To the Stars -- And Beyond

by Robert Reginald

  Professional rivalry. Was that sufficient motive for murder? Killing had been done for lesser reasons in the past, Ino knew! Unconsciously, he raised one hand and tried to tug at his moustache, but his hand encountered only the transparent panel of his helmet.

  He sighed and rose to his feet. He forgot himself for a moment, thinking of his sixty-three-kilogram weight—at Nirgal Vallis. He managed to throw a hand up and avoid cracking his head on the ceiling.

  Settling back onto his feet, he regained his equilibrium and explored the rest of the Russian station. There was a computer terminal bolted to a workbench in the makeshift lab. Ino studied it. It was clearly of modern design and manufacture, and the few markings on its exterior were in Kanji, not Cyrillic. It was obviously a new installation, not part of the abandoned Russian equipment.

  Could he get a readout of the computer’s contents? If so, he might well resolve the situation at once. But he feared that the computer was tripwired. An attempt at unauthorized access to its contents might not merely fail, but cause the machine to wipe its own memory.

  There were those at Nirgal Vallis, or at Tithonius Chasma, who could tackle the computer problem. It would slow Ino’s work to rely on their help, but it would safeguard valuable and potentially irretrievable information.

  He was reluctant to move such evidence as the miniature Face and the computer, but he feared also to leave them behind. Whoever had killed Miss Inada—if she was dead—was almost certainly still on Phobos. If Ino left the evidence behind, the criminal might well return here. Aware that Ino had ballooned up from Nirgal Vallis, he would likely remove the Face and the computer. They might be hidden or even destroyed.

  Ino set up a recorder and took moving depth images of the miniature Face and of the computer, making sure that the Kanji markings on the computer were clearly recorded. For the first time, he read those markings. They were manufacturer’s indicia and patent numbers. He smiled.

  He returned the recorder to his tool kit. He unbolted both the Face and the computer from their positions. He could not fit them into his tool kit or pockets, but he could carry them, one in each hand.

  He left the Russian station, dogging the airlock behind him, and started back toward Stickney crater.

  In a peculiar moment of accelerated time he realized that it was impossible, on airless Phobos, to hear someone move behind him. Unless the other’s movements were transmitted through the regolith or the underlying rock, back through the soles of Ino’s boots....

  Perhaps it was that, perhaps it was the slightest sight from the corner of his eye. In any case, he sensed the movement, the flashing knife that drove down at his spine. He lunged forward and away, too late to prevent the blade from puncturing his suit and plunging into his back.

  His hands flew upward in spasm, the computer and the Face flying away from him. He tumbled forward, falling with strange slowness, almost as if he were flying across the ground, twisting as he went.

  In a strange, almost dreamlike state, he knew that he was revolving. As he faced upward the sky revolved before his eyes. Then, as he faced downward, he saw that he had crossed the lip of Stickney crater and was floating across the accumulated dust and pebbles that lay within.

  He crashed into the regolith. His impact sent a spray of fragments into the black sky. It also absorbed his forward momentum. As he sank into the deep regolith everything turned to an all-encompassing black mist. He slid downward through the regolith until he reached solid rock, then slid ever so slowly until he came to rest.

  Where was he?

  He put the question out of his mind. He would deal with it later. First, he must determine his physical condition. He tried moving his hands and feet. They responded. It was his reflexive attempt to dodge the descending blade that had saved him—the knife would otherwise likely have severed his spine!

  He reached behind himself. The spacesuit made the maneuver difficult, and moving his arms through the regolith was like swimming in grainy mud. Still, and despite the pain of his knife wound, he was able to reach the center of his back. The knife was gone and he could feel the scar in his suit where the sealant had flowed into the opening. More good fortune—if the assailant had turned the knife and torn a triangular flap from the suit, the sealant would probably have failed—but a simple slit was a best case for the sealant.

  Where was the knife now? Probably his assailant still had it. As well as the Face and the computer.

  Ino carefully opened his tool kit. Working by feel, he extracted a light and turned it on. There was no discernable effect. He raised the light to his face. Through the transparent panel of his helmet he could see that the light was undamaged. It was as bright as ever. But when he turned it away and tried to see through the regolith, he was confronted by another impenetrable kuroi kiri. He shut off the light and returned it to his tool kit.

  He inferred that he was in the center of the crater. He tried walking. It was almost impossible. He managed only two or three steps, each one an immense struggle, before realizing that this was hopeless. The exertion had caused terrible pains in his back, and he realized that he was bleeding from his wound. He could feel a slow accumulation of blood in his boots.

  He flicked on his suit radio and tried to establish contact with the research station, but the regolith damped his transmission and he had to give that up as well. Unthinkingly, he tried once more to walk forward. His foot encountered a solid obstruction.

  Even to bend over and feel what it was he had struck, required immense effort. But he managed. With both hands he felt the obstruction. It was a human form, clothed in a spacesuit. Through the flexible fabric he could tell that the person in the spacesuit was dead. He could not tell how long the person had been dead, for the body was now frozen. By its contours he could tell that it was the body of a woman.

  Fumiko Inada, Ino thought. Fumiko Inada!

  For a moment his mind returned to the mystery of Miss Inada. The missing body was now recovered, and the hapless Jiricho Toshikawa was vindicated. Ino did not think for a moment that Toshikawa was the killer—not after what Ino had found in the Russian space station.

  But all of Ino’s ratiocination—he might be a modern Inspector Imanishi for all that it mattered—was less than worthless, it was meaningless—if he remained here to die beside the body.

  How could he get out of the crater? He thought of a crippled wasp dropped into a saucer. Unable to fly, the creature would struggle to crawl to safety, but the more nearly it approached the rim of its prison, the steeper would grow its walls until the prisoner slid helplessly back toward the center. There was no hope for the poor creature. It would have to await another life in which its fate might prove happier. It might find some Jizu-boratsu of the insect world to comfort its soul.

  The wasp’s problem was the absence of traction. Ino’s was the black mist of regolith that held him helpless!

  He opened his tool kit once more and felt its contents. Lights and recorders were useless here. His hand touched the collapsing ladder. That was self-powering. He extracted it from the kit, struggled back down through regolith to a crouching position and set the base of the ladder on the solid rock.

  Now he set the ladder to open. Would dust and pebbles jam its mechanism? Would the sheer weight of the regolith hold it collapsed?

  No.

  Slowly the ladder expanded, climbing upward. It was invisible to Ino, as was everything in the black mist of regolith. But he could feel it rising, rising.

  If it reached the surface of the regolith he might be able to climb it, despite the weight and density of the material above him. Then another idea flashed upon Mr. Ino. The ladder was hardly above the height of his waist, so slowly was it expanding. He stopped it, attached it to the belt of his spacesuit, and started it again.

  Slowly but steadily he felt himself lifted. He conjured images of his home and his mother, of the icy winds that blew across the Strait of Soya that separated Hokkaido from Sakhalin, of the fishing town of Wakkana
i where he had been born and where his family had lived for uncounted generations. With his father and the other men he had fished in summer and winter, had swum in the icy strait in the coldest of storms. He had always been small, and had toughened himself by this exercise so he could stand up to other young men of the town.

  He would like to see Earth again, for all its squalor and poverty, its poisoned oceans and its choking air. If he didn’t die here in the black mist of Stickney crater on Phobos....

  He closed his eyes. Opened them. There was no difference. Closed them again. He could feel the internal workings of the expanding ladder straining. A final quiver and it stopped.

  Opened his eyes.

  Kuroi kiri.

  A gasp escaped his lips and he felt one more hot wetness. This time it was not blood seeping from his wound, but hot tears falling from his eyes.

  He disconnected his belt from the ladder and climbed the short extra distance to the very top. Kuroi kiri. He reached up and felt his hand burst through the top layer of regolith.

  He was racked by gasps of laughter and tears, puzzlement and despair and hope. He pushed himself to his greatest height and tried desperately to see, but there was only blackness. He lost his balance and started to slide downward through the regolith once more, but was able to grasp the ladder and regain his position.

  He opened his tool kit. By now dust and pebbles had filled it, but he was able to feel the tools nonetheless. He drew out the power-grapnel and raised it over his head until he felt his hand once more break the surface of the regolith.

  He held the power-grapnel in a horizontal position and fired it, holding to the handle for his life. He could neither see nor feel the grapnel strike and claw its way into bedrock. He could not tell whether it had reached the rim of the crater or had fallen into kuroi kiri. He tugged at it, knowing that if it yielded he was lost.

  It held.

  With one hand he pulled gently against the grapnel line. With his other hand and both legs he tried swimming through the regolith. He felt himself moving through the pebbles and dust. This was harder even than swimming in the Strait of Soya, battling icy cold, wind and waves. But he would do it.

  He tried to get the power-grapnel to retract, to pull him to the rim of the crater, the shore of this terrible lake of kuroi kiri. But the dust must be too much for it. The mechanism refused to respond. He found that he could pull himself a fraction of a meter, swimming in the very rocks, then wrap the grapnel line around his forearm, then pull and swim again.

  In time he stood on the edge of the crater. Stood there for a few seconds, then slid slowly to the ground.

  He did not turn on his radio.

  It was not a band of hinin who had stabbed him and thrown him into Stickney crater to die. It was not an alien being who had murdered Miss Inada and left her in the crater. It would be necessary to retrieve the murder victim’s body before this matter was closed. But for now, Ino had to return to the research station and obtain treatment for his own wound.

  He could see both the Russian station and the one from which he had started his terrible excursion. One to the left, one to the right. He headed for his own base. Even in Phobos’s negligible gravity, walking was dreadfully difficult. His boots were partially filled with fluid—blood—that sloshed with each step. The wound in his back was painful. Every muscle in his body ached from the exertion of struggling through the lake of regolith inside Stickney crater.

  Also, as he walked, he was constantly on the alert against his attacker. He dared not try to contact the research station. He had notified Deputy Manager Sumiyoshi of his intention to visit the Russian station. Upon leaving that station, he had been attacked and very nearly killed.

  Obviously, Sumiyoshi was his attacker, and was consequently the prime suspect in the murder of Miss Inada. Matters were simplifying themselves, and if Ino managed not to be killed himself, he should establish Sumiyoshi as the criminal. Yes, things were growing simple.

  Or were they? Ino had conversed with Sumiyoshi, but he had not asked Sumiyoshi to keep the conversation a secret. The deputy manager might have mentioned Ino’s whereabouts to others. Or, for that matter, others might have monitored the conversation. The spacesuit-to-station radio link was anything but secure. It would have been easy for a third party to overhear Ino’s call to Sumiyoshi.

  And for that third party to leave the station unobserved. There were no particular controls over egress and entry to the station. There were several airlocks. The staff of the station was small and its members were almost without exception well trained and trusted workers.

  A fool like the kitchen-helper Toshikawa was a rare, perhaps unique, exception. Such a man might do anything. He was like an ancient kabuki-mono, a crazy whose conduct could not be predicted.

  The murder might be anything from a tsuji-giri, a random killing with no more purpose than the testing of a new blade, to a coldly calculated act of untold implications. Having found the secret exoarchaeology lab in the Russian station, Ino was convinced of the latter.

  He glanced behind him, cautiously turning in a full circle. There were rocks of every size; the rim of Stickney crater was silhouetted now against the Milky Way itself. There was still the jagged shape of the Russian station.

  Was there a shape crouched behind a rock? Did a tribe of hinin like the dwarf Sukuna-bikona dance like shadows, from hiding place to hiding place, ready to attack him?

  Was he growing light-headed? Would he die before he reached his goal? Having solved the mystery of Fumiko Inada’s murder, having discovered the illicit laboratory in the Russian station, having survived a murderous attack and escaped the kuroi kiri in Stickney crater—was he to fall dead a few kilometers from his goal?

  He lost track of Mars days and solar days and eclipses as Phobos rotated on its own axis and raced in its bullet-like orbit around Mars.

  Ino dragged himself toward the station. He fell to his knees, confused. He looked one way and saw a station, then the other way and saw another station. One was his own goal, toward which he was struggling. The other was the old Russian station. But his head swam, his eyes were dim. There was a black mist inside his helmet. He swiped at it with a gloved hand but only smeared more regolith dust on the outside of the panel.

  He flopped onto his belly and dragged himself across the ground like an injured frog. He reached the station and dragged himself back to his feet, found an airlock, and entered. He managed to work the lock and found himself in an unfamiliar corridor. Bright lights and clean walls glared at him, the brightness almost blinding after his time on the surface of Phobos.

  A passing worker dressed in clean blouse and trousers and soft sandals stopped and stared at Ino.

  Ino wigwagged his hands, took a step toward the worker, and stumbled.

  The worker started to recoil from Ino. He must have looked like a coal miner freshly emerged from a day’s labor in the black dust beneath the earth. But the man caught him in his arms and steadied him. He helped Ino to remove the helmet of his spacesuit. He gaped at Ino, muttered a few words, then lifted him in his arms—an easy task in this gravity—and carried him through phantasmagoric corridors to the station’s tiny infirmary.

  Strangers removed the spacesuit, studied Ino’s wound, made him wiggle his fingers and toes for them, disinfected and stitched the wound. There was a bustle and whispered conversation. Then the workers backed away, making an opening.

  Through it strode Manager Kakuji Matsuda.

  “Mr. Ino!” Concern was clearly visible on Mr. Matsuda’s face.

  Ino attempted a bow, managing to dip his head slightly without quite removing it from a pillow. His wound was bandaged, and he was able to lie on his back without great pain. A light sheet covered him and prevented him from throwing himself from the bed with any exertion.

  Mr. Matsuda returned the attempted bow. “Mr. Ino,” he said again, “what happened to you? Word was brought to me that you were injured.”

  “Attacked,” Ino said.r />
  “Attacked? By whom? What happened?”

  Ino started to tell his story, then halted. Deputy Manager Sumiyoshi was still his prime suspect. What was the relationship between Manager Matsuda and his chief aide? Were they in league in some criminal enterprise? Had Miss Inada discovered their illicit work, and was her death the reward for that discovery?

  Perhaps she had reported her findings to Sumiyoshi, not suspecting that he himself was involved in the enterprise. Was Mr. Matsuda innocent? Ignorant of Sumiyoshi’s crimes? Or was he Sumiyoshi’s colleague, even his mentor, in the scheme?

  Ino had never noticed Sumiyoshi’s hands. Perhaps the last joint of a finger was missing, had been presented to Matsuda at an earlier time. They might be members of the same criminal gumi, gang; of the same ikka, family. If Sumiyoshi played kobun to Matsuda’s oyabun, then Matsuda would be bound by compassionate duty and loyalty to protect Sumiyoshi.

  That protection could cost Ino his life.

  “I do not know what happened,” he told Matsuda. “I searched for Miss Inada, for her remains, or—thinking she might be injured or trapped somehow—for Miss Inada herself.”

  “Did you find her?”

  “I was struck from behind. Fortunately, the wound was not fatal. My spacesuit sealed properly and saved my life.”

  “Did you find Miss Inada?” Mr. Matsuda asked again.

  Ino gritted his teeth. To lie to Manager Matsuda was against his training and his personal principles, but if Matsuda was a kuromako—the godfather of a criminal gumi—then Ino must not play into his hands.

  “I did not find her,” he lied. But he knew that he was a poor liar.

  Matsuda grunted. “You do not look well, Ino.”

  Ino said nothing.

  “Well, you rest and recover, Ino. I will continue the investigation. You come and see me as soon as you can. In the meanwhile, I will apprise Mr. Matsuzaki of your condition, and reassure him that you are making a rapid recovery.”

  “Thank you,” Ino said. Again he managed a partial bow. Matsuda returned the bow and left the room.