Murder in Orbit

by Bruce Coville

  Well, not quite on my own.

  I got up off my rock and went to make that phone call.

  I fiddled with a dial on my desk. When the focus on my wall screen improved, I punched a long series of numbers into my terminal.

  The WAIT message flashed on the screen. I settled in to do just that while the computer processed my call.

  I felt better now that I was here in my own room, surrounded by my own things. I suppose that just goes to show that no matter how far we stretch out into space, we’re still basically territorial creatures. I sure know that I am, anyway.

  A bell sounded, and my grandfather’s lean face appeared on the wall. His hair, which had once been as red as mine, was shot through with gray and white. His green eyes creased at the corners as he smiled a welcome. It was good to see him, and I appreciated again the inexpensive colony-to-Earth communication system the ICE Corporation provides for us. It’s just good business, of course—one of those little things they figure will keep us from going space-wack. Even so, I get a kick out of being able to call a quarter of a million klicks for less than it costs most people on Earth to call across town.

  “Rusty!” said Grampa happily. “I didn’t expect to hear from you at this time of day.”

  Usually I called Gramps later in the evening; his evening. Our days and nights are totally artificial. Fortunately for Gramps and me, ICE-3’s time system is only a few hours different from his.

  “I’ve got a problem,” I said.

  One of the things I appreciate about my grandfather is that he takes me seriously. “I’m all ears,” he replied.

  After I told him what had happened, he rubbed his hands together gleefully. “That’s the most fascinating thing I’ve heard in ages!”

  “It may be fascinating,” I said. “But it’s got me plenty worried!”

  The grin he had been trying to control faded from his face. “Sorry, Rusty. You know how I love a good mystery.”

  “I love them, too—when you write them. But I wanna tell you, it’s a lot more fun reading about some poor guy finding a body than it is to actually find one yourself.”

  “I see what you mean. And you can’t get anyone up there to take you seriously? Have you talked to your parents about it?”

  I didn’t have to say a thing. I just looked at him.

  “I see what you mean. Well, I guess you’d better go see Dr. Puckett.”

  My jaw dropped. I looked at him in astonishment. “The Dr. Puckett?”

  “Of course. He’s an old friend.”

  Chapter 5

  Dr. Puckett

  My grandfather called back during dinner to tell me that Dr. Puckett had agreed to see me.

  Since rumor had it that the man chewed up research assistants for breakfast, the idea made me so nervous I could hardly settle down all evening.

  I wandered around my bedroom, looking for something to distract me. I tried watching the news from Earth, but it was the same old stuff: food riots in England, another notch up on the worldwide pollution index, and more whining from an increasingly powerful bloc of South American countries that had declined to participate in the original ICE pact and was angry now because the colonies were becoming successful and it didn’t have any of the action.

  I switched off the screen and took out one of my grandfather’s books, the first in his famous “Macdonald of Terra” series. But even the swashbuckling space adventures of Lieutenant James D. Macdonald (“And don’t capitalize the d in Macdonald, buddy!”) couldn’t keep my mind off what I was going to have to face in the morning.

  Finally I crawled into bed and spent some time using the meditation techniques my grandfather had taught me. They must have worked, because when my bed started shaking in the morning (alarm beds are great if you sleep as deeply as I do), I found myself trying to wake up—which meant I must have actually fallen asleep at some point.

  Two hours later I was standing outside Elmo Puckett’s office, trying to get up the nerve to go in.

  After the second time I had counted to ten, I took a deep breath and rapped on the door.

  “In!” yelled a pleasantly feminine voice.

  I opened the door and floated through. For reasons known only to Dr. Puckett, he had chosen to locate his office and living quarters in the colony’s hub, where there was virtually no gravity. It was supposed to be a privilege, but considering what a pain in the neck it is to maneuver in those conditions, I thought it was more like a punishment.

  I decided his choice of locations probably had to do with his research—which just goes to show you how wrong a guy can be.

  “You must be Rusty,” said the wildly beautiful woman who was floating in the center of the room. She was probably referring to my name, but she might have been referring to the awkward way I was moving in the null-grav situation. “My name is Dr. Chang. I’ll tell his nibs you’ve arrived.”

  Dr. Chang—Helen, as she later told me to call her—had jet-black hair, enormous amber eyes, and smooth skin the color of an almond shell. Her lab coat did little to hide the fact that she had curves an engineer would have given his eyeteeth to have designed. An odor of flowers seemed to cling to her, though it was tantalizingly faint. She flashed me a dazzling smile, left what appeared to be a test tube full of blood floating in midair, and touched a button on her belt. A puff of air moved her gently toward the door at the rear of the office.

  When she disappeared through that same door, I took the chance to look around.

  I had never seen so many books in my life! Every wall was covered with them. And I do mean every. Since there was no gravity here, there was no need to have a place to walk. Obviously Dr. Puckett had decided that under the circumstances a floor and ceiling were just a waste of good space. So he had put bookshelves everywhere except in the spaces used for doors.

  I’m fairly used to null-gravity situations, but this was a new one to me. It was weird to look up and see shelves full of books hanging over my head—especially since no matter which way I turned the situation remained the same.

  I was trying to make my way to one wall to look at some of the titles when Dr. Chang reappeared and said, “Dr. Puckett will see you now.”

  I could tell by the look on her face she was somewhat curious about that. After all, part of Puckett’s mystique was his inaccessibility.

  Without another word she recovered her test tube, which was still floating where she had left it. Then, using her air mechanism, she propelled herself through a door off to my right.

  I was alone in the room. Dr. Puckett was waiting for me behind his door.

  But getting to him was easier said than done. Unlike Helen Chang, I was not equipped with an air pack. I imagine I must have looked something like a wounded frog as I paddled myself across the room. I stopped when I got to his door.

  Should I knock, or just go in?

  That may seem like a stupid thing to worry about. But when you’re dealing with a living legend, you want to do things right. Feeling like an idiot, I floated beside the door, dithering over what was the best approach. Finally I figured I’d rather be safe than sorry, and knocked.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, come in!” bellowed a voice from the other side. “I haven’t got all day!”

  So much for etiquette.

  I took a deep breath and touched the sill. The door slid into the wall, and I pulled myself into the room.

  Even my sometimes overactive imagination hadn’t prepared me for what was waiting inside.

  The center of the room was occupied by an enormous desk. When I say center, I don’t mean the middle of the floor. Dr. Puckett’s desk was in the true center of the room—which means it was floating midway between the ceiling and the floor. It was anchored in place by floor-to-ceiling cords that kept it from drifting too far in any direction.

  Unlike the first room, this one was not totally covered by books. They took up only four walls. One of the remaining walls was given over to diplomas, citations, and photographs. The other w
as made entirely of glass and looked out onto the hub’s popular null-gravity swimming pool, where about a hundred people were splashing around and alternating between floating in the water and floating in the air.

  To tell you the truth, I don’t know if I really saw all that then, or if I just picked it up later. I do know that most of my attention was taken up by the man floating behind the desk. Dr. Puckett was the biggest man I had ever seen.

  Dr. Puckett. How can you describe a man like Elmo Puckett in just a few words? He deserved a whole book. (“Book!” I can hear him snort. “It would take an encyclopedia to do me justice!” The most annoying thing about statements like that is that they’re true. Though it took me a while to realize it, Elmo Puckett wasn’t a raging egomaniac. He was just realistic.)

  Anyway, the first thing you noticed about Elmo Puckett was his size. I found out later his height was just a centimeter shy of a full two meters. When you figure that he packed a hundred and fifty kilograms onto that frame, you begin to get the picture.

  He had thinning white hair. His skin was very fair—though his nose was crisscrossed by a small highway map of thin red veins. His eyes were a shocking electric blue.

  “So, you’re Simon McPhee’s grandbrat,” he said, shoving himself away from the desk.

  The desk quivered, held in place by the anchor ropes. Dr. Puckett himself floated backward to the window, bounced off at an angle, hit another wall, and then, using one of the anchor ropes for a brake, came to a stop a few feet in front of me. It sounds simple, but if you’ve ever maneuvered in a null-grav situation, you have an idea of how much skill it took to pull it off.

  I was appropriately impressed.

  “People call me Rusty,” I said, putting out my hand.

  “I can see why,” replied Dr. Puckett, glancing at my carrot-colored hair while he reached for my hand. “I’d offer you a seat, but as you can see, it’s not really necessary.”

  I took his hand. It was enormous, and mine almost disappeared inside the cool flesh. My eye caught a set of deep brown stains on his fingers.

  “Tobacco,” said Dr. Puckett, following my gaze. “I used to be a heavy smoker. Still would be, if I could find someone up here who would grow me some of the stuff.”

  I was amazed. Tobacco is illegal out here, of course. But most people are so disgusted by the very idea of smoking that the law is considered almost frivolously unnecessary. I couldn’t believe someone would actually want to do that.

  “So, what’s the emergency?” asked Dr. Puckett. He reached behind him, grabbed one of the anchor ropes, and flipped himself backward over the desk, managing to end up just about where he had started. “Your grandfather, old coot that he is, was very mysterious when he contacted me. He tells me very good things about you, by the way. I’d chalk that up to prejudice but for the fact that Antoine Twining also speaks highly of you.”

  My heart sank. I had been counting on Gramps to clear the way for me by telling Dr. Puckett what had happened. Would he believe the story I had to tell him?

  I took a deep breath, then blurted, “I think there’s been a murder in the colony.”

  As soon as the words left my mouth, I winced in anticipation of his disbelief. To my surprise, he rubbed his beefy hands together and cried, “That’s the best news I’ve heard in weeks!”

  I was shocked by his callousness. “You call that good news?”

  “You misinterpret me, Rusty. It’s not a piece of good news, but a good piece of news, if you take my meaning. Now, why don’t you fill me in on all the gory details? Let’s see if you’ve inherited any of your grandfather’s flair for storytelling—not to mention his taste for the bizarre.”

  Before I could even take a breath to start, he interrupted me. “Wait! I have a couple of people I want to hear this.” He pushed a button on his desk. “Helen. Cassie. I want you.”

  Notice—no “please” or “if you’re not busy.” Just “I want you.”

  It was like a fantasy in stereo. Within seconds doors on either side of me slid open and two incredibly beautiful women came floating into the room. The one on my left was Dr. Chang. That meant the one to my right had to be Cassie. She was about half a head shorter than me, with shoulder-length blond hair tied back in a ponytail (less trouble in null-grav situations). The look in her eyes, which were very large and very blue, seemed to indicate that she took everything quite seriously. It was balanced by a little quirk that pulled at the corner of her mouth, seeming to indicate just the opposite—that she saw everything as an enormous joke.

  Other than the fact that she seemed to be about my age, she might have been the model for half a dozen of my grandfather’s heroines.

  I just didn’t know there was anyone who looked like her running around in the real world.

  I glanced at Dr. Puckett. He shrugged. “Awful, isn’t it? I mean, if having one beautiful female scientist as an assistant is a cliché, then having two is just wretched excess. But good gracious, boy, if the colonial management is willing to indulge my fantasies, who am I to turn them down? Just don’t tell your grandfather about this. He has a hard enough time with the fact that we’re up here and he’s not. If he knew what my lab partners look like, the jealousy would probably kill him.”

  “Shut up, Elmo,” said Dr. Chang.

  Dr. Puckett sighed. “Anyway, as you can see, it’s not an unmitigated paradise. Now, why don’t you go ahead and tell us your story.”

  I hesitated, half expecting him to interrupt me again. He didn’t, so I launched into a recital of the terrible things that had happened to me the day before.

  When I got to the part about my trouble with the man from Dispute Management, Dr. Puckett began to smirk. I slowed down, half offended, half confused.

  “Sorry,” said Dr. Puckett. “I was distracted by a stray thought.” He waved his hand as though dismissing it. “Please, continue with your story!”

  I did. Right up to the point where my grandfather had surprised me with the information that he and Dr. Puckett were old friends.

  “I used to give your grandfather technical advice for his stories,” said Dr. Puckett, sounding rather self-satisfied.

  “Anyway,” I finished, “he said you were the best man in the colony for me to contact about this mess.”

  “I’m the best man in the colony, period,” said Dr. Puckett. “But we’ll let that pass. Your grandfather’s instincts were on target. The fact of the matter is, I’m probably the only person in the colony for you to contact. No one else would believe you.”

  “But why not?” I cried.

  Dr. Puckett shrugged. “You’re a kid.”

  I started to protest, but he waved it away. “I know everything you’re going to say: You’ve got a license, you’ve been accepted into the mentor program, you’re involved in genuine research. That’s all very nice, but it doesn’t make any difference. We’re not talking reality here, Rusty, we’re talking perception. And in the eyes of anyone who has any power out here, you’re still a kid. Whether that’s fair or not is irrelevant. You just have to recognize it as a fact and move on from there.”

  “If all that’s true, then why do you believe me?”

  He spread his hands and grinned. “Because I’m smarter than they are!”

  Helen Chang groaned. “Elmo, you’re impossible.”

  “No, just highly unlikely. But that’s beside the point. The question at hand is: How do we go about solving this mystery? Anyone have any suggestions?”

  “I’m sure you have several,” said Cassie. It was the first time she had spoken since entering the room, and her voice had a slightly acid quality to it.

  “What a sweet child,” murmured Dr. Puckett. “Always comes in right on cue. Indeed, Cassiopeia, I do have suggestions. I just thought I would give my right-hand persons a chance to go first.”

  “Fine. Then I’d suggest we turn this over to the proper authorities and get on with our real work.”

  I felt myself bristle. “Brilliant idea. We just
leave some murderer wandering around up here while idiots like Jones pretend nothing has happened.”

  Cassie’s blue eyes flashed. “Look, Buster,” she snarled, “just because your grandfather happens to be an old chum of Elmo’s doesn’t mean the rest of us have to believe your hallucinations.”

  “Hallucinations!” I yelped. “Listen, you—”

  “Children, children!” cried Dr. Puckett. “Let’s not squabble. It offends my delicate sensibilities.”

  “You have the sensibilities of a warthog in heat,” said Dr. Chang.

  Dr. Puckett ignored her. “Now,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “I think the first thing we should do is finish our introductions. After his story, you all know something about Rusty. Rusty, the stunning scientist of Eurasian descent to your left is Dr. Helen Chang. Helen has three things that make her of great value to me: advanced degrees from Harvard and the University of Beijing; a brilliant understanding of Materials Management and Environmental Biology; and a high degree of tolerance for my nonsense. The lovely young lady to your right, who is serving an internship as my research assistant, is named Cassiopeia Jones.” He flashed me a wicked grin. “I believe you’ve already met her father—Dyvach Jones, the colony’s director of Dispute Management.”

  If Dr. Puckett’s desk hadn’t been floating in the center of the room, I would have crawled under it to hide.

  Chapter 6

  The System

  What do you do in a situation like that?

  Apologize? (“Gee, I’m sorry I called your father an idiot.”)

  Grovel? (“Ohmigod, I didn’t realize. I’m so embarrassed. Ohmigod!”)

  Bluster? (“Okay, so he’s your old man. He’s still a jerk!”)

  Not feeling comfortable with any of these options, I chose to stammer. (“B-duh, b-duh, b-duh …”)

  It wasn’t pretty.

  Dr. Puckett finally came to my rescue—but only after he had let me swing in the wind for a while.