* * *
"We'll be in hard vacuum, Mr. Alvarest," Spaceman Ramsey said, leading the way into the ready-room. "Have to suit up and take a scooter." He halted before a row of lockers, turned to eye Alvarest for size, and pulled out two spacesuits.
"Why keep it in hard vacuum?" Alvarest asked nervously, taking the suit. "Doesn't that make for more trouble?"
Ramsey shrugged. "Trouble for people who don't belong here. Prevents contamination. You've worn a pressure suit before, right?"
Alvarest shook his head.
"Well, then, there's some things you need to know."
Alvarest tried to listen as Ramsey rattled off the instructions, but he had trouble concentrating. Contamination? Of what—the weapons stock? Or radioactive contamination of the station? How would he know if he saw anything incriminating? He knew the symbol for radioactivity, but that was about it.
"—back on this lever," Ramsey was saying.
"Huh? Right. Pull back," Alvarest repeated. By the time they were both suited, he had begun to wish he'd been thinking less and listening more to the checkout. It wouldn't hurt to be cautious, Horst had said. Thinking could be a dangerous habit.
Ramsey led the way into the airlock and told him to shut his faceplate. Ramsey checked the seal, and then closed his own. "Check your air," he instructed, his voice crackling in Alvarest's headset. Alvarest took several deep breaths; the air smelled a little stale, but otherwise seemed okay. "What are your pressure and flow readings?" Ramsey said. His voice was loud and harsh, and his breath a rasp in Alvarest's ear.
"Where do I find it?" He fumbled at the controls on his chest.
"Not there!" Ramsey said impatiently. "Fuckin' A, man, didn't you listen? Inside—top of your visor."
"Right." Alvarest found the tiny red digital display reflected on the inner surface of his visor and quoted the figures to Ramsey. Ramsey grunted and turned to the airlock control panel.
The inner door slid shut. An amber light went on above it. The light turned red, and Alvarest felt his suit stiffening slightly. When he turned around, he saw the outer door retracting. Ramsey gestured and moved out of the lock; Alvarest, after a moment's hesitation, followed.
The view in the hangar was essentially the same whether one was looking out through a window or stepping out in a spacesuit, but the feelings were very different. Alvarest clung to the doorframe to steady himself. Weightlessness suddenly had a new meaning. If he let go, he might tumble away from the airlock, and safety, with nothing to grab onto. Don't be ridiculous, he thought. How was Ramsey managing?
His guide was hovering, using tiny jets on his suit. "Hook your line to that cleat on your left," Ramsey ordered. Alvarest found the end of his safety line and obeyed. "Now swing around there and get on the rear seat of the scooter." Alvarest focused on a wasplike craft moored to his left. Slowly he swung himself around and clambered onto the second narrow seat on the craft's body. He hooked his legs around the frame, until Ramsey floated up alongside and showed him where to hang on. "When I unhook your line, now, reel it in and hook it right here." He tapped a fitting on the scooter. Alvarest, fumbling in the bulky suit, complied.
Ramsey settled into the front seat and ran down a checklist. Alvarest felt a jolt, and the scooter began moving, accelerating out of the hangar. He swallowed back a sudden feeling of vertigo, held on tightly and tried to enjoy the ride. He hadn't been able to see much during the morning shuttle flight from GEO-Four to the deep-space hangar; now was his chance. He peered around as the scooter accelerated. What he saw, mostly, was a collection of nondescript sheds somehow moored together in free fall. He located the Earth, the glare of the sun, spotted a few stars in the blackness. This wasn't too bad. He could get used to having nothing beneath him but space. He relaxed his grip a little. Over his left shoulder, he could see the main deep-space dock and the supply shuttle he'd come in on. He suddenly felt foolish—certain that there was nothing for him to see, no evidence—why else would Ogilvy have sent him out here? He turned to look forward again, with a vague sense of uneasiness; it was quiet, lonely out here, just he and Ramsey and the emptiness.
Ramsey applied braking thrust as they passed a small fuel-tank cluster and approached the last structure in the group. The scooter turned as Ramsey maneuvered beyond and around the end of the enclosure. They came to a halt a few meters from the shed. If this was an ordnance area, there was nothing to signify it on the outside. Ramsey dismounted and jetted to an external control box. He manipulated something, and a large bay door began to retract. He returned to the scooter and brought it slowly forward into the doorway, into the near-pitch darkness of the shed's interior. The scooter bumped to a stop, and Alvarest felt a click as some sort of docking mechanism locked it into place.
Ramsey dismounted again, turned, and crowded close to Alvarest. He did something to the controls on the front of Alvarest's chestpack. Alvarest's helmet light blinked on, a spotlight stabbing into the darkness. Ramsey moved away, his own light flicking on, and gestured for Alvarest to follow. "What do you want me to do?" Alvarest said uneasily. He didn't like the idea of floating away from the scooter into darkness.
He suddenly realized that he no longer heard Ramsey's breathing in his ear. "Ramsey," he said nervously. "Can you hear me?"
Ramsey moved back to a position in front of him, his faceplate reflecting Alvarest's light. Alvarest pointed to his ear with his right hand, signaling that his radio was out. Ramsey leaned forward, placing his helmet in contact with Alvarest's. "I turned your radio off," Ramsey said, his voice reaching Alvarest thinly through the helmet-to-helmet contact. "Can't risk anyone listening in when I show you this."
An unpleasant chill ran through Alvarest's body.
"Get off the scooter," Ramsey said. "Unhook your line, and I'll show you where to hook it on the wall." The spacesuited man pulled his head away, and moved off to the right, away from the scooter.
Alvarest rose from his seat, cautiously. The beam of his helmet light moved crazily across the wall. There was Ramsey's light; don't lose sight of it. A jump was required to reach the wall. He poised, and pushed off from the scooter—and immediately felt himself yanked around, tumbling. He grabbed for the wall, missed. His helmet light flew drunkenly across wall and then emptiness. "Wait!" he shouted futilely. His voice was heard by no one but himself.
Something jerked him against the side of the scooter, and he gasped, and realized dully that he had forgotten to unhook his safety line. He cursed with relief. No wonder he'd tumbled. Breathing heavily, he found the cleat and disconnected the line. Then, steadying himself, he pushed off again for the wall.
The spot of his helmet light grew bright against the wall as he caught at a brace, missed, caught another. Panting, he swung himself to a halt, face forward against the wall. It was harder work than it looked, moving around in these suits. Carefully, he turned himself around to look for Ramsey. He blinked, trying to shake off a feeling of dizziness. Was he still getting air? Breathing so hard he couldn't tell, couldn't hear the whisper. Getting excited, now; calm down. Where the hell was Ramsey?
He couldn't see much across the shed; his light was lost in darkness. Nearby was a large rack of girders and beams, apparently just being stored. Most of the shed seemed empty. He saw nothing that looked like weapons storage. "Are you sure we're in the right place," he said, a little too loudly, forgetting that he couldn't be heard. What was this, a weapons depot camouflaged as a construction storage shed? Or just a storage shed? If Ramsey was playing a game of some kind, how long would it take to play it out?
Something dark moved in the distance. Ramsey? He turned his head, trying to aim the light. It was impossible; it wasn't bright enough, and he couldn't get the damn thing pointed where he wanted it, anyhow. Where the hell was Ramsey? He turned—and felt his handhold slip—and realized too late that he'd failed to reattach his safety line.
He was drifting away from the wall, his light dancing bewilderingly. "Ramsey!" he shouted. Find something to gr
ab onto. Anything. There were several terrifying moments as he groped at empty space, and then his right hand landed on something that felt like a handle, and he clutched it and yanked himself toward it—and felt it shift toward him with a sudden jerk. He released it with a start. Damn it—now what had he done? "Ramsey!" He was drifting backward, away from the wall.
Maneuvering jets, idiot. Controls on your chestpack. Damn it, what did Ramsey say about them? He fumbled at the chestpack, found a recessed lever on the side. Something hissed and kicked him in the right shoulder, and he began spinning. Christ. As his light swung wildly around the shed, he held his breath, waiting for another glimpse of the near wall. His beam passed a jumble of moving objects. What the hell was that? Coming closer.
He pushed the lever frantically the other way; a kick in his left shoulder slowed his spin. Something in his light, coming toward him.
"Shit!" he whispered in terror. It was the rackful of girders—loose now, tumbling and jostling, weightless but massive, and coming toward him. Panicked, he tried to move, kicked against nothing. "NO!" he bellowed. "RAMSEY!" Use the jets, now or never! He found another lever on the left side of his pack, yanked it, felt a kick driving him backward. His spotlight danced crazily on the girders, following him. Faster. He fired the jets again, squeezed and held the lever. He couldn't breath, couldn't cry out. He was frozen in a moment of seeming motionlessness, flying backward, chased by a churning cluster of steel girders. His stomach was a clenched fist. His balance was off; he began twisting again, losing sight of the pursuing objects. The far wall was coming up fast; he couldn't control his movement.
The first impact slammed his helmet into the wall. The second and third crushed his ribs.
The fourth, he never felt.
* * *
Ogilvy punched the security codes anxiously until the console confirmed a scrambled circuit. "Yes. Report," he said.
A familiar voice answered with a trace of a drawl. "Well, your man is taken care of. The official report oughta be in by now."
"Good."
"I can't hardly take all the credit, though."
Ogilvy looked at the communication set in puzzlement. "What do you mean—didn't you plan it and carry it out?"
"Didn't exactly get a chance. He brought it on himself."
"What do you mean?" Ogilvy demanded.
"He got clumsy." There was a trace of humor in the voice. "Dumped a whole rack of steel girders on himself before I was even finished setting it up."
"You mean you didn't have to do anything?" Ogilvy asked incredulously.
"I wouldn't say that. I got him there. Got him good and scared by turning off his radio receiver, and cutting back his air a little."
"He panicked?"
"He was shittin' his britches. It was real dark in there, and he didn't know which end was up."
Ogilvy recalled uneasily that he hadn't intended to ask the details. "Did you notify the MPs?"
"Yep. A terrible thing, terrible accident. And that's the truth. People been saying for years those storage areas should be better secured. And who the hell knew why the guy wanted to inspect a bunch of construction sheds, anyway."
Ogilvy began to relax. "Well, I'll look for the official report. There'll be hearings, of course, but that shouldn't pose too much of a problem. It looks like you've earned your pay."
"Fuckin' A."
"Your check'll be in the mail."
"A pleasure, man."
The circuit-connect light blinked off, and Ogilvy took a deep, satisfied breath. The general might not know exactly how the coyote had been removed from the henhouse, but he would know to whom he owed the deed.
Chapter 62
The snow was still coming down, blowing in an icy wind that wrapped itself around every building, tree, and vehicle so that no place outside was sheltered from its gusts. Against the streetlights, the snow was a flurry of angry white particles, flying in swirls and whipping upward in defiance of gravity.
Payne slammed the car door and hurried up the walk. He stamped his feet in the vestibule, fumbled with the lock, and finally trudged up the stairs to the third floor. The hallway was silent as he entered the apartment and hung up his coat.
He felt the tension return to the pit of his stomach, without even seeing or speaking with Denine. He kicked off his shoes and put on slippers before padding into the empty kitchen. She must be in the back room. Clicking on the water heater, he stared silently out the kitchen window, watching the snow fly under the streetlights. Even the weather had them under siege, he thought. His whole world seemed under siege, sometimes. He and Denine had been getting along poorly ever since his return from New Phoenix. Why, he wasn't sure; maybe it was his frustration, or her impatience. Maybe they were just drawing apart, as people do. Maybe it was the weather.
The water spurted out boiling into his cup. Carrying the steeping tea, he went down the hall, looking for Denine. Her studio door—nearly always open—was closed. He tapped softly and pushed the door open. She was at her table, working at the graphics screen. "Yo, I'm home," he called.
"Yep," she said, not turning from her work.
"It's blowing like crazy out. Colder than a witch's—"
"You've got a message," she said, still not looking up. She was staring at a portion of a painting on the screen, flipping frame to frame.
"How's it going?" he said. She grunted. He shrugged and pulled her door closed again and went into his own study. She has her problems, I have mine, he thought with some resentment, dropping into his seat. The message light was glowing on his console; he punched replay. It was Teri Renshaw, in New Wash. He pulled at his lip, thinking, No, I haven't finished your update yet, and could that be the fly in Dee's soup—Teri calling? Or was there something more—all the time he'd been spending away, maybe, or her suspicion that he was exploiting Mozy's story for his own ends?
He blew through his fingers, shaking his head. He was having enough trouble just keeping on top of the damn story, without extraneous pressures. Since he'd learned from his New Phoenix assistant about the death of Hoshi Aronson, under what had to be considered bizarre circumstances, he'd been trying harder than ever to piece together the pattern of facts and suspicions; but he just didn't have enough to make it stick—not on national newscope network. Fragments, it was nothing but fragments. Of course, Teri never tired of telling him that it was fragmentary stories that made the news; and after you'd written enough fragments, if you were lucky, you found that you had a whole. Maybe it was the ability to be content with that process that made a good hard-news reporter. He wasn't sure that he had it in him.
He called Teri at her home. The line rang twice. "Hello," Teri said. Then her face appeared in the screen, and her smile disappeared. "Joe."
"I haven't done the story yet, if that's what you called about," he said. "Are you gonna be mad?"
Teri shook her head. "No, uh . . . Joe . . ." A pained expression crossed her face. "I wish I didn't have to be the one."
"What?"
"To . . . give you this news."
Butterflies took flight in his stomach. They were cutting him from the story. No. They couldn't. They wouldn't.
"Joe—" She gazed straight out of the screen at him. "It's your friend, Don Alvarest. The one who went to GEO-Four. He's—" Her voice caught.
I've gotten him in trouble, then. Damn it—
"Joe, he's dead."
Payne's breath went out.
Teri said quietly, "We just got a report from our man at GEO-Four. It was some kind of accident, evidently. The official report was that . . ."
All he could feel was a sudden emptiness in the center of his chest, a blunt pain. A roaring sensation in his ears.
" . . .outside the space station, in some kind of storage shed . . . he was crushed . . ."
A corner of Payne's brain listened as Teri spoke, absorbing the details with perfect clarity; but the rest of his mind, through a haze, spun futilely with disbelief, with the sheer unbelievability o
f it, that Donny could be gone. An accident? He thought dimly of times they'd shared together in college, drinks and good times and bad times; and he thought of the irony of the fact that if it were not for Donny, he might have no story now, no story at all. It was not possible that he could be dead. It wasn't just not possible; it wasn't fair.
There was a rattling and howling at the windows as Teri spoke to him, as outside, the snowstorm raged.
* * *
"I have to go to New Washington," Payne said, pacing. Denine was sitting quietly at the table opposite him. The single overhead bulb filled the kitchen with a stark glow. "I have to talk with Teri and George and the others, and see if their man at GEO-Four is good enough to handle this. There has to be someone good on it. Someone who can dig."
He stopped pacing and looked at her. She was watching him silently, with an expression that was some mixture of sympathy and detachment. He shrugged and sat down and stared at the tabletop, thinking of the last phone message he'd had from Donny, and imagining him up there alone, trying to carry on an investigation. There was a lot about Donny's work that he didn't know—he realized that—but he knew Donny, and Donny wasn't one to bow to petty bureaucrats. He'd probably not made many friends among the military bureaucracy, not if his investigation took him onto their turf. How could it have happened? And why? The news bureau contact thought that the circumstances sounded suspicious, and even the defense attorney for the Tachylab scientists had called for an investigation. But what could he have uncovered that was important enough to be murdered for?
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