Murder in Orbit

by Bruce Coville

  “Well, these little things happen,” he said cheerfully. “The important thing is not to let them affect our working relationship. Now, if the four of us are going to work together to solve this mystery—”

  “Elmo!” cried the beautiful Ms. Jones. “You aren’t taking this dope seriously?”

  Dr. Puckett rolled on as if she hadn’t said a thing.

  “—then we’ll have to set aside our petty differences and act as a team. Helen, you will be my second in command. Rusty and Cassie, you will do the legwork. As for myself, I will do what I do best.”

  “You’re going to annoy people?” asked Dr. Chang sweetly.

  Dr. Puckett refused to rise to the bait. As if it had been a perfectly innocent question, he replied, “No, I am going to think.”

  “Heaven help us all,” muttered Dr. Chang.

  Cassie didn’t say a thing. She didn’t need to. It was clear from her scowl what she thought of this whole affair.

  “Now,” said Dr. Puckett, “what are the three major strands in a puzzle like this?”

  “Suspect, motive, and method,” I replied at once, having been well trained by my grandfather.

  Dr. Puckett nodded serenely. “Very good, Rusty. So we start by asking ourselves: ‘What do we know about these areas right now?’ The answer, unfortunately, is: ‘Not much.’ If we discount Rusty, we don’t have any real suspects. Neither do we have a clue as to motive. And if we assume that the victim was not still alive when he got tossed into that tank of acid—a fate I wouldn’t wish on more than about a hundred people I know, most of them lawyers and politicians—we don’t even know how the poor chap was done in. In fact, we don’t even know who he was. Hell, we don’t even have a body.”

  “Sounds hopeless,” said Cassie.

  “Exactly!” said Dr. Puckett cheerfully. “Which is what makes this such a fascinating puzzle. Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother with it.”

  “So how do we start?” I asked.

  “By taking unfair advantage of my position,” said Dr. Puckett, in a tone of voice that indicated he truly relished the idea. “Since I have Priority One access to the computer, we’ll do a few searches that you wouldn’t be able to accomplish elsewhere. First we’ll verify what Cassie’s father told you. Helen and Cassie, I want you to work on that. It will probably take a fair amount of time, even with our capabilities.”

  Glancing at Cassie, he caught the look on her face and said, “Ah, I see. It’s not that I don’t trust your father, my dear. However, it is possible that there is something going on that he is not privy to, something we might spot at a higher access level than he has.”

  “He’s got the highest access level possible,” said Cassie.

  Dr. Puckett pursed his lips, rolled his eyes slightly, but said nothing.

  Cassie sighed. “Got it,” she said.

  “Good,” said Dr. Puckett. “Now, while you two are working on that, I plan to set Rusty up with a program that will help him construct an image of the person he saw in the tank. But first I want him to fill us in a little on the structure of the Waste Treatment system.”

  “You mean how it works?” I asked.

  “Not the chemical process,” said Dr. Puckett. “I helped design that. What I want to know is how stuff gets there.”

  “Well, most of it is carried in by pipelines that run from the buildings. There’s a whole network of them between the colony’s outside and the inside shells.”

  Dr. Puckett nodded. “Pretty standard stuff. But since it’s clear our man was neither washed down a drain nor flushed down a john, he must have gotten into that tank some other way. It’s possible somebody actually lugged the body through the streets and into the treatment facility. But I don’t really believe that’s what happened. They’d be too exposed. So the question is, if you wanted to get something as big as a human body into the system, what would be your options?”

  I stopped to think for a moment. “I guess you’d use one of the bulk collection points.”

  “How many of those are there?” asked Dr. Puckett.

  “About a dozen.”

  “Where are they located?”

  Well, you get the idea. That was the way things went for the next several minutes. The funny thing is, by the time we were done, I understood the system better than I ever had before. It wasn’t that I learned anything new—heck, I was the one providing the information. But Dr. Puckett’s questions forced me to organize what I knew, to really think about how the system worked.

  I’ll spare you the details and just give you the important parts:

  ICE-3 is divided into six sections, which are marked off by the spokes coming in from the Hub. Three of the sections are agricultural; the other three are used for business and housing. Each residential section is paired with an agricultural section, and each pair shares a Waste Treatment Facility.

  We had a dozen bulk drops for the business and farm areas in our sector. Our WTF also serviced three of the orbiting substations—including the BS Factory. Waste material came from the substations in large canisters and was then ejected into tubes that conveyed it to the decomposition tanks.

  While I spoke, Dr. Puckett tapped away at his keyboard, muttering to himself things like “stupid design work” and “I really should have gotten involved in that.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Elmo, show us what you’re looking at,” said Dr. Chang.

  Dr. Puckett looked up. “Sorry, Helen. I forgot you were there.”

  Dr. Chang made a little snort, which I took to be a comment on her boss’s manners.

  Dr. Puckett touched a button. The back wall of the office, the one that looked out over the swimming area, went dark. Almost at once it was covered by a large schematic diagram of the Waste Treatment system.

  “Thank you,” said Dr. Chang primly.

  Dr. Puckett grunted something that might have been “You’re welcome,” but probably wasn’t. He fiddled with the computer for another minute, then turned his attention back to me. “Important question: How long do you think the body was in the tank before you spotted it?”

  I closed my eyes and did some calculating. “Maybe fifteen minutes,” I said at last. “Based on its condition, not more than that.”

  Dr. Puckett nodded. “And what time was that?”

  I grimaced. “I was supposed to report to work at noon, but I was twenty minutes late. I had been there about ten minutes when I spotted the body. So it would have been around twelve-thirty.”

  “Last question: Is access to the bulk drops open or restricted?”

  “Semirestricted. You have to punch in your personal ID to use one. But they don’t require private pass codes or anything like that.”

  “That’s all right,” said Dr. Puckett. “As long as people have to punch in a valid personal code, we can get a record of who used them. It’s going to take a while to work through the timing on this, but I ought to be able to get a handle on who was using the system at the right time yesterday.”

  Cassie spoke up. “If someone really wanted to get rid of a dead body—and I’m not saying anyone did, because I still think this whole thing is screwy—but if someone did, is it likely he or she would have used a personal code? I mean, that would be worse than leaving fingerprints all over the place.”

  Dr. Puckett shrugged. “It depends on a few things. For example, if the body was deposited by someone who frequently used the Waste Treatment system, there wouldn’t be anything suspicious about it. If it was put there by someone else, the odds are he or she didn’t use their own code.”

  Cassie looked shocked. “But you can’t use someone else’s code. They’re secret!”

  Dr. Puckett tsked. “Don’t be so naive, my dear,” he said gently. “It happens every day. The thing is, ninety-nine percent of the time when someone’s code number is abused, it’s done by someone else well known to that person. So while a list of who used the system may not give us our killer, it should certainly help us narrow down our search. Since we’re
starting with 25,000 suspects, that seems like a worthwhile thing to do. Now, man your battle stations. We’ve got work to do!”

  Chapter 7

  Make a Face

  I followed Helen and Cassie out of Dr. Puckett’s office, back through the book-lined waiting room, and into the compound’s private research facility.

  I was properly impressed. Space is at a premium out here (kind of ironic when you think about it), and while none of us is really cramped, we all have to make some concessions in the way we live.

  I was beginning to find out that Elmo Puckett didn’t make concessions. His lab was enormous, filled with banks of computer terminals, dozens of monitors, and enough equipment to make it look more like a supply house than a working laboratory.

  “What do you do with all this stuff?” I asked in astonishment.

  “A little of this, a little of that,” said Helen with a shrug. “Elmo has a lot of interests.”

  Maybe being involved in this mystery was making me suspicious of everyone, but I had a feeling she was being purposefully vague. I pushed the thought away. The last thing I needed right now was another mystery.

  Following her instructions, I stationed myself at a terminal and logged on. When Dr. Puckett established contact with me a moment later, Helen moved away to work with Cassie on their assignment.

  Following Dr. Puckett’s instructions, I quickly became engrossed in a program that was very much like a game. When I described it to my grandfather later, I learned it was just a high-tech version of a technique police have used for decades: the composite picture.

  Here’s how it worked: I would select a facial feature—a nose, for example. Then the screen would display several noses, all sizes and shapes. I would study them and indicate the one that seemed most like the nose of the man in the tank. (Considering the condition of his face when I first saw him, this wasn’t always easy.) The surprising thing was, not only did the program help me create a picture of the face, it actually seemed to work as a memory jogger. The longer I worked, the more clearly I was able to recall what I had seen in the tank the day before.

  Unfortunately, recalling and re-creating turned out to be two different things. After about an hour I had chosen a facial shape and filled it in with eyes, nose, and mouth. But while each individual item looked about right, for some reason I couldn’t get the picture to come together. I was starting to get pretty frustrated. Fortunately, the program had several fine-tuning mechanisms. By fiddling with the proper dial, I could adjust the distance between the eyes, or the width of the nose. If I didn’t like the change I made, I could just turn the dial back, and the image on the monitor would readjust itself—which is a lot easier than erasing and starting over on paper.

  Even so, I finally got so fed up that I began goofing around with the most refined image I had managed to come up with. (Of course, I saved it first, so that I could go back to it once I was done feeling so cranky.)

  I started by enlarging the nose. It wasn’t long before I had the poor guy looking like a pelican. Not a very respectful way to treat the deceased, I guess, but I figured it wouldn’t make that much difference to the poor guy at this point. Next I began playing around with his skin color, and then his ears. Soon I had this really wonderful lop-eared, blue-skinned creature on the screen.

  That was when Cassie came up behind me and looked over my shoulder.

  “So, that’s what the poor guy looked like,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Well, it shouldn’t be too hard to find out who he was. I doubt there were many people in the colony with a face like that.”

  That was what she said. The underlying meaning, easy enough to read from the tone in her voice, was much simpler: “Mister, you are some kind of jerk!”

  “I was just taking a break,” I said lamely. “Here, let me show you what I’ve really done.” I typed in a command to erase the embarrassing results of my frustration, then pulled up the real picture.

  “Well, at least that one looks human,” she said with a shrug.

  I was trying to decide if I should ignore her or scramble around in my head for some withering reply when Dr. Puckett’s voice broke the uncomfortable silence developing between us. “Meeting in my office in ten minutes!” he announced from a speaker somewhere in the lab.

  (That was a bit of a relief, to tell you the truth. I was having a hard time coming up with a withering response.)

  “It shall be as you wish, O Great Master Who Must Be Obeyed,” answered Helen. “Come on, Cassie. We’d better tie up what we’ve done before we go face the next wave of Elmo-isms.”

  A silence settled on the lab as we all worked to finish our assignments. I did a last brush-up on the image of the man in the tank, then ran off four copies on the color printer. All in all, I thought they were a pretty good likeness.

  I was gathering them out of the printer tray when Helen tapped me on the shoulder. “Come on,” she said. “It’s time to face the living ego.”

  Dr. Puckett was smiling as we floated into his office. “I trust you have all had a successful morning,” he said. “For my own part, I have performed brilliantly—a fact I assume will surprise no one. Helen, how did you make out?”

  “Pretty much as I expected,” said Dr. Chang. “Between us, Cassie and I were able to verify the presence of every one of ICE-3’s 25, 112 people.”

  “Splendid!” cried Dr. Puckett, rubbing his hands together. “We’re 240,000 kilometers out in space, in a closed colony where everyone is accounted for, and we have a dead man who can’t exist—and in fact, no longer does. Do you realize that makes this the biggest locked-room puzzle in history? What a chance for us to be brilliant! And how did you make out, Mr. McPhee?”

  By way of answer, I passed around copies of my composite drawing.

  “Anyone recognize him?” asked Dr. Puckett, staring at the broad-faced, sandy-haired image I had come up with.

  Cassie and Helen shook their heads.

  “And what have you turned up, Elmo?” asked Dr. Chang.

  “I’m glad you asked that!” exclaimed Dr. Puckett.

  “I know,” said Dr. Chang. “Feeding you cue lines was the top item on my job description.”

  I was beginning to realize that insulting Dr. Puckett was like throwing spit wads at an elephant. Even if you scored a direct hit every time, it didn’t really make any difference. He rolled on as if Helen hadn’t said a word.

  “Through a complex process of elimination, I have managed to assemble a list of the people who could have put that body into a bulk collection spot. This involved some sophisticated comparisons of collection schedules, delivery times, and log-on notations. But it was worth it, as I have narrowed our list of possible suspects by 99.71 percent—from 25,112 down to 73. Not bad for a morning’s work.” He glanced at his watch. “In fact, if we continue at that rate, we will pinpoint our villain in approximately 10.43 seconds. Unfortunately, like the man about to reach the ground after stepping over a hundred-foot cliff, we have now come to the hard part.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” said Helen.

  “You’re safe for the time being,” said Dr. Puckett. “It’s Rusty and Cassie that I’m going to put into action. I want you two to go out and start talking to these people.”

  “What are we supposed to say to them?” asked Cassie. “Do we just go up and ask them if they killed someone and dumped him in a collection unit yesterday?”

  “No. You show them the picture Rusty worked up and ask if they know the person. Odds are they won’t admit to it, even if they do. But if you’re paying attention, you’ll be able to get a sense of whether or not they’re lying. That’s why I want both of you to go out on this one. One of you will be showing the suspects the picture—the other will be watching their eyes when they first see it.”

  “But what do we tell them?” persisted Cassie.

  “What do I care?” snapped Dr. Puckett. “Be creative. Tell them it’s a school project. Tell them your sister spotted
him eating a McBunny Burger, developed an unrequited passion for the guy, and is pining into an anorexic stupor. Drop a hint that we suspect he’s the forerunner of an alien invasion. All I want you to do right now is get that picture in front of these people’s faces. Now, here’s the list, along with each person’s workplace and home address. See how many of them you can get to before the day is over. Helen, I want you to stay here for a minute. I need to talk to you about our other project.…” He looked up at me and Cassie, as if he were surprised to see us still floating there. “Well, what are you waiting for?” he roared. “Get going!”

  I glanced at Cassie. It was clear she wasn’t too pleased about all this. But it was also clear that she had no intention of arguing with Dr. Puckett. She touched the button on her belt and headed for the door.

  I started after her.

  Fortunately, I had been fitted with a propulsion belt of my own while we were in the lab.

  Unfortunately, it takes a while to learn to use those things properly. I bounced off three walls before I finally made it through the door.

  It wasn’t what you would call a grand exit. I appreciated the fact that Dr. Puckett did nothing more than chuckle.

  Chapter 8

  Cassie

  When I finally made it into the hall, the look on Cassie’s face did little to improve my self-confidence. She looked like someone who’s been forced to babysit for her obnoxious little brother.

  “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” I asked.

  “I’ve already answered that question.”

  “Cassie, I swear to you that everything I’ve said is true. I know it all sounds crazy. It is crazy. But that’s why it’s so important. There’s something weird going on up here, and we’re the ones who have to figure it out.”

  She looked at me, and I could tell that she was surprised. “You really are serious, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I’m serious,” I said, surprised by her surprise. “Why else would I be doing all this?”

  “I’ve been trying to figure that out. To tell you the truth, once you said all those stupid things about my father, I didn’t really listen to what else you were saying. I was too mad. I figured you were just trying to prove something at his expense.”