“Mm.” I tapped my pencil on the clipboard, giving her just a moment longer to be uncomfortable. “Here’s my other question. You missed the morning BusyBee route … How did you get out there?”
Birgit froze. Her eyes darted around the room, but with the flashlight in her face, she had to be nearly blind. She took a rapid breath and swallowed. “A friend flew me out.”
“A friend … Funny thing. There’s no pilot listed.”
“I feel like you are accusing me of something specific, but I don’t understand what.” Birgit lifted her chin. “No offense, but why am I talking to you instead of Administrator Frisch?”
Defensive and, oh, so interesting that she wanted to involve Frisch instead of Eugene.
Halim leaned forward on his toes just a little. “As a reminder, I am the chief astronaut.”
“And head of your department, but I’m—”
The lights came on.
Birgit looked up and, thankfully, missed the moment of complete confusion I’m sure showed openly on my face. That had not been anywhere near sixteen minutes. What the hell was going on? I powered off my flashlight and lowered it.
Frowning, Birgit looked back to us. “I’m … I’m a colonist. I’m in a different department.”
Halim shook his head, doing an excellent job of staying in the game. “On the Moon, everyone ranks below astronauts because we’re the ones trained to keep you alive.” He turned the flashlight off and stowed it. “Also, this question involves a spaceship and a pilot, which is very definitely in my department. Who flew that BusyBee?”
She clenched her hands together, staring at the floor again. “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
“So you’re saying you didn’t fly it there?”
She shook her head, still looking at the ground. “I’m not certified to fly a BusyBee.”
“You’re a pilot.” Halim shrugged. “I let you have simulator time.”
“That’s— Come on. I’m not stupid enough to think a simulator is the same as flying in actual vacuum.”
I crouched, trying to make eye contact with her, in a posture expressing concern. My voice was couched to be low and sympathetic. “Just tell us who flew you. Don’t make this worse than it already is.”
She tensed before leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees, head hanging. “I guess we’re both grounded, regardless. Only … He was being kind. Please. Do not let this reflect on him.” Birgit took a slow breath. “Curtis Frye flew me out. We did not list it in the logbook, because he was grounded.”
Curt. Curt went out to The Garden? Birgit was at least accounted for during a two-hour period, but there was no record of him being out there at all. Or did he go? There was a scenario in which she flew herself out and framed someone who would have ample reason to deny being in a BusyBee.
Bringing my chin down, I asked, “Where is the BusyBee?”
“The one we flew to The Garden?”
“The one you stole.”
Birgit gaped at me. “Stole? What are you…? I don’t—” Her eyes widened. She gave a breathless laugh. “You think I’m with Earth First? No! Mein Gott, I was stupid and inconsiderate but I’m not—No. NO!”
“Darling.” I smiled at her and it was as cold as I could make it. “Do you understand why you might not be believed when you say that?”
“I don’t care what you believe. I had nothing to do with the power outages or losing contact with Earth or the Lindholms—”
“What do you mean, the Lindholms?”
Birgit cut herself short. “They were—someone sabotaged their BusyBee.”
That was a detail we had not told anyone outside our little group. Save for Frisch. “I don’t recall mentioning that.”
“Someone else told me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know!” She ran her fingers through her hair, flattening it against her skull. “I can’t believe you’d think I had anything to do with any of this. I have polio. What am I supposed to have done, dragged myself around doing all sorts of wicked things?”
“You can walk.”
“Now! Barely.” She hit the crutches with the flat of her hand. “This is better than Curt or Ruben, but it is not easy. I am not subtle and built for sneaking around doing any of the things you are accusing me of.”
“So far, those are all from before you got sick.” Folding back the papers on my clipboard, I exposed the page of ciphers, which I still hadn’t been able to crack, and turned it to face her. “Would you like to explain this?”
She sighed, looking up to the ceiling. “Mein Gott, ist ein Albtraum…” She gestured at the paper. “It is a game that Curt and I play. People would run the papers between us when we were confined to bed. We were having an affair. There. Are you happy now? All of my laundry you have. What next? Firing squad? Airlock?”
“Who else are you working with?”
“I’m not working with anyone!” She flung her hands out as if she could push the question away. “Curt and I are— Do you know what it’s like to be confined to the same room with him and I cannot touch him even? And you think now we are collaborating on … what? What exactly?”
I smiled sadly at her. “I’m sure this is hard for you. If everything is the way you say it is, then the simplest way to demonstrate that is to tell me what this cipher says.”
Birgit’s cheeks flamed. She crossed her arms over her chest. “I can’t.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Can’t. That’s awkward, if you really want to help us.”
“I didn’t crack it.”
“The thing is … it’s in your handwriting.”
Her nostrils flared. “Yes. I know. I couldn’t get it, so I copied a clean version to start again.” She blew her breath out and stared into a corner with spots of red still flaring like alarms in both cheeks. “If you want to know what it says, you’ll have to figure it out on your own.”
FORTY-FOUR
Artemis Base Mission Log, Acting Administrator Eugene Lindholm:
May 28, 1963, 0103—Still no contact with Earth. Tasked comms department with confirming that main radio dishes are capable of receiving by scanning for signals from anywhere on or around Earth. Have been told they will not be able to isolate any channels due to low SNR of non-IAC sources. Backup LGS is non-operational due to Aerozine corrosion from the lunar shuttle crash.
When we finished asking Birgit questions, we stowed her in one of the offices that Eugene had converted to crew quarters. He’d made the door lockable. Halim still asked one of the astronauts who was a long-timer to guard it, figuring that if he was involved with Earth First, we would already be dead. It was not an entirely reassuring thought.
The moment Birgit was out of the geology lab, I turned to the intercom. “Could you hear all of that?”
Helen’s voice crackled out of the small speaker. “Aside from when we lost power, loud and clear.”
“What happened with the lights?” Halim asked.
“The engineering team turned the whole system off—”
“Are you kidding me? Without warning.” The entire room went hot with fury as I realized that the terrifying darkness had been caused by our team. “Do they have any idea how damaging that could have been? Besides the fact that we were interrogating a possible terrorist, we don’t have working emergency lights in here.”
“Eugene has had a word with them.”
Myrtle cut in. “By ‘word’ what she means is they got a ‘Come to Jesus’ moment of Biblical proportions.”
That made me chuckle, but only slightly less likely to stab the person who had decided to just cut the power. “Why in this or any other world did they decide to turn things off?”
Helen’s voice slowed down and became more precise. “They cannot find anything mechanically wrong with the communication channels to Earth and were hoping that when they powered the system back up it would reconnect to the Earth downlink automatically. It did not.”
“It did not as in, i
t did not power up, or it did not connect automatically?”
“It powered up and went through the correct connection procedure. However, we can neither send nor receive a signal.”
At my side, Halim’s face was as tight as mine felt. He checked his watch. “To confirm … Fifteen hours and eleven minutes without contact?”
“Confirmed.”
Mission Control in Kansas must be in a panic. Engineers would have flooded into the facility as everyone buckled down to work the problem and—I grabbed a chair to steady myself as a thought went through my head. Even though it was nearly one in the morning, the IAC in Kansas City would be fully staffed right now. Astronauts, engineers, technicians, computers … everyone would have come in.
Earth First had issued a manifesto calling for blood.
Halim touched my elbow. “You all right?”
Clearing my throat, I wanted to be in two places at once. I wanted to be in LGC to help them and I wanted to be here, talking to Curt. “Could you ask them to see if we can pick up signals from anywhere other than Mission Control or Lunetta?”
“They’ve done that…” Myrtle’s voice was hesitant. “What are you thinking?”
Earth rotates, so there are three large radio dishes placed around the planet every 120 degrees. That used to be all we had, but they added satellites as a layer of redundancy for the radio dishes. When everything is working, the comms run through satellites around Earth to Lunetta and then down to Earth. Mission Control was based in Kansas City and could be relocated to Brazil or Europe, but it still took the massive radio dishes or the satellites to cross the distance to the Moon without signal loss. Losing one would still leave the others. So why couldn’t we contact them?
“If we can detect other signals from Earth—even if we can’t reply to them—then it’s not our system.”
“Nicole, honey … You don’t have to solve all the problems.”
I clenched my jaw as rage flooded through my veins in disproportionate amounts. I had just enough presence of mind to be aware of that and to ride it out, but I wanted to snap at her that she did not need to solve all the problems either and I was certainly not a problem to be solved.
Swallowing, I let out a breath. “My point was that if everything is fine here, then something is wrong on Earth. Everyone will be at the IAC trying to reach us. Everyone.” I took another breath to steady myself and charged on. “And we already know they are willing to kill.”
The intercom was silent for a moment and then Helen said, “I’ll ask about receiving other signals.”
Her voice was so even it hurt. Her husband, Reynard, was an engineer and would be there. If Earth First had decided to bomb the IAC, there was nothing we could do, but not knowing is the worst.
So what could we do? I bounced on my toes, thinking. Curt would have seen us take Birgit out of the room and note that she didn’t come back. “Let’s get Curt. Tell them not to turn the lights off.”
“Confirm.”
Halim hesitated. “Should we pause for a snack?”
I almost threw my clipboard at him. It’s hard enough having Helen and Myrtle know about the anorexia. Having Halim know and nursemaid me? We work well together. I like the man. I’d even call him a friend, but he’s not a close friend. More importantly, he’s my boss. I do not like being reminded that he knows about this weakness.
I shook my head. “Afterward. I don’t want to give Curt any longer to think about why we pulled Birgit out of the room in the middle of the night than we already have.”
“It won’t take that much longer.” He shrugged, smiling with a real effort at innocence.
Over the intercom, Helen said, “What did you have for lunch today?”
“I forgot. But I had a sandwich for dinner. With Eugene, so I have a witness.” The lie rolled off my tongue with disturbing ease. I did have a sandwich. Eugene would remember that I had a sandwich. He would remember seeing me take a bite. I had two bites of that sandwich and then we got busy. The rest of it was wrapped in foil in my pocket.
The smart thing to do would be to pull it out and finish eating it. The smart thing to do would be to not resent the friends who were trying to help.
I clapped my hands together. “Shall we get Curt?”
* * *
It was the same setup as before. Curt sat in his wheeled chair under the good light. Halim and I leaned against a table opposite him in the shadow.
Curt looked up at the light and then down to me. “So … I guess this is the interrogation portion of my night?”
I winked at him. “Let’s get right to it, then, shall we?” Start with the known answers. “Your file says you were Air Force. What did you do with them?”
“How do you know if a fighter pilot is in the room?” He gave a wry smile. “They tell you.”
Hell, if I’d been allowed to fly combat, I would have told everyone I was a fighter pilot too. I gave him a courtesy chuckle to build rapport, which was also probably what he was trying to do.
“Although since you’ve read my file you know I was a fighter pilot. So in the interests of complete honesty, I only flew one combat mission in Korea before we were recalled to the States after the Meteor. From there I was on reconnaissance to help spot refugees. Later, I went to test pilot school at Edwards AFB.”
“Why join the IAC?”
“That was where the interesting flying was.” Curt shrugged. “I mean, the answer I gave in my interview was, ‘To serve my nation’ and something about ‘the survival of mankind’ but really it was about the rockets.”
“What did you do at The Garden?”
“Tricky…” He tilted his head to the side, eyes narrowing as he watched me in the shadows. “I haven’t been to The Garden.”
Interesting. He might have delayed to protect Birgit. He might have straight-up admitted it. Or … denial. “And yet, we have a witness who saw you there.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I haven’t been there.” He chewed his lower lip. “You won’t tell me who … Will you tell me when I was supposed to be there?”
“April sixteenth. Tuesday. All day.”
“Huh.” He rubbed his chin and frowned. “I’m trying to think if there’s anyone in the new hires who looks enough like me to be confusing … Anyway, Tuesdays are my scheduled phone call home. I can’t account for the whole span, but I was talking with my mom during part of that time.”
“That’s easy to check.” I made a note on my clipboard. “How’s your mom?”
“Fine. Although apparently, Mike is back from Venezuela and having a hard time because Bert has uterine cancer.” His voice was relaxed and breezy as he said this, then his eyes widened. “Oh! Wait. It’s a soap opera. Sorry. Should have been clear about that up front. Mom loves Guiding Light, so a lot of our phone calls are updates on what’s happened. You should have heard her last season when Anne got shot. Whew! Nothing but that for days. I think she went into actual mourning— Oh, shit. Ma’am. I am so, so sorry. I didn’t mean … Shit.”
The funny thing is that I had been so focused on trying to read Curt that I hadn’t drawn the connection until that moment. I’d been living in the reality where I was just doing my job and Kenneth was still alive. My heart beat sideways, touching parts of my chest it had no right to.
I swallowed to clear my throat and turned the clipboard around to show him the coded letter I’d found. My voice would be goddamned level. “Tell me about this?”
Curt hesitated, still trying to look past the clipboard to me. Damn him. As derailing tactics go, bringing up my grief was an easy target, but that had been so well done. His gaze dropped to the clipboard and he leaned forward. “Well … it’s a cipher.”
I waited, giving him silence to fill and my eyes a chance to clear.
He beckoned. “Can I see it? It’s kinda in the shadows.”
Nice try at getting me closer. I passed the board to Halim. “See but not handle.”
“Fair.” Curt nodded as Halim walked
it to him and held it just out of reach.
The fans whirred as we waited for him to read through the page of text. Curt frowned, mouth moving slightly as if he were reading to himself. “Do we know what language it’s in?”
“How would you determine that?”
“Looking at common letter pairs? But cryptography wasn’t really my area of interest. I just took one class in it and…” He shrugged. “I passed, so that was good.”
I gave him some more time to look at it and also to get my own brain back on track. What had we been talking about when he derailed me? His mom. That seemed like an innocuous topic, so what had been before that? His schedule. He’d given me one thing that could be a partial alibi and then used my question about his mom to change the subject.
“May I assume you think this is linked to me in some way?” Curt was resting his elbows on his knees and squinting at the page.
“Birgit says you gave it to her.”
Curt raised his eyes, brows going up. “Excuse me?” He pointed at the page. “But that’s not my handwriting.”
“She says she copied it over from text you gave her.”
“From…?” He looked back down at the page again, tilting his head to the side as if that would change his focus. “I’m trying to think of how to convince you that I’ve never seen it before in my life and I can’t think of a single thing I would find compelling if I were in your place.”
“She says you’re having an affair.”
“What? No!” Curt stared at me. “No. She’s married, for crying out loud.”
“That is why it’s called an affair, I believe, instead of dating or going steady.”
“Look—” He held his hands up as if he could stop the conversation. “Look, she’s ten years older than me. I mean, she’s pretty and all and yes, I definitely flirted with her when we met, but we never … I mean, as soon as I realized she was married I stopped, because there are things you just don’t do.”
I kept going as if he weren’t protesting. “Is she the one that helped you with covert communications to Earth?”
The Relentless Moon Page 41
