The Trikon Deception

by Ben Bova

  He rapped on the hatch and Lorraine swiftly opened it for him. Putting on his highest-wattage smile, Jaeckle entered the observation blister.

  Lorraine was not smiling. She backed away from his reaching arms.

  “There’s no easy way to say this, Kurt.” Her voice was tense, her hands knotted into tight little fists.

  “To say what?” he asked, gliding toward her.

  “We’re finished,” Lorraine blurted. “It’s over.”

  Jaeckle felt his breath catch in his throat. Finished? She’s telling me it’s over?

  As she finally pushed herself away from the biochemistry bench, Carla Sue realized she was playing a losing game. Wearily she nodded farewell to the other late workers and headed back to her compartment in Hab 1. Even though she had spent two extra hours on the soil samples she could still find nothing to confirm Russ Cramer’s supposed discovery.

  Worse than that, she was no closer to her goal of penetrating the arrogant, self-absorbed psyche that encased Kurt Jaeckle like a suit of armor than she had been when she first tried to seduce Lance Muncie. Her failure was not for lack of effort. She had spent every possible minute of the last three days in Lance’s dubious company. They ate meals together, exercised in tandem, and spent a well-advertised double session in the observation blister.

  The rumor mill, which Carla Sue knew to be more efficient than the station’s computer system, seized on this morsel of gossip with its usual speed. Her fellow Martians whistled when she floated to the biochemistry workstation in the Mars module. Trikon techs smirked when they passed her in the connecting tunnel. Freddy Aviles peered out of the labyrinth of cylinders in the logistics module and flashed a smile dripping with forbidden knowledge.

  Everyone on the station noticed—except Kurt Jaeckle.

  Carla Sue’s resolve was beginning to ebb. Her choice of Lance seemed more blunder than brilliance. There was something weird about Lance Muncie. It was as if there were actually two of him: he was awkward, reticent, almost afraid to be alone with her—until she touched his body. Anywhere. Then he exploded in a passion of animal fury that left her gasping and a little frightened. Lance was a big guy; when he threw away his self-control he could hurt you.

  Other than those wild bursts of ardor he was as dull as a wheat field. No, not dull, exactly. No matter how boring his conversation, or lack of it, there was always something lurking just beneath the surface—something scary.

  I’ve created a Frankenstein, Carla Sue said to herself, trying to make light of her predicament. But then she thought of how Kurt must be laughing at her behind her back. That she could not tolerate.

  Carla Sue finally reached her compartment. She slipped inside, but kept the door open a crack to peer down toward the aft end of Hab 1. Kurt Jaeckle would be coming down this way, heading for his own compartment. Carla Sue hoped he had nothing important planned for the rest of the day. She didn’t expect he would be able to concentrate once she finished with him.

  Within minutes Jaeckle floated into view. Carla Sue pulled back her door. “Oh, there you are, Kurt.”

  “Hello, Carla Sue,” he replied. He trailed his fingertips along the opposite door as if wondering whether he should stop. “I understand you want to see me.”

  “I certainly do.”

  “Well, I’m on my way back to the module,” he said.

  “This’ll only take a minute.”

  Jaeckle eyed her up and down, then looked past her as if suspicious of her intentions, wondering if she had already found out that his affair with Lorraine was finished. She was fully clothed and her compartment appeared to be in order. Satisfied that she was not bent on seduction, he decided to grant her a minute, no more. He turned his body to face her wide-open door, and pushed himself inside.

  Carla Sue closed the door behind him. She switched on the viewscreen and turned up the stereo. Snow swirled on a New England countryside to the strains of Leroy Anderson’s “Sleighride.”

  Jaeckle frowned with sudden suspicion. “Why do we need music?” he asked.

  “You’ll understand the reason,” said Carla Sue. “I wanted to talk to you about LaVerne Nelson.”

  “Who the hell’s that?”

  “LaVerne Nelson was your housekeeper during your first marriage,” said Carla Sue. “I’ve been in contact with her. Not directly, through a private investigator. I know all about her role in your divorce proceedings.”

  Jaeckle blinked several times, rapidly. Then he reached over and turned up the volume of the stereo.

  “LaVerne Nelson is a pathological liar,” he said, leaning closer to Carla Sue to be heard over the cheerful music. “I fired her for stealing.”

  “I don’t doubt that’s true, Kurt. But there is the small matter of the deposition she gave before you and your first wife decided to settle your differences out of court.”

  “A deposition by a liar and a thief is not the most believable document in the world,” said Jaeckle. His lower lip quivered slightly. “Besides, that deposition is sealed by court order. I insisted on it.”

  “Well, my investigator tells me that LaVerne’s memory is still very fresh. And she’s still in need of a few dollars.”

  “Carla Sue, this is a poor way of getting attention.”

  “I don’t want your attention, Kurt. I decided that long ago. I just don’t want you to forget me.”

  “Forget you?” he said, summoning a smarmy smile onto his face. “How can I forget the times we had? The Cape. Do you think I could forget the time we—”

  “You fool!” Carla Sue snapped. “I don’t give a damn about that sentimental guff. I want you to remember me when it comes to Mars.”

  Carla Sue knew that Jaeckle regarded himself as the sole deed holder to Mars. Everyone else, even his colleagues in the Mars project, were squatters. Her statement had the desired effect: Jaeckle’s phony warmth was transmuted to a more authentic iciness.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, like a professor quizzing a student.

  “I want to take over Russ Cramer’s position, now that he’s gone. And when it comes time to pick the team for the first mission to Mars, I want to be the chief biochemist.”

  Jaeckle had been unconsciously backing away from her. He thumped against the closed door; he could retreat no further.

  “The standards for the real Mars crew will be very high,” he said, trying to regain his dignity.

  “No they won’t, and you damn well know it,” said Carla Sue. “They’ll be just as cockamamy as they were for this project. Carla Sue Gamble in space? You thought that was funny at first, didn’t you? But I’m here. And now that I’ve come this far I’m going all the way.”

  “Your work will have to…”

  “Never mind my work! It’s good enough, we both know that. I want to be on the first team and you’re going to make damned certain that I am.”

  “Carla, I won’t have the power to select the actual Mars team.”

  “You know, you’re probably right,” said Carla Sue. “You won’t have any power at all once people start seeing your face plastered over every supermarket checkout in the country. I don’t think anyone would want a man who raped his own daughter to plant the flag on Mars.”

  Even though she was in her own compartment, Carla Sue realized she had just uttered the perfect exit line. Exaggerating a smile, she opened the door a tad and slipped out.

  Jaeckle was too dumbfounded to follow. He stared blankly at the video screen and replayed the conversation over and over again in his mind, oblivious to the music and the images of evergreens laden with snow. The stereo was playing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

  He unfurled a handkerchief from a shoulder pocket of his flight suit and mopped at the film of sweat oozing across his brow. A minute later, his brow still wet, he realized that he had twisted the handkerchief into a knotty coil.

  Hovering in the shadows by the hatch to Hab 1, Lance felt his skin crawling with hatred. He had been right. For two hours he had wa
ited here watching Carla Sue’s compartment. Ever since he had seen Jaeckle go into the observation blister.

  I was right, he kept repeating to himself. First they spend two hours in the blister and then they come straight back here to her compartment. They think they’re pretty smart, coming back separately. But they’re not smart enough to fool me.

  Lance edged closer to Carla Sue’s compartment, his insides blazing. He saw that the accordion door was tightly sealed. Music played inside. Christmas music!

  Something—someone—thumped against the door. Lance remembered Freddy’s comment the first time they had seen the observation blister: Newton’s Law.

  Lance felt a surge of nausea as he hung in the aisle. A chill spread out from his spine. His mouth filled with bile. He thought first of the Hab 1 Whits; they were only a few feet away. But he wanted to be out of this module, as far away as possible from Kurt Jaeckle and Carla Sue Gamble and whatever was going on behind that door. So he bolted and threw up his guts in the Whit of Hab 2.

  Dan Tighe ate alone at a table in the rear of the wardroom. As was his custom, he divided his attention equally between the food tenuously adhering to his tray and the people occupying the other tables. He was particularly interested in Aaron Weiss. The reporter had not developed into the pain in the ass Dan had expected. Except for the incident with Hugh O’Donnell, the only complaint had been from Jaeckle, who was insulted by Weiss’s lack of interest in the Mars Project.

  Weiss was sharing a table with Stu Roberts on the far side of the wardroom. Roberts’s bony Adam’s apple was in constant motion, either from slurping his food or from whining about long-forgotten rock stars. Weiss looked as bored as a gelding at a stud farm, thought Dan with an amusement he barely could contain. If Weiss spends much more time with Roberts, he’ll beg to return Earthside. Not a bad idea. Maybe I should assign Roberts to escort him wherever he goes.

  Jaeckle, Ramsanjawi, Oyamo, and Bianco ringed another table. A formidable quartet. Jaeckle orated, Ramsanjawi snickered, Oyamo listened politely, and Bianco drank it all in with a twinkle in his dark eyes. Good thing we’re in micro-gee, thought Dan. Otherwise the table might collapse from the combined weight of their egos.

  Funny the way Bianco’s adapted to microgravity, Dan thought. Trikon’s Earth-bound medics had sent a long worried report about the old man’s ailments and medication needs. Yet since the moment he had come aboard the station Bianco had seemed strong, alert, healthier than some of the scientists half his age. Maybe it’s poetic justice, Dan said to himself. Bianco created this station; it’s treating him kindly. It’s as if he was always meant to be here.

  Freddy Aviles was alone at an adjacent table. There was no sign of Lance Muncie or Carla Sue Gamble. More precisely, Lance Muncie and Carla Sue Gamble. Word was that the two towheads had fallen for each other.

  O’Donnell sailed into the wardroom. He hastily prepared a tray at one of the galleys and joined Dan at his table. Dan had read Lorraine Renoir’s report on O’Donnell’s latest blood test. Negative. Dan felt relieved. Still, he found himself scrutinizing every movement of O’Donnell’s hands and analyzing every word of small talk.

  “No darts tonight,” said O’Donnell.

  “Work?”

  “Yeah. I need to log more lab time.”

  “Problems?”

  “A few unexpected snags.”

  “Sometimes it’s a good idea to step back when you’ve run into a wall,” said Dan. “Makes it easier to find your way round it.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” O’Donnell said. “Sometimes.”

  There was a general shift in the wardroom crowd. Stu Roberts finished eating, to Aaron Weiss’s obvious relief. Oyamo rose from his foot loops, executed his patented micro-gee bow to each of his three dinner companions, then propelled himself toward the hatchway. Freddy Aviles checked his watch as if waiting for a train that was long overdue. After another minute, he departed as well. Three Japanese techs settled at a table adjacent to Weiss. They grinned at the reporter and he grinned back. Ramsanjawi and Bianco fell into a deep conversation that excluded Jaeckle and attracted the attention of Weiss from the far side of the room. The reporter stared at the scientists as if hoping to provoke an invitation to join them. Instead, Jaeckle moved across to Weiss’s table and started talking to him earnestly, urgently. Weiss stood it for a few minutes, then abruptly pushed himself away from the table and left the wardroom. Jaeckle glared after him.

  In the midst of all the movement of bodies and clanging of trays, Lance entered the wardroom. His flight suit was askew and his hair was mussed as if he had just got out of bed. His skin was as pale as it had been his first day on board. But Dan paid less attention to these details than to the simple fact that Lance was alone. He looked at O’Donnell and mouthed the name Carla Sue. O’Donnell shrugged as if to say, Search me.

  Lance hung in front of a galley for a full minute before attempting to remove a tray from the magnetized stack in the cabinet. He seemed to grab blindly at the first packets of food that his hands could reach, then stuffed them into the nearest microwave unit. He fumbled with the hot water jet, then missed his cup entirely and sent bubbles of scalding water spraying everywhere. All the while he kept glancing nervously in the direction of the entry hatch.

  The bubbles of water floated up toward the overhead ventilator grill. The microwave pinged. Lance attached the meal to his tray and pushed himself away from the galley, still looking over his shoulder toward the hatch. There was one empty table and two others occupied by single people. But Lance chose the last available spot at the table with the three Japanese.

  “You see what I see?” muttered Dan.

  “Carla Sue’s dumped him?” said O’Donnell.

  “I’d bet on it.”

  “Do you think he realized she’s a shark?”

  “That doesn’t take a hell of a lot of insight,” Dan said.

  “It might for someone like Lance,” said O’Donnell.

  Lance ate quickly and not very cleanly. The Japanese scrupulously ignored the fine spray of crumbs and gravy spiraling from Lance’s tray to the table vent. Lance suddenly grabbed the edge of the table. His stomach heaved and his cheeks puffed out like the throat of a bullfrog. He shot upwards, banged his head on the ceiling, then dove out the hatch.

  “Young love gone bad.” Hugh shook his head sadly.

  “What the hell,” said Dan. “Saves me from giving him some fatherly advice.”

  Lance managed to keep his stomach under control long enough to reach the Whit in Hab 2, where he heaved a yellow-brown ball of gravy, bread, and bile into an airsick bag. This was his third attack since seeing Carla Sue and Jaeckle together. He wiped his face with a moist towelette and stared into a mirror. His normally cream-smooth skin was splotched and seamed like the surface of the moon.

  When Lance exited the Whit, he found Lorraine Renoir waiting for him. He felt an immediate flash of anger.

  “Commander Tighe sent you, right?”

  “Actually not, Lance. I saw you rush in here. Are you okay?”

  “No I’m not okay. I just puked like crazy.”

  Lorraine reached out her hand to touch his shoulder, but he spun away. His arm slammed against the door of the Whit. The bang echoed throughout the module.

  “Perhaps I should examine you,” she said.

  Oddly, the impact calmed Lance. He was still angry at Dr. Renoir for meddling with his pain, but he found that stifling his anger was easier than swallowing back his dinner.

  Lorraine brought him to her infirmary and told him to remove his shirt. His stomach, chest, and arms seemed terribly lean, as if he hadn’t eaten for a week instead of merely a day. Lorraine listened to his heart and took his blood pressure and stuck the end of a digitalized thermometer into his mouth.

  “I believe you have a virus,” she announced.

  Lance wanted to scream. He wanted to shout that he didn’t have a virus at all, that if anything he was heartsick at the thought of that bitch-
woman Carla Sue lying to him, using him, and then betraying him. He was sick at the thought that right now she was with Jaeckle in her compartment, doing all the things she had done with him, that she had promised she would do with nobody else but him. What right did she have to draw him in, to use her body, to say the things she said? Didn’t words mean anything? Didn’t lovemaking mean anything?

  But Lance kept quiet, partly because he didn’t want to call attention to his shame, mostly because he remembered Russell Cramer bellowing in the Mars module. He knew that if he said one word about Carla Sue, he would not be able to stop. He accepted a package of breath mints from Lorraine and nodded meekly at her admonition to stay in his compartment and drink plenty of liquids.

  Lance slowly made his way back to Hab 2. Airsick bags billowed from his belt like animal pelts. People in the connecting tunnel stared at him with faces that looked like images in carnival mirrors. Lance felt another surge of anger, this time at the thought that everyone knew the real reason for his sickness. He crossed one arm over his stomach, tucked his chin against his chest, and pulled himself toward home with one hand.

  Once inside his compartment, something stronger and more bilious than undigested food rose from his stomach to his throat. He punched his head into the sleep restraint.

  “Bitch! You goddamned lying bitch!” he muttered into his dark cocoon.

  He called her every filthy word he knew; every damning curse he had ever heard he spoke in the darkness, his voice murderously low, intoning anathema on Carla Sue like an ancient priest casting out a traitress, a villainess, a carrier of loathsome disease. He kept up his deadly chant until, exhausted, he fell asleep.

  O’Donnell took Dan’s dinnertime suggestion to heart. But rather than return to the ex/rec area for a game of darts, he wandered into the Mars module. The observation blister was empty.

  He had spent little time in the blister. The long hours he logged in his lab were more than enough solitude. On the few occasions he had signed up for R and R, he found the view to be overwhelming. He had heard about “second sight,” the unexplained ability of astronauts to discern increasingly minute surface features with the unaided eye, but he had not detected any improvement in his visual acuity. In fact, he rarely knew what the hell was down below. The real world did not display political boundaries and neatly lettered names trailing away from perfectly circular cities. But on this evening he knew exactly where he was: three hundred miles above the Andes, whose spiny backs looked razor sharp beneath the broken cloud cover.