by Paul Preuss
The retrorockets of an incoming spacecraft burst into flame over Sparta’s head as her moon buggy sped across the gray plain. The white ship with the blue band and gold star settled gently toward the landing field beyond the domes. Sparta wondered what could have brought the cutter back to the moon so soon after she’d left it at L-1.
16
After twenty kilometers of bumpy, dusty driving beside the endless launcher track, Sparta was approaching the center of the base. For most of the distance she’d been pondering what connection could possibly exist between Blake Red-field and Katrina Balakian. What Sparta knew of Balakian from the files indicated that the astronomer had been on Earth on a three-month leave of absence, all of which had been spent on the shores of the Caspian Sea. No one knew better than Sparta how easily such records could be faked.
Could there be some innocent explanation for why Balakian’s mark had been on Blake’s apartment? Sparta could think of none. On the other hand, Balakian’s relationship with Blake had nothing to do with Cliff Leyland’s near-fatal non-accident, of that she was certain, because the answer to the Leyland mystery was already clear…
Her commlink hissed. “Van Kessel here, Inspector Troy. We’ve installed the fail-safe devices you suggested.”
“That was quick.”
“It was an easy circuit change. A unilateral manual command now requires the agreement of at least one power-control computer.”
“Good. When are you restarting the launcher?”
“On your right.”
Sparta looked up as a bucket carrying a dead load flashed silently toward her and disappeared past her, down the track. A second later another bucket streaked by. Then another. And another. Soon an invisible beaded string of tiny projectiles was stretching into space behind her.
Sparta skidded the awkward buggy to a halt outside the maintenance dome. She didn’t bother with the vehicle airlocks; her helmet was locked and she’d left the buggy’s interior in vacuum. She hopped out and walked toward the dome’s nearest personnel entrance.
Her commlink hissed again. “Landing field dispatch, Inspector Troy. A Space Board cutter just sat down out here. Pilot says she wants you to come out and pick up a passenger.”
“Patch me through, please.”
“She’s on the link.”
“Who’s your passenger, pilot?” Sparta demanded.
“I’m not at liberty to divulge that,” the pilot replied. “My orders are to deliver the passenger to you and nobody else.”
Sparta recognized the woman. “How much of a hurry are you in, Captain Walsh?”
“We’ll be refueling for an hour,” the pilot replied. “Then we’re gone.”
“I have business. I’ll get out to you before you’re topped off.”
“Fine with me, Inspector Troy.”
Sparta’s business was an unscheduled interview with a launch technician, whom she intended to escort to Base Security before the next shift change at the launcher. The name Pontus Istrati had been high on Sparta’s list of suspects since shortly after she’d set foot on the moon. She’d gotten the name directly from personnel files: Istrati was one of the three people on duty as launch attendants the day of Clifford Leyland’s near-fatal launch. The other two were women. The voice Cliff Leyland heard before the hatch closed on him was a man’s.
And it was a distinctive voice. Sparta had been grimly amused to find, after a bit of cross-checking, that Istrati didn’t bother to hide the mellifluous tones Leyland had found so noticeable—Istrati had a local reputation around the base as singer in a jazz combo.
As for the Farside smuggling ring of which Istrati was such an incautious member, Sparta had little doubt it was run by Frank Penney. Penney had more than means and opportunity; he had the entire launch operation under his control. He even smelled of drugs. Katrina Balakian was not the only person who had named Penney as one of the people who supposedly could get you what you wanted.
None of which was proof, or even admissible evidence. Sparta hoped Mr. Istrati would lead her to that. More than a smuggling ring was at stake. Sparta was sure that Frank Penney—in a moment of panic, and thinking himself overly clever—had tried to kill Cliff Leyland.
Sparta entered the outside chamber of the nearest personnel airlock. Air rushed in and she opened her helmet. She was shaking the moondust from her boots, waiting for the robot gatekeeper to confirm her identity, when emergency sirens started to wail.
“What’s the problem?” Sparta demanded.
“Clear channels, please,” said the robot voice of the base’s central computer.
Sparta ripped the glove from her right hand. She shove her PIN spines into the information slot and squirted the central computer with her identity code. “This is Troy. Command channel!”
“Command access acknowledged,” said the robot.
“Nature of emergency?” Sparta demanded.
“Apparent attempted hijack of orbital tug now in progress.”
“Status,” Sparta barked.
“Tug is disabled. Alleged hijacker is not in possession of appropriate lift codes.”
“Identity of hijacker?”
“Alleged perpetrator of apparent attempted hijack is tentatively identified as Mr. Pontus Istrati. He may be armed and should be considered dangerous.”
Sparta pulled her spines from the slot, tugged her gloves on, and sealed her helmet. She popped the door of the airlock without waiting for the gradual decompression of the vacuum pumps. She was almost blown out the door, but she kept on her feet as she leaped in great moon-strides toward her waiting buggy.
In moments she was barreling toward the landing field.
You had to be told an emergency was in progress to recognize the situation at the field. At one end of the field the tall white cutter was being serviced by a rolling gantry, while the fat cislunar tug which was allegedly being hijacked was sitting all by itself at the opposite corner of the field, illuminated by floodlights. A few seconds ahead of Sparta, a single unarmed moon buggy with a red light flashing on top of its bubble plowed to a stop a safe distance away from the tug’s engines. That flashing red light represented one third of Farside Base’s total mobile security force.
Sparta hauled her buggy to a stop beside it. Over her helmet link she said, “Farside Security, this is Inspector Troy of the Board of Space Control. Request permission to approach the tug.”
There was a moment of hesitation. A man’s gruff voice said, “The man may be armed, Inspector.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Uh … just that it’s possible.”
“Is that an informed guess?”
This time the pause was longer. “We really don’t know a whole lot, Inspector.”
“You know Istrati, don’t you? Is he the type to use a weapon?”
“Uh … there’s no record of that, Inspector.”
“Repeat: your authorization to approach the tug?”
The patroller breathed disgustedly into his commlink. “It’s your neck.”
“Thanks,” she muttered. She popped the lid of the moon buggy and climbed out. Moon gravity was still new to her, and she hopped cautiously past the security buggy with its flashing red light, toward the tug.
No one challenged her as she easily climbed the ladder, nine stories up the floodlit side of the tug’s bundled fuel tanks, until she reached its slender command module. The hatch was locked tight from inside. She thrust her gloved hand into the emergency release and the hatch sprang open, adding its oxygen to the ephemeral lunar atmosphere. She quickly climbed inside.
She set about decoding the magnetic lock to the tug’s interior, a task she estimated would take about fifteen seconds. “If you are really in there, Istrati,” she breathed into her suit’s commlink, “you’d better have your suit on, because I’m coming in. And when…”
The hatch exploded in her face, the inner hatch cover slamming into her, all its bolts blown. She was hurled back against one wall of the airl
ock and out through the outer hatch. Wheeling and clutching the vacuum, she fell.
She fell thirty meters. Someone falling off a nine-story building on Earth hits the ground in less than two-and-a-half seconds, hard enough to burst. Someone falling the same height on the moon doesn’t hit the ground for an agonizing six seconds. The impact, when it comes, is substantial—like a hard parachute landing on Earth—but if met heads up with knees flexed, it can be walked away from. Sparta’s twisting and flailing had a purpose. Like a cat, she landed on her feet.
Above her, Istrati was sliding down the ladder. When he saw that she’d recovered her balance, he put his feet on a rung and he leaped as hard as he could, a soaring leap that took him well above her head. He hit the ground some seconds later, rolled twice, and bounced to his feet. He ran in great long jumps across the plain.
In the adrenalin rush of the moment, Sparta almost ran after him, but she stopped herself. She wheeled toward the security buggy. “Where’s he going?” she demanded.
The patroller’s voice in her helmet sounded baffled. “No—where. There’s nothing in that direction. We’d better go pick him up before he hurts himself.”
“I’ll handle that. You’re needed at the launch control room.”
“We are?”
“You will be, I guarantee it. Get over there and wait for me.”
“If you say so, Inspector.” The security buggy immediately wheeled around and headed back.
She brushed the moon dust from her suit and walked back to her buggy. She drove off at a leisurely pace, following the now dwindling white figure of Istrati, who was still springing along toward the distant rimwall, a hundred kilometers away.
They covered two or three kilometers this way. At first Sparta expected the man would come to his senses and realize he had no choice but to give up. Another two kilometers passed beneath her oversized tires, and she began to grow weary of the chase. She accelerated.
As she gradually closed on Istrati, she tried talking to him on the commlink. “Mr. Istrati, I’m getting tired of this game and I’m not even exerting myself. How about you? You’ve been running for over five minutes now. Why don’t you save your strength. Slow down, let’s talk. I won’t come any closer than you want me to.”
His suitcomm was open, but all she could hear was his ragged breath.
She drove with one hand, steering the buggy into the larger craters that pocked the floor of the Mare and up their far rims, wheeling smoothly around the smaller ones. The buggy’s electric wheel motors whined softly under the crackle of the radio. “You know there’s nowhere for you to go. Let’s make this easy, okay? You stop running, I’ll stop following you.”
Ahead of her, the running man took a ten-meter wide crater in one great bound, and disappeared beyond its far lip. She nosed the moon buggy into the crater—it was deeper than it looked—and with wheels spinning she climbed the far wall. She cleared the top of the rim with all four wheels off the ground, and landed in a cloud of dust. “Say the word, Mr. Istrati. I’ll be glad to give you a lift back to the…”
He wasn’t there. She skidded to a stop.
Something slammed into the plastic bubble over her head. Istrati had jumped from behind the buggy, gripping a meter-wide basalt boulder in his two hands, and crashed it against the vehicle’s roof. He still held the massive rock; he hit the bubble again. He was trying to smash his way into the cab.
Sparta saw his red-rimmed, glaring eyes through the plate of his spacesuit and saw the froth on his lips. Istrati was gripped by no simple panic. He was in a state of chemically induced rage.
She threw the buggy into reverse and backed off, slapping at the catches of her safety belt to release them. Istrati was about to leap again when she threw open the bubble and jumped for him. He swung the sharp-edged boulder at her and missed—but in the tricky gravity she missed her intended tackle.
Istrati had held onto his weapon, and the momentum of the swing had pulled him off his feet. He tumbled onto his shoulder and rolled, then skidded in the dust. He struggled slowly to his knees and onto his feet. Sparta poised to jump again, but again he anticipated, hurling himself forward as hard as he could…
In horror she watched him throw himself purposely onto the rock he still held between his gloved hands. An edge of basalt as sharp as a primitive hand-axe shattered his faceplate. He was still alive when Sparta reached him, but there was nothing she could do for him. His red eyes turned redder as the blood rushed into them. He shuddered violently as the last of his breath frothed into the vacuum, and then he died.
Sparta knelt helplessly beside the body for several long seconds. She was conscious of her commlink crackling with static, but she didn’t call in. This stinging sensation in her eyes was tears, an inchoate upwelling of angry sadness. She was not made for this business. Whatever they had made her for, it wasn’t this.
She let the sadness fill her and slowly ebb, until she was left exhausted and sore all over. The whole yoke of her shoulders burned with stiff pain. Slowly she stood and lifted Istrati’s big, lightweight body in her arms.
She carried it to the moon buggy. She arranged Istrati in the back seat, as straight as she could manage, and strapped him in. She climbed into the driver’s seat, lowered the canopy, and pressurized the cabin from the stored air. When pressure was normal she unlatched her helmet and sniffed the air.
Long chemical formulas appeared on the interior screen of Sparta’s consciousness—a complex cocktail of cortico-adrenal drugs of which Istrati’s body still reeked, although it was at the end of its breath.
She engaged the buggy’s motors and headed slowly back toward the base. “Troy to Farside Security. Command channel.” There was no answer. Sparta looked up and saw that Istrati’s initial attack had sheared the antennas. Her commlink was dead.
She drove toward the distant base, sunk in a black depression. She’d come to Farside to investigate an attempted murder. Now she had a successful murder on her hands. Istrati had been deliberately overdosed—and the same man was responsible, for the same reason. Penney was desperately trying to cover his tracks…
Sparta’s introspection was interrupted by an eerie sight. Sharply visible in the Moon’s hazeless non-atmosphere, on the near side of the landing field where the bright spike of the white cutter blazed against the star-filled sky, a brightly backlit spacesuited figure was walking toward her, gesturing. She zoomed her eye in on the distant figure, still five kilometers away, bringing it close in her field of view…
It was Blake Redfield.
She sealed her helmet and depressurized the cab. A few minutes later she skidded to a halt beside him. When she popped the bubble she saw his big grin through his faceplate.
Her suit radio crackled. “You’re the passenger I was supposed to pick up?”
“The same. I persuaded them to let me off the ship.” He was mightily pleased at the effect he’d created.
“Do you mind sharing the back seat?”
“Not at…” His grin dissolved when he realized that the man in back had a smashed helmet.
“Until I can get Security to take him off my hands.” Her tone was edgy, challenging him: make a joke of this.
“In that case…”
He settled himself quickly in the back, leaning against his straps away from Istrati’s body. She lowered the bubble. The buggy resumed its journey toward the base.
After several moments of silence, she said, “What are you doing on a cutter? That’s for triple-A-priority cases.”
“I had the impression you sent it for me.”
“Who gave you that impression?” she asked sharply.
“Tall guy, gray hair, blue eyes, a voice like high tide on a pebble beach. He wouldn’t give me his name, but he said he worked for you.”
Sparta almost choked; she turned it into a throat-clearing sound. “Right,” she wheezed. “I found your message, Blake, and I got to Paris, but I was too late. Then this business came up.”
“What
business? Nobody’s told me what’s going on. Or why you’re here.”
“The Farside launcher failed a few days ago and almost killed the farmer who was riding in the capsule. They sent me up here to find out whether it was an accident. It wasn’t. Right now I’m on my way to arrest the guy who did it.”
“Oh,” Blake said. “I guess you’ve been pretty busy.”
There was silence in the cab except for the whine of the wheel motors, conducted through the frame.
“Ellen, are you unhappy to see me?”
She stared sullenly ahead for a long moment, then shook her head. “I’m sorry. I just—I have so much to deal with. I’m running low on energy.”
“One of the things I wanted to tell you—I found William Laird. Or whatever his name is.”
She swallowed and found that her throat was like sand. Laird. The man who’d tried to kill her. The man who’d, if they were dead, must have killed her parents. “Where?” she whispered.
“In Paris,” he said. “He was calling himself Lequeu. He found out who I was before it occurred to me who he was—they had me locked up for more than a week before I got away.”
“Why did you steal that scroll?”
“I’m a member of the Free Spirit now. It was my first assignment. I was hoping you’d show up in time to save me from a life of crime. I came as close to botching it as I could, and I laid a trail back to Lequeu. But he was too smart for the flics.”
“Blake, do you know a woman named Katrina Balakian?”
“No. What about her?”
“Her fingerprints were all over your apartment. She searched the place after you left it.”
“Damn. They must have caught me sending the hide-and-seek message,” he said. “What do you know about Balakian?”
“She’s an astronomer here at Farside. Soviet. A big, muscular blonde, gray eyes…”
“Catherine!” Blake exclaimed.
“Who?”
“Lequeu’s sidekick, Catherine. You say she’s Russian?”
“Transcaucasian. A real man-eater. Charming accent.”
