The Furnace

by Timothy S. Johnston

  Rickets pulled out his reader and punched up the officers’ duty schedules. As first officer, he doled out the weekly assignments. “She was supervising the storage inventory today—been doing it for the past couple of days. She probably wanted to get an early start.”

  “Perhaps. Or maybe she was involved in something dangerous.”

  “Ridiculous,” Manny said. “Belinda? Involved in anything other than her duty? Not possible.”

  Rickets said in his deep voice, “I agree, Tanner. Bel went by the book. She frowned on nonregulation activities.”

  “Like sending a man on EVA by himself?”

  There was a long pause while Manny glared at me. His face burned red. “For the record,” he grated, “she took me to task every time I broke regs.”

  I studied his eyes and realized instantly how crass the comment had sounded. Perhaps I was being too harsh with him; there was no need to dwell on his mistake, and bringing it up was petty. “Sorry,” I said. “I really am.” I needed to focus my attention on the killer, not on decisions the captain now regretted.

  He looked angry, but gave me a curt nod anyway. “No harm done.”

  Another short and uncomfortable silence ensued. Eventually Rickets cleared his throat. “It’s possible she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  I turned to him. “If that’s so, then Reggie was the intended victim.” And if that was the case, then...

  It actually told me a great deal.

  * * *

  The notion that Reggie might have been the target encouraged me to go have another look around his lab. Malichauk, the person partnered with me, tailed me on the way to Module F.

  “What are we doing down here?” he asked in a quiet voice. He seemed jittery, looking this way and that. He kept falling behind while sending darting glances over his shoulder, then having to take a few quick steps to catch up. I kept my back to him as I marched along, but I made sure to keep a hand on my pistol, just in case.

  I found the usual clutter inside Reggie’s lab. I looked around and almost immediately located what I was after: the blood sample I had given him two days earlier. He had concealed it at the back of a shelf behind a photograph of the sun—exactly where I had suggested he put it after he was through. I gestured to the other side of the lab and told Malichauk to search in that direction.

  “What am I looking for?” he asked.

  “Anything out of the ordinary,” I muttered.

  “But I don’t think there’s anything important here,” he said as he rooted around a workbench. “It’s all solar stuff.”

  I grabbed Reggie’s notes and the blood sample—now pressed between microscope slides—and shoved it all in my pocket. I scanned the entire lab thoroughly, but found nothing more of interest.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Where?” He looked at me, confused and unsure about what I was doing.

  “Back to the common mess.” I needed to review these notes.

  * * *

  I removed the papers from my pocket and spread them out on the table before me. The only other person in the room was Shaheen Ramachandra, who I’d asked to help me interpret Reggie’s work. I’d sent Malichauk back to the clinic with Shaheen’s partner, Brick.

  “What are we looking at?” she asked as she studied the papers.

  “Reggie’s notes about some blood that I found in life support.”

  She looked perplexed. “Blood? What was it doing there?”

  I related the story Crewman Anna Alvarez had told me, about how Jimmy had witnessed the bizarre altercation in the darkness of the module.

  “Sounds really odd,” she said, her brow creased.

  “You’re telling me.” I didn’t mention that during the attack in my quarters, my assailant had done the same thing: gripped my arm with incredible pressure for no apparent reason. I flattened the papers on the table. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” I had taken the precaution of removing the sheet that indicated whose blood it was—no need for her to see that just now.

  She skimmed the papers quickly. “Looks like there’s a missing page. It might have told us who the blood belonged to.”

  “Hmm,” I murmured.

  She flashed a look at me before she continued. “This is weird. Reggie found a nano in the blood drop. A single nano.”

  “What kind?” I asked. “Medical?”

  “No...according to this it’s a nano of a type he’s never seen before.”

  I scowled. “Come on. It must be one that’s used frequently on the station. What are they used for here?”

  “Injuries, mostly. Malichauk also should have nanos in his stores for tumor elimination, organ transplants, vision correction, and so on. The medical uses are limitless. But that’s not what’s strange. This is not a medical nano.”

  “An engineering one, then.”

  “We use them for manufacturing processes, true, though not here. But this isn’t one of them either.”

  “Then what is it?”

  She pointed at Reggie’s writing. “‘Completely foreign technology,’ he says.”

  I absorbed that. “And it was in the drop of blood I gave him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Completely foreign,” I repeated.

  She looked at me with fear in her eyes. “Tanner, what the hell is going on here?”

  Part Three: Infection

  Investigator’s Log: Lieutenant Kyle Tanner,

  Security Division, Homicide Section, CCF

  The patch on my wrist was dark. My exposure was building. I was already bleeding internally, and I knew the effect would magnify enormously in just a short amount of time. My options were limited; the sun was bearing down on me, frying me with its enormous heat and radiation, and here I was floating in the void wearing only a vacsuit with three spare oxygen bottles.

  Oxygen! My heart thudded in my chest as I realized that only a few seconds of the suit’s original supply remained. My alarm had already sounded; somehow I had missed it. Was my hearing going now as well? I grunted in frustration and switched all alarms to visual. I couldn’t miss the flashing light inside my helmet unless my sight went too.

  I sucked every last breath I could from the bottle, straining even after the oxygen monitor read zero. As my lungs heaved in agony and my sight began to grow dim, I quickly attached the vacsuit’s auxiliary hose to my first spare, fingers fumbling slightly with the valve. The fresh air filled the helmet and I inhaled tremendous gulps. Belatedly, I realized I might have just made a mistake. I should have made the transition smoothly, without the need to take in such huge breaths. Ultimately, I had probably used more oxygen than I had saved. Shit.

  I was now officially down to twelve hours, but it wouldn’t matter with this radiation; I probably wouldn’t make it to the next bottle unless I did something fast.

  Something was tickling the back of my mind about the radiation. Something about the oxygen and the radiation...

  I needed some sort of shield, something to keep the high-speed particles from damaging too much flesh. A sheet of lead would be nice, but of course I didn’t have that. All I had were a few tools, a currently dismantled communit, some spare oxygen bottles and two large metal canisters.

  Two empty gas canisters...

  Of course! I wanted to kick myself. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it as soon as I launched from SOLEX.

  I yanked the cord and hoisted the steel tanks up to chest level. I tore a tether from my thigh pocket and strapped the canisters together side by side. The nylon material was thin but sturdy. I wrapped it around the top of each, wrenched it tight, then did the same at the bottom of each. The tethers were long and useful for any number of emergencies, but I doubted vacsuit manufacturers had ever predicted this.

 
At last I finished and looked at my creation in appreciation; I had connected the tanks into something of a raft. It was about a meter long on two sides, and half that on the other two. It was just large enough to protect me from some of the dangerous solar wind. The canisters weren’t lead, but they’d have to do.

  The skintight refrigeration suit constricted me so much that it was difficult to move. It took great effort to pull my knees up; I couldn’t believe the original astronauts had worn something like this in a place as cool as Earth orbit. I finally managed to poke my feet into a loop I had left in the tether that bound the tanks. It was like a single large snowshoe made of two stubby pipes. Straightening my legs, I pushed the shield “downward” and placed it between myself and the sun. I bent at the waist to look and...

  It blocked most of the star from view. Holy shit. It had worked. Well, better than empty space would, at least.

  I’d bought myself some more time. Now I just had to get this damn communit working.

  I turned the recorder back on as I continued to work on the transmitter. “The discovery—”

  Chapter Twelve

  —of the nano threw a wrench into the entire investigation. Should I continue on the belief that someone was killing for the traditional reasons: personal gain, revenge or hatred? Or was something else going on that I hadn’t anticipated? Something completely alien and therefore impossible to predict? It might be difficult to decipher the clues, because they simply didn’t fit into preestablished paradigms. It was a tricky predicament.

  Could anyone solve this? Could Michael Flemming have?

  I sighed in the darkness of my quarters. Michael Flemming, dead because I took too long to see a simple connection between two people. Ever since his murder, I hadn’t felt right. It had made me question myself. And if I failed to make the connection here on SOLEX, there could be more deaths. I had narrowed the number of suspects down, but it was impossible to watch everyone all the time. If I took too much longer...

  Then I’d be to blame. Again.

  * * *

  It was the day after the discovery of Reggie, Bel and the nano. I had needed time to digest the new information, the new deaths. The personnel were quiet and clearly thrown off balance by the events. Dinner the previous evening had been miserable. They had continued to shoot me darting glances, mostly filled with hostility or fear. There’d been no more talk about the victims. They were gone, and the crew had been struggling to grasp that there was a killer among them.

  Afterward, they’d retired to their cabins for the evening. I had as well, though I hadn’t slept immediately. I’d spent hours reviewing the officers’ personnel files, trying to dig up something that might be useful later.

  I met with Shaheen in her quarters before the workday began to see if she could help with the problem. I knew one thing was certain: I had to learn more about the nano. Why was it in the drop of blood? What was its purpose? What category was it, medical or manufacturing? How much had Reggie known, and was that the reason he’d been killed?

  He had included a microscope photo and a few words below it scrawled in red letters: “Nano in blood? Unknown type. Completely foreign technology.”

  “That’s it?” I asked as I looked at the notation. “Why the picture?”

  She peered over my shoulder. “It’s a bacterium.”

  “Recognize it?”

  “Not really... What would he be doing with a picture of bacteria?”

  It was cylindrical, with tiny filaments that trailed from one end. I thought back to my days in academy biology; they were called flagella. Bacteria used them for locomotion.

  She said, “He found a nano in the blood but didn’t photograph it.”

  “This bacteria must be more important than the nano.”

  It all seemed fishy. I had given the blood sample to Reggie to match for me. Apart from doing that, within it he had also identified a nano and a bacterium. Something about this knowledge had gotten the man murdered.

  Excluding myself, there were now twelve people on the station. One was a murderer, killing now to protect his identity. The closer I got, the more dangerous he would become. It was nothing new for me, but I couldn’t let the collateral damage get out of hand.

  I looked at Shaheen from the corner of my eye. Asking her to help no doubt put her in incredible danger. Part of me wanted to ignore the feelings that she had stirred inside me. Another part needed her help to solve the mystery. She knew more about the station than I, and I needed every possible advantage over the killer. She would also be able to help me decipher this new problem.

  I had met a lot of interesting people in my travels, and she was most definitely one of them. She seemed to have the entire package. And the way I felt whenever I saw her...

  Perhaps she was like me. Alone and adrift in this crazy society, searching for someone to fill the gaps, but not even realizing it.

  Alone and adrift...

  I shoved that thought aside. She had someone. I didn’t.

  “I need access to the station’s medical database,” I said finally. “I need to find out what kind of bacteria that is.”

  “Sure, no problem. We can go anywhere, really. Your reader can access the station’s network. You can stay here.”

  I discarded the idea almost immediately; I felt it would be better to be on my own turf.

  “My quarters,” I said.

  She flashed me a look. “Really?”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t try anything. Jase Lassiter seemed like a nice guy.”

  She appeared startled. “How’d you find out about that?”

  “It’s my job, Shaheen.” She looked like she wanted to say more, but she held her tongue.

  I made sure to lock the hatch behind us. The rest of the personnel were doing this with their own cabins as well. Allowing someone access to our personal space was now out of the question; it was too tempting a target for the killer, who could do anything from planting incriminating evidence to lying in wait, hoping to kill again.

  * * *

  As it currently stood, the pairings were me and Shaheen, officers Manny and Rickets, officers Brick and Malichauk, crewmen Grossman and Balch, and O’Donnelly and Aina. The three scientists, Sally, Katrina and Lingly, were together. It wasn’t a perfect system—the killer could still take out his partner and move on to dispatch others as well—but it was the best we could do. I assumed the three scientists would be safe, but other than that, everyone else could currently be in danger.

  In my quarters, we accessed the medical database and called up the information file on bacteria. It was huge; gigabytes of information scrolled rapidly across the screen.

  “This is too much,” I said. “I just want to know what bacterium Reggie photographed.”

  “Okay,” Shaheen said. “I’ll bring up the gallery.” The screen filled with images and she peered at them intently. “According to this, there are essentially three shapes of bacteria. You’ve got the rod, the ball and the helical. Which one is ours?”

  I glanced at Reggie’s photo. “Rod.”

  “That narrows it down a bit,” she said. “But there are still thousands of types here. I’ll have the computer compare for us.” She snapped a photograph of the image on the paper and hit a few keys on the reader. “It’ll take just a... There it is.”

  I eyed the results. “It says there’s no match. Mutation, maybe?”

  She shook her head, perplexed.

  I frowned. No matter how many pieces I put together, the puzzle kept getting larger. I rarely came up against such a difficult case. Usually the clues were all there, and I just had to connect them to the killer and track him down. The capture was the most difficult part. But this mystery had me confounded. I was off balance and fighting to bring some sort of meaning to all this. If only I could talk to someon
e about it...

  “I want you to find out what bacteria that is,” I said finally. “It’s important in some way.”

  “What about the scientists, or Malichauk? He’s the doctor.”

  “I don’t want more people knowing about this. Besides, you’re pretty smart, I guess.”

  “You guess?” The corners of her eyes crinkled. She watched me as if I were a lab rat in an elaborate experiment. Then her features grew serious again and I continued to gaze into her eyes. A long silence stretched out, and neither of us looked away. My mouth suddenly felt dry. “What’s hurting you?” she asked in a soft voice.

  That took me aback. “What do you mean? I’ve recovered from the attack.”

  “You’re pretty intense. Quiet. Maybe that’s how you work, but I think there’s more to it than that.”

  “I’m like this when I work. You have to be.”

  “Do you have to separate yourself from your emotions?”

  “Sometimes. Some investigators do. They’re so distant, they’re as cold as the killers they’re after. They’re like robots.”

  “But you’re not like that.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve learned to separate myself, but only at the necessary times. You need a bond with the victims and the families in order to do the job properly. It’s the way I work.”

  She hesitated, then, “There’s more to it than that.”

  “You said yourself I liked to work alone. You were right.”

  “Why is that?”

  I paused and wondered how much I should tell her. I didn’t want to reveal too much about myself, especially in the middle of an investigation. However, she was helping me, and putting herself in danger. I felt that I owed her a response. “My parents died suddenly. In Colorado. Freak accident. When I found out, it was like a punch to the gut. I haven’t felt anything like that since, and I don’t want to.” My heartbeats stretched on for a seeming eternity while I gathered my thoughts. “I learned to adapt to my new life. I had to.” Otherwise this job would destroy me, I wanted to say. I’d go crazy.