To the Stars -- And Beyond

by Robert Reginald

  “Surely you don’t believe that. What is lost may be recovered, don’t you agree?”

  Ino nodded. “Of course. We must not lose hope.” He smiled, tugged at his moustache. Mrs. Itagaki was just his own height. He felt most comfortable with her. “A passing moment, a black mist of despair. Please continue.”

  “A miniature Face? Then there must be life, past or present. Martian life. Alien life. Hinin. Yes, hinin. The shining sword of the exobiologist.”

  “But where are the Martians?”

  “Who knows? Probably they lived and died long ago. Millions of years. Perhaps they live in distant stars, or in secret redoubts beneath Mars. Perhaps we are the Martians.”

  Ino nodded. The theories resonated with those he had already heard. He said, “I believe that Deputy Manager Sumiyoshi killed Miss Inada.”

  Mrs. Itagaki stood motionless for twenty beats of the heart. Then she said, “Why?”

  “For the Face. Think of its value to some collector of fine objets d’art. Incalculable. A unique specimen. The only known work of art of an alien hand, an alien race. The prestige it would confer upon its possessor would make him the greatest kuromako in all the world.”

  Mrs. Itagaki drew a dainty kerchief from the sleeve of her blouse and wiped her eyes.

  Mr. Ino took her hand to comfort her. The act required all of his courage, and was rewarded with a small smile.

  “You believe he knew of her secret laboratory?”

  “Obviously.”

  “And he killed her and left her body near Stickney crater, where it was discovered by Mr. Toshikawa. Why would he leave her like that? Leave her to be discovered, then return and remove the body. Why?”

  “Gurentai operate as much by terror of force as they do by the actuality of force. Think of the terror and confusion that this incident creates—far more than simple murder would have.”

  Mrs. Itagaki shook her head. “It’s beyond me. I only wished to do my job, and to be a friend to Miss Inada. A beautiful young woman. You never met her. Hair like midnight, eyes like bottomless ponds. Her hands—strong hands, the hands of a scientist who worked with hard materials. There were scars and signs of old injuries in her hands. Yet they could be as graceful and as quick as darting carp, as gentle as the breast of a dove.” She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.

  “All right,” Ino said. “We have to act.”

  She looked at him unspeakingly.

  “How many people can we rely on in this station?”

  “My own staff. There are six. Two or three I am certain of. Two more are doubtful. The others I would not trust.”

  “Anyone else? What about Mr. Matsuda?”

  “The manager? Mr. Matsuda?”

  “Yes,” Ino hissed.

  “You question the manager? You doubt his honesty?” She seemed more shocked by the notion that Matsuda might be corrupt than by anything that had gone before. Yet gurentai had their tentacles everywhere. Men and institutions anywhere could be polluted by them.

  “I could never question Mr. Matsuda.” Mrs. Itagaki shuddered visibly.

  And yet, Ino thought, if Sumiyoshi was kobun, someone had to be his oyabun. Who could it be? He tugged at his moustache with one hand and rubbed his scalp with the other. Mrs. Itagaki might not question the integrity of her boss. Such loyalty in itself was admirable. But if Matsuda had been corrupted by gangsters, he was doubly guilty—guilty of whatever illegal acts he had been induced to commit, and guilty of betraying the trust of the research organization, of those above him who had placed authority in his hands and by those below him, to whom he was obligated to wield that authority with honor and propriety.

  Ino shook his head to clear it of such contemplative concerns. He must deal with the reality of the moment. “Mrs. Itagaki, would you know if Mr. Sumiyoshi had recovered the missing Face and computer?”

  Mrs. Itagaki shook her head. “If the research were licit, it would be under my department, and I would have been informed of the find. But since the original research was never officially sanctioned....” She tucked her handkerchief back into her sleeve and looked straight at Mr. Ino. “And if Mr. Sumiyoshi is some sort of gangster....”

  Ino nodded and made an encouraging sound somewhere between a hum and a grunt. He felt himself straining, striving to make Mrs. Itagaki continue by sheer force of will.

  “No,” she continued, “I might not know of it. Mr. Sumiyoshi might have hidden the objects. I do not know where.”

  “Mrs. Itagaki.” He took her hands in his own. Her fingers, too, were stained and scarred and callused by many years of work with specimens, chemicals, and tools. “Mrs. Itagaki, please summon those workers whom you trust. They must have your total confidence. Better two trustworthy persons than a dozen doubtful ones. Will you do this for me?”

  “I can. But—why?”

  “To return to Stickney crater and to the Russian station. To see if we can recover the Face and the computer. To see what evidence we can find concerning Miss Inada. You and I to search. The others to assist—and to mount guard. Mr. Sumiyoshi might attack a single person, but he would not dare attack a party.”

  Mrs. Itagaki complied. Before long four persons were donning spacesuits and making their separate ways to as many airlocks. Ino had decided that this would attract less attention than a party of four assembling and leaving the station together.

  The group reassembled at the rim of Stickney crater. They had planned their foray in whispered conversation and passed notes under the protection of the same noisy machine that had covered the discussion between Mr. Ino and Mrs. Itagaki.

  It was their intention to maintain radio silence if at all possible. What conversation was needed, would take place within the Russian station. It was their hope that the station’s heavy metal bulkheads and fittings would prevent eavesdropping by Sumiyoshi or any ally of his.

  As they stepped inside the Russian station, Ino took the lead and proceeded directly to Miss Inada’s secret laboratory—or rather, to the chamber where the laboratory had been. There were signs of disorder and of the removal of equipment, but there remained no laboratory, or any but the most flimsy suggestion that a laboratory had ever existed in this space.

  Mrs. Itagaki looked at Mr. Ino inquiringly. Behind her, Mr. Ino could see her two assistants. They were a man and a woman. Mrs. Itagaki had introduced them to Ino before they had donned their spacesuits. They were a married couple, both post-doctoral students. He was from the town of Otomari on Aniwa Bay, even farther north than Mr. Ino’s home region on Hokkaido. She was from the small city of Niihama on Shikoku. They had met while attending graduate school in Canada, and returned to Japan to be married.

  To Mr. Ino it was obvious that whichever way Mrs. Itagaki leaned, the young couple would leap.

  “There is nothing here,” he said. He could not keep the bitterness from his voice, nor was there anything he would have done to hide it.

  “What now?” He could see Mrs. Itagaki’s lips move even as he heard her voice inside his helmet. His scalp tingled and itched, and he reached to massage it but only touched his gloved hand to the top of his helmet.

  “I can retrace my steps to the place where I was stabbed. Maybe we can find the computer or the miniature Face.”

  “Don’t you think your attacker would have gathered them up and brought them back to the station? To either station, the Russian or our own?”

  “Let’s do what we can!” Ino felt anger rising within him, and even heard it in his own voice. Mrs. Itagaki recoiled inside her helmet. Mr. Ino sucked air between his teeth, breathed it deep into his lungs despite the unpleasant, slightly-oily flavor that the spacesuit gave it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Let us try.”

  Mrs. Itagaki nodded.

  They set out, Ino in the lead, Mrs. Itagaki beside him. The two others were split, one to either side, trailing Mr. Ino and Mrs. Itagaki by half a dozen paces. They turned frequently, searching for the two objects.

  Even while still in the Russ
ian station, Mrs. Itagaki had raised an intriguing question. What were the lighting conditions when Mr. Ino was attacked and the two objects lost?

  Mr. Ino examined his memory and determined that Stickney had been in full Phobos light. Under the red glare of the planet, the regolith would have appeared black. But now Phobos was in a different posture. Phobos was passing over the daylight half of Mars, an almost invisible black dot against the nearly black sky except to those directly beneath the moon, who would see it as a speck sliding rapidly across the face of the sun.

  But Stickney was faced away from Mars, bathed in direct, bright sunlight. The regolith would appear gray, and an object like the Face or the computer might capture a glinting ray of sunlight. Might scream out to a searcher, Here am I!

  Mr. Ino and Mrs. Itagaki walked like a couple many years younger, striding slowly. But their eyes would have betrayed them, for they were not fixed on each other. Instead they scanned the ground to the left, to the right, to the left, to the right.

  They were close to Stickney. Years of explorers and workers had obliterated the virgin appearance of the regolith, but more workers, the likes of the hapless Jiricho Toshikawa, had trudged across the surface with rakes in hand, restoring its natural unmarked face.

  Someone—Mr. Sumiyoshi or someone else—had returned to this sector after the attack on Mr. Ino. All visible traces of the former incident were gone.

  Mr. Ino exhaled, thinking that someone would have to return here once more and remove the signs of his newest outing with Mrs. Itagaki and the young scientists.

  But somehow he should be able to re-establish his location at the time of the attack. It had been a moment of such importance, surely he could not have lost all track of it.

  The lighting was different, yes. But shapes remained the same. He looked at the rim of Stickney, then turned and looked back at the Russian station. There were irregularities in the shape of the rim. If he could find the configuration that he had seen just before the knife struck....

  Yes. He believed that he had found it. By hand signals he told the others what he had done. Mrs. Itagaki understood his message at once. She stood in his place, her hands upturned as if holding the two important objects. Ino raised his own hand, plunged it, empty, toward her back. As if he held a knife.

  Mrs. Itagaki twisted forward, as she knew Ino had done. She flung her hands upward in an instinctive gesture.

  Did the others understand?

  They did, clearly, for both nodded, then resumed an even closer scrutiny of the ground, following the invisible trajectory of the two imaginary objects Mrs. Itagaki had thrown.

  Ino’s recollection was that the Face was far more massive than the small computer. Even in Phobos’ negligible gravity, he had felt its weightiness when he handled it.

  With his eyes he drew an invisible line from Mrs. Itagaki’s right hand, the line along which the computer would have traveled. Depending on the height of its trajectory, it might have bounced or it might have flown directly into the crater.

  One of the younger scientists had followed Mrs. Itagaki’s movement. Mr. Ino saw the spacesuited figure moving forward, casting a sharp, black shadow against the gray regolith. The scientist pointed with one gloved hand, drawing that imaginary line in the dust and pebbles. At the edge of the crater the scientist stood, hands on hips, staring down into the crater helplessly.

  Mr. Ino turned, followed the line that the face would have traveled from Mrs. Ino’s left hand.

  The second of the young scientists mimicked the actions of the first, walking slowly along, pointing at the ground, following the presumptive course of the miniature Face. Near the rim of the crater the spacesuited scientist knelt, pointed, touched the ground. “Look, it struck here and bounced. Even though the pebbles are back, you can see the depression.”

  Ino watched the spacesuited scientist rise and point out the direction of the bounce. Over the lip of the rim. Into the depths of the crater. Into the lake of kuroi kiri where Ino had nearly died, and where the body of Miss Inada still lay.

  The extending ladder that had saved Mr. Ino’s life still stood in the center of the regolith lake. It served now only as a grave marker for Miss Inada, for Ino had been forced to leave her body at its base when he climbed to the surface and escaped from the crater.

  And now the computer and the miniature Face lay in the lake as well. As small and as light as they were, they might not have made their way to the center, but instead would lie where they fell. Somewhere beneath the regolith. Hidden by black mist.

  Inside his spacesuit, Ino moaned.

  The band of four reassembled and resumed their trek from the old Russian station to the newer facility.

  Once again they separated and entered the station through four separate airlocks. It did them no good. Each was met by a squad of workers and escorted to Deputy Manager Sumiyoshi’s office. No word could be got out of the workers who met them and brought them along.

  They were placed in chairs and their wrists and ankles were bound to the arms and legs of the chairs.

  Ino turned to Mrs. Itagaki. “I’m sorry,” he began. “I should not—”

  The worker standing nearest to Ino caught Ino’s face in one hand, stopping him in mid-sentence. “You will not speak.” To the four of them, the worker said, “You will not speak.”

  In a few minutes Mr. Sumiyoshi arrived. He stood behind his desk, looking from one to another. As he looked at each of them, he showed differing feelings. To Ino, anger. To Mrs. Itagaki, annoyance. To the young man and woman, sadness and disappointment.

  “What am I to make of this?” Sumiyoshi asked. He shook his massive head. “Order is breaking down. Society disintegrates. The old virtues are lost and anarchy reigns.” He folded his arms and walked among the four chairs, weaving an intricate pattern. “What are the katagi no shu to think, when the finest of society act no better than eta burakumin? It’s hard enough for those common folk to know how to behave, without scientists and high personages like you acting like depraved villagers. Villagers who know no better. You know better.”

  He pulled a kerchief from his desk and wiped his brow. It had grown wet with perspiration.

  “You hypocrite,” Mrs. Itagaki spoke angrily. “You killed Miss Inada, didn’t you?”

  Sumiyoshi ignored her words. “And what do I now do with you four?”

  “You must know that my associates are coming from Nirgal Vallis,” Ino said. “You know that Mr. Matsuzaki is responsible for me. He will not abandon me. You must surrender yourself to me, right now. Call back your helpers.”

  The workers who had captured Ino and the others and had tied them to their chairs had by now left Sumiyoshi’s office.

  Sumiyoshi growled. “I need no helpers,” he said.

  One of the young people said, “Mr. Matsuda will punish you. You must free us and apologize to us all, and then go and apologize to Mr. Matsuda. You have shamed him and the entire station, Mr. Sumiyoshi.”

  Sumiyoshi laughed. He strode to a cabinet and pulled a jug from it. He placed it on the surface, heated it, then returned with it and a tiny cup to stand over the others.

  “Apologize,” he grunted. “Apologize!” His breath erupted in a vulgar snort. He poured a cup of heated sake and downed it in one motion. “Too bad we cannot share this,” he rumbled. His voice was as deep and as gruff as a bear’s, and his shape resembled that of a bear as well.

  “You are the ones who should apologize,” he continued. “Interfering with important work. Meddling where you have no business to do so. Me, apologize?” His grinned at the thought, his chin looking more bearlike than ever. He had not shaved, and a black stubble made the others think of the snout of an animal.

  “You will have to face Mr. Matsuda,” Ino reminded him. “The youngster is right. Better that you speak first, Sumiyoshi. There may be a way for you to save some small bit of your honor.”

  “My honor is not at stake.” Sumiyoshi screamed. His voice had grown shrill, and his hands
began to shake. Their size was as great as one would expect of this bear-like creature. The right one gripped the sake cup so tightly that the hand made a fist and the cup disappeared within it. The left held the jug.

  Sumiyoshi dropped the sake cup on the floor. He shifted the jug to his right hand and lifted it to his mouth. The sake dribbled over his stubbly chin and spilled onto his blouse. His left hand waved in the air before him. At last Mr. Ino could see clearly that Sumiyoshi’s little finger was missing its last joint. He wondered if Sumiyoshi’s body was not also covered with tattoos.

  “My honor is intact!” Sumiyoshi said loudly. Ino looked at Mrs. Itagaki and found her looking back at him. She appeared distressed, alarmed. Yet in a voice that remained soft despite the excitement of the moment, she said to Sumiyoshi, “You must call Mr. Matsuda. You must do this at once.”

  Sumiyoshi tipped the sake jug once more, holding it over his mouth as the last of the hot wine tumbled out. The bear-like man shook his head and drops of sake spattered the four prisoners. He threw the empty jug at the wall and fragments flew in all directions. He leaned over Mrs. Itagaki and held his face centimeters from hers. Mr. Ino saw Mrs. Itagaki cringe before Sumiyoshi’s alcoholic breath. Ino struggled at his bonds, but to no avail. Sumiyoshi drew back his hand and struck Mrs. Itagaki. Mr. Ino was bursting with rage.

  “What’s this?” Another voice was heard. All faces turned toward the new speaker. Standing in the doorway of Sumiyoshi’s office was Mr. Kakuji Matsuda, manager of the entire Phobos Research Station.

  “Mr. Matsuda,” Ino cried out, “you have been betrayed. Your deputy is a corrupt gangster. He is the killer of Miss Inada, and he is responsible for the loss of an incomparable treasure.”

  Mr. Matsuda stood beside Sumiyoshi. To his deputy he said, “Is this true, Sumiyoshi? Please tell me the truth.”

  Sumiyoshi laughed. He went to the cabinet and found another jug of sake. This time he poured it into two cups, one of them filled almost to the rim, the other to the halfway point. He placed them on a table top.

  Mr. Matsuda reached for the half-filled cup. Sumiyoshi took the other. Turning slowly so that all in the room could see them, they downed the rice wine.