by Larry Niven
“So right now you’re probably wondering, ‘Why didn’t she just buy a new pressure suit?’ And the answer might be these—” Luke’s cursor highlighted points on the old suit. “Medical sensors. Those early suits didn’t just keep an astronaut alive. NASA wanted to know what was happening to them. If they died, maybe the next one wouldn’t.
“In the early space program the medical probes were invasive. You wince just reading about it. These later suits weren’t so bad, but your deader may have upgraded them anyway. What she wanted was the medical ports on the suit. There are suits like that still being made, of course, but they’re expensive, and the sale would be remembered. Take your choice, she was secretive or cheap.
“Let me know, will you? And remember, criminals don’t like locked rooms. They’re usually accidents.”
I watched the empty space where Luke had been. “Hecate, didn’t Shreve say that Shreve Development labs have pressure suits with medical ports? We might’ve guessed that—”
“I bet they’re a lot less than a hundred years old, Gil. You want to see them anyway? I’ll arrange that.”
Four off-duty technicians had been watching our antics. Now they seemed to be losing interest. I didn’t blame them. I got up and paced for a bit, wondering if there was anything more I could do.
Hecate said, “I’ve got your overhead view, Gil.”
“Put it on.”
A camera was panning slowly across a shrinking moonscape, tinted with violet from the fusion drive of a rising Belt trading ship. Del Rey Crater slid into view, shrinking. Little craters all the same size. Bits of silver in the little craters. Three bronze bugs…four crawling around near the southern rim. We watched until Del Rey was sliding off the edge of the field, shrunk too small to show detail.
Then Hecate replayed it, slowing it, slower yet. “See it?”
It’s amazing what you can see from orbit.
Waldo tugs had made random tracks all across the southern quarter of Del Rey, like the tunnels in an ant farm. Down there they had obscured the flow lines. But from up here…
Something on the southern rim had sandblasted Del Rey Crater from the rim as far as the battered central peak.
Down there would be surfaces clean of dust, sharp crater rims slightly rounded, minicraters erased. Down there you would see only details. Close-up I had seen nothing of the overall fan-shaped pattern.
I didn’t believe that had been done by a spacecraft’s oxygen tanks. It was too intense. That smooth wash must have been made by the rocket motor itself.
“The footprints must have been made afterward,” I speculated. “Anything earlier was washed out. I’m going to have to apologize to Luke.”
“No. He called it,” Hecate said. “Nobody sets out to make a locked room mystery. The perp was hiding something else. Now, he fired from the south rim? And prints made afterward lead from the center south-southeast. She ran toward the killer?”
“Right toward her only source of escape. And oxygen. And medical help.”
“She was hoping for mercy,” Hecate said.
I looked over at her. Hecate didn’t seem unduly disturbed, only bemused. Whoever had set a woman down in that radioactive Hell would not offer mercy.
I said, “She might have begged. Who knows? I know people who would have been gasping curses. She might run to the center to leave a message, then run away from it to distract the killer.”
“Did you see a message?”
“No.” I wasn’t even sure I liked the notion. “That rocket flame had to be erasing something. It looks like the killer didn’t have the guts to go into the crater, but propping his lemmy right on the rim took some nerve. Why? To erase footprints?”
“Gil, only a madman would trudge out into the middle of Del Rey Crater unless he already knew something was there.” She caught my smile. “Like you did. But someone might peek over an edge. The perp erased the bootprints that led in from the edge. The ones in the center, he left.”
“Could have waited and got them all. And any later message.”
“Your turn,” she said.
The last time I read a murdered man’s dying message, he’d been lying. But at least Otto Penzler hadn’t erased it, then made me guess what it said!
“I need a nap,” I said. “Give me a call when you know something.”
It felt like I’d been asleep for some time. I was on the rug, totally comfortable in lunar gravity. I had a view of Lawman Hecate Bauer-Stanson’s back. She was studying a diffuse rainbow glow. I couldn’t see the hologram from down here.
I got to my feet.
Hecate had a split screen going. Through one holo window they were carving a woman like a statue of petrified wood. The band saw was running itself. I could see vague human shapes, out of focus behind a wall of thick glass.
One of the slices was passing through a second window. The view would zoom on some detail: arteries and sections through the liver and ribs. Details might fluoresce before the view backed off.
A third window showed the archaic suit.
“The damn trouble,” I said, talking to myself because Hecate had her Privacy on, “is that there’s nobody to pull in. No witnesses, no suspects…millions of suspects. With a proper leak in her suit she could have died yesterday. With no leak she could have been out there ten years. More.”
What if her suit was new when she lay down?
No. Even sixty years ago the missiles were still falling in Del Rey Crater. “From ten to sixty years. Even on the Moon, that’s a million suspects, and nobody has an alibi to cover a fifty-year span.”
A fourth window blinked on, showing a fingerprint—another—another—something unidentified—“Retina,” Hecate said without turning. “Completely degraded. But I got fingerprints and partial DNA. Maybe the ARM can match them.”
I said, “Boot them over to me.”
She did. I called the Los Angeles ARM. I left a message on Bera’s personal code, then got through to a duty clerk. He showed signs of interest when he realized I was calling from the Moon. I gave him the dead woman to track down.
Hecate was looking at me when I clicked off. I said, “There are short lunies.”
She said, “Bet?”
“What odds?”
She considered—and my phone blinked. I picked up.
Valerie Van Scopp Rhine. Height: 1.66 meters. Born A.D. 2038, Winnetka, North America. Mass: 62 KG. Gene type…allergies…medical… She was forty or so when the picture was taken, a lovely woman with high cheekbones and a delicately shaped skull under a golden crest of hair. No children. Single. Full partner, Gabriel’s Shield, Inc., A.D. 2083–2091. No felony convictions. WANTED on suspicion of 28.81, 9.00, 9.20—
Hecate was reading over my shoulder.
I said, “The codes mean she’s wanted on suspicion of embezzlement, flight to escape arrest, violation of political boundaries, misuse of vital resources, and some other stuff as of thirty-six years ago.”
“Interesting. Vital resources?”
“It used to be the custom, you named every possible crime, then trimmed. Boundaries, that’s an old law. Here it means they think she escaped to space.”
“Interesting. Gil, her suit isn’t leaking.”
“Isn’t it.”
“There was a fair vacuum inside. We got traces of organics, of course, but it would have taken years—decades to lose all of her air and water.”
I said, “Thirty-six years.”
“All that time. In Del Rey Crater?”
“Hecate, at a distance her suit looked just like another of the Boeing packages, and nobody was looking anyway.”
“Then we can guess why the body’s in such good shape. Radiation,” Hecate said. “What’s she supposed to have embezzled?”
I scrolled through the file. “Looks like funds from Gabriel’s Shield. And Gabriel’s Shield turns out to be a research group…. Two partners: Valerie Van Scopp Rhine and Maxim Yeltzin Shreve.”
“Shreve.”
&nb
sp; “Bankrupt in A.D. 2091, when Rhine allegedly disappeared with the funds.” I stood up. “Hecate, I’ve got to go sharpen my skates. You can study this, or you can summon up a dossier on Maxim Shreve.”
She stared, then laughed. “I thought I’d heard every possible way to say that. Go. Then drink some more water.”
I waited for a woman to step out of the recycler booth, then went in.
Hecate had a display up when I got back.
Maxim Yeltzin Shreve. Height: 2.23 meters. Born A.D 2044, Outer Soviet, Moon. Mass: 101 KG. Gene type…allergies…medical…No felony convictions. Married Juliana Mary Krupp 2061, divorced 2080. Children: 1 girl, Marya Jenna. Single. A videoflat of his graduation, looking like a burly socker champ, used with permission. A holo taken at the launch of the fourth slowboat, the colony ship bound for Tau Ceti, bearing the larger model Shreveshield, in A.D. 2122. He didn’t need a medical chair then, but he didn’t look good. Chairman of the board of Shreve Development 2091, retired November 2125. Two years ago.
When your body gets sick enough, your mind starts to go, too. I could be putting too much weight on any oddities in this man’s behavior.
I hit the key that got me the next dossier.
Geraldine Randall. Height: 2.08 meters. Born A.D 2066, Clavius, Moon. Mass: 89 KG. Gene type…allergies…medical… She’d had a problem carrying a child, corrected by surgery. No felony convictions. Married Charles Hastings Chan 2080. She’d been at the launch of the fourth slowboat, too. Member of the Board of Shreve Development 2091.
Over Hecate’s shoulder, they were still carving the dead woman. I understood why they were so casual about it. The remains of lunar dead become mulch, whatever can’t be used as transplants. Hecate was listening to a running commentary, but if they’d found evidence of disease, she’d have told me.
Valerie Rhine hadn’t rotted because radiation had fried all the bacteria in her body. She could have lasted a million years, a billion, without my hindrance.
I turned back to Maxim Shreve as he had been when he registered as Shreve Development, a lunar corporation, thirty-six years ago. He was posing with five others, and one was Geraldine Randall. A younger man, he already looked sick…or just worn down, working himself to death. It’s one way to get rich. Give everything to your dream. Six years later, A.D. 2097 and looking a little better, he and his partners had an active shield up for patent.
Did lunies just get old quicker? I tapped Hecate’s shoulder. She turned off Privacy, and I asked, “How old are you, Hecate?”
“I’m forty-two.”
She met my stare. Older than me by one year, and healthy as a gymnast. The lunie doctor Taffy saw when I wasn’t around was in his sixties. I said, “Shreve must be sick. He’s less than ninety. What’s his problem?”
“Doesn’t it say?”
“I couldn’t find it.”
She slid into my spot and began diddling with the virtual keys. “The file’s been edited. Citizens don’t have to tell all their embarrassing secrets, Gil, but…he must be crazy. What if he needed medical help, and it wasn’t in the records?”
“Crazy or guilty.”
“You think he’s hiding something?”
I said, “Call him.”
“Now, Gil. Maxim Shreve is one of the most powerful men on the Moon, and I wasn’t thinking of changing careers.” She studied me, worried. “Are you just harrassing the man in the hope he’ll tell us something?”
I said, “It seems pretty clear what happened, doesn’t it?”
“You’re thinking he killed her and took the money himself. Set down in Del Rey and pushed her out of the ship, still alive. But why not kill her first? Then there wouldn’t be any footprints or dying messages.”
“Nope, you’ve only got half of it.”
She flapped her arms in exasperation. “Go for it.”
“First: Mark 29. You said Shreve Development has been trying to build a little shield ever since they got the big ones. I believe it. Twenty-nine is a big number. Maybe a small version is the first thing he tried. That’s what told him about the, what she said, hysteresis problem.
“Second: He didn’t act like a thief running away with the money. When he founded Shreve Inc., he acted like a man who wants to build something and almost knows how. I think he and Rhine spent all they had on experiments.
“Third: Someone sprayed part of the crater from the rim, and I think that was Shreve. There’s no sign he was in the crater, except for Rhine’s footprints, and we already know something was erased.
“Fourth: Why Del Rey Crater? Why walk around in the most radioactive crater on the Moon?”
Hecate was looking blank. I said, “They were testing a prototype Shreveshield. That’s why she walked in. I even know what he was hiding when he sprayed the crater.”
She said, “I’ll call him. Your theory, you talk.”
Hecate looked around at me. “Mr. Shreve isn’t taking calls. It says he’s in physical therapy.”
I asked, “Where’s the Mark 29 now?”
“They took off almost an hour ago.” It took her only a few seconds. “En route to Copernicus. That’s the Shreve Inc labs. ETA ten minutes.”
“Good enough. Luke Garner’s travel chair has a sender in it, in case he needs a serious autodoc or even a doctor. What do you think, would a lunie’s chair have one too?”
It took her longer (I got her coffee and a handmeal) to work her way through the lunar medical network. Finally, she sighed and looked up, and said, “He’s in motion. Moving toward Del Rey Crater. I have a number for the phone in his chair, Gil.”
“Futz! Always I get it almost right.”
“Call him?”
“I’m inclined to wait for him to touch down.”
She studied me. “He’s going after the body?”
“Seems right. Any bets on what he might do with it?”
“It’s a big Moon.” She turned back. “He’s crossing Del Rey. Slowing. Gil, he’s going down.”
“Phone him.”
His phone must have been buzzing during the landing. When he answered it was by voice, no picture. “What?”
I said, “The thing about poetic justice is that it requires a poet. I’m Ubersleuth Gil Hamilton, with the ARM, Mr. Shreve. On the Moon by coincidence.”
“I’m a lunie citizen, Hamilton.”
“Valerie Rhine was of Earth.”
“Hamilton, I’m supposed to run now. Let me set my headphones and get on the track.”
I laughed. “You do that. Shall I tell you a story?”
I heard irregular puffing, less like a sick man running on an exercise track in low gravity than the same man climbing out of a spacecraft. No sound of fiddling with headphones: they’d be already in place inside his bubble helmet.
The puffing became much faster.
I said, “Shreve, I know you’re not afraid of the organ banks. The hospitals wouldn’t take anything you’ve got. Come in and tell your story.”
“No. But I’ll—tell you a story, Ubersleuth. Lawman.
“It’s about two brilliant experimenters. One didn’t have any money sense, so the other had to keep track of expenses when he’d rather have been working on the project. We were in love, but we were in love with an idea, too.”
His breathing had become easier. “We developed the theory together. I understood the theory, but the prototypes kept burning out and blowing up. And every time something happened, Valerie knew exactly what went wrong and how to fix it. Warble the power source. More precision in the circuitry. I couldn’t keep up. All I knew was that we were running out of money.
“Then one day we had it. It worked. She swore it worked. We already had all the instruments we needed. I spent our last few marks on a video camera. Stacks of batteries. The—we called it the Maxival Shield—it ate power like there was no tomorrow.
“We went out to Del Rey Crater. Valerie’s idea. Test the device and film the tests. Anyone who saw Valerie dance around in Del Rey Crater would thr
ow funding at us with both hands.”
“Gil, he’s taking off.”
Too fast. I suddenly realized why his breathing had eased. He’d left his Mark 20-odd sitting in the dust. Maybe it had quit working, maybe he stopped caring.
I asked, “Shreve, what went wrong?”
“She went out into Del Rey with the prototype. Just walking, turning to cross in front of the camera, then some gymnastics, staying within the shield effect, and all with that glow around her and her face shining in the bubble helmet. She was beautiful. Then she looked at the instruments and started screaming. I could see it on my own dials, the field was just gradually dying out.
“She was screaming, ‘Oh my god, the shield’s breaking down!’ And she started running. ‘I think I can get to the rim. Call Copernicus General Hospital.’”
“Running with the shield? Wasn’t it too heavy?”
“How did you know that?”
Hecate said, “Gil, he’s just cruising along the crater rim. Hovering.”
I nodded to her. I told Shreve, “That was our biggest problem. What were you erasing when you sprayed rocket flame across the crater? I figure your shield generator was big. You had it on some sort of cart that Rhine could pull. She pulled a superconducting cable. She left her power source with you.”
“That’s right, and then she ran away and left it. If a hospital got her, every cop on the Moon would want to look into our alleged radiation shield. The doctors would have to know exactly what she was exposed to. We didn’t have a tenthmark left. Nobody would believe we had anything, what with Valerie glowing in the dark, and if anyone did, he could get the designs on the Four O’Clock News.”
“So you pulled it back.”
“Hand over hand. Was I supposed to leave it sitting out on the Moon? But she saw me doing it. She—I don’t know what she was thinking—she ran away, toward the center of the crater. I’d already had more radiation than I wanted, but those tracks…not just the footprints, but—”
