped little smile,
straightened the collar of his flight uniform and sat up taller in his seat.
“Put her through.” His voice sounded less gruff and less old.

A new image appeared on the dome and covered portions
of several existing images. It contained Tina’s head and shoulders and upper
torso. In it she was wearing a delicate yellow blouse, cut low enough to make a
man look, but not so low that he would forget to admire her many other
delightful features. She was not smiling.

This last fact did not slow Larry, he was now smiling
enough for them both. “Captain Lawrence Palmer speaking. How may I help you?”

“Captain, I’ve noticed that the engines have stopped.”
Her southern accent seemed even thicker than Mike remembered. “And I was
wondering if there was some kind of problem.”

The captain shook his head, gently. “Nothing serious.
We’ll be under power again within a few hours.”

“I hope this won’t cause us to arrive late. My schedule
is tight, already. If I miss my connecting shuttle to Earth, I’ll miss the
entire Nobel Prize ceremony.” It was now her turn to shake her head. “That
would be something we cannot allow.”

“Rest assured, Ma’am.” Mike’s eyebrows went up in
amazement. His old buddy sounded just like the sheriff in one of those western
movies from the days before 3-D. “We’ll have no trouble making up this little
delay and arriving at Von Braun on schedule. We can make up as much as a seven
hour delay without being late.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” Tina gave her head one good
shake as though tossing back long hair—an unnecessary gesture since her hair
was trimmed short. “I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that I fully expect my
mother to win the prize in biochemistry this year.”

“No, ma’am. I’m looking forward to watching it on
television myself.”

Mike smiled.
Liar! You wouldn’t sit through a sixty
second commercial of that kind of crap.

“Thank you, Captain. I appreciate your candor.”

“My pleasure. If you have any other concerns, please
feel free to call me.”

“Thank you again, Captain.” She ran the fingers of both
hands through her shimmering golden hair and tilted her head back as though she
enjoyed the sensation immensely. An alluring pose to remember her by? Perhaps.
“This is Tina Bernadette: out and clear.”

Her image disappeared from the bridge dome and in doing
so uncovered the image of Kim’s gloved hands exploring a fuel pump’s gear
teeth.

The captain frowned. “Kim, found anything?”

“No, Captain. Pump looks fine. I’ll put it back
together and check the filter.”

“OK, I’ll be monitoring.” The captain closed his eyes
and smiled, stupidly.

Mike scowled.
What’s he doing?
But it was
painfully obvious: he was attempting to memorize how Tina looked with her
lovely head tilted back and her delicate fingers running through her magical
golden hair. Mike wondered if Larry was going to tell the ship to replay the
closing frames of her message. He’d always known Larry’s head could be turned
by a pretty face, but he had no idea what an old fool Larry could be when he
really tried. Mike had no clue that sometimes he looked just as stupid.

“Captain,” the ship said, “the medsys is calling.”

“Oh? What in the world does that thing want?”

“It did not say.”

The captain shrugged. “Maybe somebody’s sick. Put it
through. Captain here. What’s up?”

No new image appeared on the dome. The call was
voice-only. “I am sorry, Captain,” the medsys said in a decidedly slow and
formal manner, “but it is my unfortunate duty to inform you that approximately
twelve minutes ago one of your passengers died: an engineer named Valentina
Cortez.”

The captain’s amazement shrank his voice down to a
barely audible whisper. “What?” He pulled himself forward in his big gray
command chair though there was, of course, nothing to see. “What happened?”

“She was poisoned. The substance used—sodium
cyanide—suggests the poisoning was planned in advance. What’s more, my own
analysis of her medical file indicates the probability of this having been a
suicide is less than three percent, which means there is a ninety seven percent
probability that you have a murderer on board this ship.”

The captain’s voice returned to its normal volume but
his tone was one of open disbelief. “A murderer?” But then he frowned and
rubbed his forehead with one hand as if his attitude was changing. Medical
computers aren’t known for leaping to ridiculous conclusions. If a medsys
believed something, it was usually true. “Is there any evidence as to who the
murderer might be?”

The machine described the wad of paper and clump of
hair it found in Val’s stomach, along with the message written on the paper and
the circumstances of Mike discovering her in her room and bringing her to
medical.

The captain’s big hands closed into fists. “You’ll
never get me to believe that Mike killed her! Never! I’ve known him for over
fifteen years. He’s one of the finest people you could ever hope to meet. And
solid as a rock: I’d trust him with my life any day of the week.”

Mike smiled.
Now there’s the Larry I know!

“I am not saying that Mister McCormack killed her. Only
that he had the opportunity, and that it is a bizarre piece of circumstantial
evidence that strands of his hair were found wrapped in paper inside her
stomach.”

The captain rubbed an elbow with the palm of his hand
then folded his arms across his chest. “Is there anything else you need to tell
me?”

“A few miscellaneous facts: I’ve begun an autopsy,
since there will be a formal investigation. The poison that killed Valentina
was taken orally no more than ten minutes before Mister McCormack called me.
There is no evidence of either a struggle or sexual assault. And finally—and
most importantly—I must recommend that you assume you are dealing with a
murderer. A murderer who may or may not be Michael Tobias McCormack.”

The captain took a deep breath and released it before
continuing. “I understand. Thank you. Captain: out and clear.” He took another
deep breath, then closed his eyes as he spoke. “Ship?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“There will be an investigation of this after we dock
at Von Braun. I want you to begin gathering whatever evidence you can. Archive
all the images and audio from the hallway camera data-recorders as well as all
the ship’s com channels. Oh, and be sure to lock Valentina’s cabin; we don’t
want anyone sneaking in there and tampering with physical evidence. Coordinate
all this with the medsys. It may have other evidence-gathering ideas that will
need following up.”

“I understand.”

“Good.” He opened his eyes. “Where’s Mike now?”

“In his cabin.”

The captain did not ask what Mike was doing. The
privacy act of 2022 prohibited permanently mounted cameras inside a person’s
private quarters. Instead, he said, “I want you to monitor everyone aboard this
ship—both passengers and crew—for any suspicious behavior. Watch the hallway
cameras and the com channels and listen to the intercom system.”

“Com channels are generally scrambled for privacy.”

“I know. Unscramble as much as you can, but record
everything. I want every shred of data that might turn out to be evidence
stored and archived for the investigators regardless of whether it’s clear or
scrambled.”

“As you wish.”

The captain stared at the image of Kim’s hands working.
She had already put the pump housing back together and carefully torqued each
bolt in accordance with its official specifications. She had then begun taking
apart the filter housing. This was a cylindrical object one foot long and eight
inches wide which resembled a miniature automobile muffler. She was now
removing its filter elements, but there was something else in there. Something
dark with an irregular shape. Something about the size of Kim’s hand.

Again, the captain pulled himself forward. “Kim, you
found something?”

The dark object became larger as she pulled it out and
brought it near her face. “Yes, Captain.” She sounded confused. “This seems to
be the problem right here. The filter’s clogged with these little fibers.” She
pinched the dark mass and tugged a few dozen strands away from the rest. “Looks
kind of like hair.”

Mike’s eyebrows went up.
Hair clogging the fuel
filter? That’s how Richard died!
He tried not to remember walking through
the shredded remains of Richard’s prospecting ship, but the images were too
strong. The unburned wreckage had been scattered across a wide lunar plain.