by Lee Killough
“Maybe,” Doubrava said, “because he stayed close to the printer while the next one printed out.”
They stared at him. “How—” Janna began, breaking off as she realized how he knew. “You said earlier there are two recordings of the suit blowing. I take it the other shows the printer?”
“We need to see that,” Mama said.
“Right.” Doubrava tapped the tabletop. “This porto recording was made for the construction records.”
A screen rose from the middle of the table. Typing on the virtual keyboard projected from it brought up an image showing that Saleem’s recording had not . . . the entire length of the porto from a cam probably above the entry portal. The previously unseen printer on the left used most of the module’s height and two-thirds of its length. Four tall curved forms like warped upright mummy cases ranged against the right bulkhead. The time code read: 0:15. Start of the shift.
Two VE-suited figures stood at the printer, one at the control panel, the other by the out tray. Chenoweth. Saleem, smaller, stood by the forms, one with its cover open.
A pale slab partially visible on the out tray kept inching out to a length Janna estimated at eight feet and several inches, until 0:25, when Chenoweth stretched an arm across the tray to pick up the panel. He turned, hugging the tall panel, and shuffled to the open form. The height of the module’s cam revealed openings in the top of the panel . . . printed with chases in place for pipes and wiring. After laying the panel against the form, Chenoweth stepped back toward the printer while Saleem latched the cover of the form.
“That’s the routine, as you can see for the rest of the shift.”
Doubrava sped up the recording, so Chenoweth scurried back and forth like an insect . . . pausing while Saleem latched the form, but otherwise hovering over the printer extruding panels. Caught up watching, Janna ignored the time code until, having delivered a panel, Chenoweth’s suit blossomed and he turned into a streak shooting down the module and out its far end.
Janna flinched. At that speed, and catching her by surprise, his death hit like a punch in the gut.
Doubrava blanked the screen. “So . . . accumulated heat. Maybe.” He touched his headset. “Zee, have you had a chance to test the suit seal with heat?” Listening, he winced . . . started to speak several times and appeared to be cut off. After listening for several minutes, sighing several times and grinning at one point, he finally disconnected with a final sigh. “Okay . . . to summarize Cathmore’s long description of her experiment, she found and applied what she hoped was sufficient wax for a test. After putting a protesting Officer Utley in the suit, she had him hug trays she warmed with a heat lamp to the estimated temperature of wall panels leaving the printer. ‘Not too hot to handle with bare hands,’ being the opinion of the printer tech she called for a consult.”
“Did the seal blow?” Janna asked.
“No, with pressure equal inside and outside the suit.”
“Then the test proves nothing.”
Doubrava grinned. “The temperature on the suit’s exterior kept increasing incrementally, however, and at ninety-eight degrees the seal visibly loosened. Cathmore slid a finger under the edge and peeled it open.”
Yes! Janna pumped a fist.
“Could our killer anticipate that, though?” Doubrava said.
“Saleem said Chenoweth always worked the printer when they did curved panels,” Mama said. “The question is how our killer knew when Chenoweth would be working with curved panels.”
“I’ll call our Chief of Construction and find out.” Doubrava touched his headset and wandered across the interview room, murmuring. After listening for several minutes with a head waggle of unspoken get on with it he came back. “Eyer says a general timetable is set at the beginning of a project phase, then refined as construction progresses. The gist is, for several weeks the killer could expect a run of curved panels sometime in the week Chenoweth died, but on Saturday the day and crew assignment were finalized.”
Janna saw Mama trying to catch her eye. No doubt to remind her that Fontana’s call to his wife the following day included the code-sounding exchange about the house, signing the papers and letting new owners take possession.
Doubrava cocked a brow. “I saw that. Has the schedule told you who the killer is?”
“Suggested a possibility only,” Janna said. “We need more evidence.”
Mama eyed the screen. “Chenoweth worked on Monday without incident. The wax had to be substituted between then and his next shift. Is there surveillance in the locker porto?”
“Probably, though I’ve never checked.” Doubrava tapped the tabletop. “Athena, show us the construction locker porto, eighteen hundred hours on this February eleventh.”
A few seconds later its image bloomed on the screen. Like the printer porto, the cam looked down the length of the narrow module. Instead of lockers, the suits — about a third of them gone — hung along both sides on racks projecting from the bulkheads, with the helmet below on a cubby. Fabric whose bright colors suggested “street clothes” draped the empty racks. Unlike the open-ended printer porto, this one had an airlock . . . currently closing behind suited figures. The light above it turned red.
“Now we wait,” Doubrava said.
Not for long. Minutes later the lock began cycling again, admitting off-duty crew in groups of four and five. Male and female shared the porto, Janna saw, twisting off helmets and wiggling out of not only VE suits but skin suits under them.
“Those are liners to keep the suits clean inside,” Doubrava said.
With a gut lurch, Janna saw Chenoweth . . . laughing with crewmates while he hung up his suit and wiped the seal before dressing in a red and orange color-block body suit. As often as she had seen surveillance of future murder victims during investigations, Chenoweth, so blissfully unaware of the terrible death less than twelve hours away, lighted anger in her. Perhaps because she had seen that death on the inquest and printer porto recordings. “I really want the bastard who killed him.”
The set of Mama’s mouth told her he felt similarly affected.
“Amen.” Doubrava tapped the tabletop, speeding up the recording.
In twenty minutes the porto cleared. The time code wound on. For six hours.
At 21:43:30 a male entered . . . sandy-haired, wearing a coverall striped in three shades of orange.
“Coming in between shifts,” Doubrava said.
Mama said, “We know him.”
Oh, yeah. Despite different clothes, Janna had no trouble recognizing the build and hair of the jon from the morgue.
Doubrava grunted. “Now he’s passing as a suit maintenance tech.”
Whom no one would question entering the locker area.
He glided straight to Chenoweth’s rack and reached into the cubby under it. Switching the wax, of course.
As he turned away, Doubrava froze the image. “Athena, identify this individual.”
“Unable to identify the individual.”
“He’s wearing clingskin again,” Janna said.
Doubrava frowned, then bared his teeth in a fierce smile. “He can’t wear it forever. We’ll follow him until he reaches a point where he has to remove it. Athena, lock on this individual at the shaft portal and follow him until I say stop.”
“Unable to follow the individual.”
They all blinked. What?
“Why not?” Doubrava demanded.
“Individual does not appear on shaft portal surveillance.”
Doubrava swore.
Janna said, “He changed appearance outside the porto.”
“Yeah. Athena, show us who exits the shaft portal.”
No one did until 00:13:43, an ebony-skinned female in a red and orange body suit. Not their suspect. Presently males and other females began straggling out.
“That’s the crew coming off duty.”
While Chenoweth started his last shift, Janna reflected grimly.
Doubrava stopped the recording a
nd backscanned to the ebony female. “The son of a bitch. I’ll bet he hung outside the porto while the incoming crew arrived, then stripped his disguise and waited to leave with the outgoing crew.”
Restarting the recording, he played it at half speed, pausing to run facial recognition on every male and female close to their suspect’s height and build. When the last had left, catching loops on the cable lift, he held up crossed fingers. “Athena, how many individuals ID’d by FR worked on this last construction shift?”
“All the individuals identified are on the crew list of this last construction shift.”
Doubrava dropped his head to the tabletop. “Shit.”
Janna stared in frustration at the screen, frozen on the image of the portal. Crap. “Did we miss someone?”
“Obviously.” He straightened and slapped the tabletop, sending the screen back in it. “But I’m not going to work it out now. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s almost eighteen hundred hours. Let me take you to dinner. We’ll come back to this tomorrow.”
* * *
Instead of diving from the threshold platform this time, Doubrava walked them around the shaft to the cable lift by Admin and rode it down past the greenhouse levels to the Food Service platform. Inside, instead of the usual central hall, it bent sideways past an emergency capsule to follow the right-hand bulkhead, around the cafeteria and a row of vending machines.
“Vending machines?” Janna said. “On a space station?”
Doubrava grinned. “Prosaic, right? But everyone likes snacks. The difference is, ours are made here, and tasty enough to disguise being nutritious.”
Mama glanced past the vending machines into the cafeteria, with customers at most of the pillar tables. A cube of vid screens overhead played news and a gossip channel. “All the comforts of home.”
Doubrava shrugged. “How else do you attract and keep top people? Where we’ll dine helps, too.”
Neon over the portal at the end of the hall spelled Rings of Saturn. Inside lay the rounded end of the module. Oval tables with — chairs! — sat on a broad, striation-patterned swathe following that contour, turning the deck into Saturn’s rings. The bulkhead rose overhead in a dome looking like windows with a view of star fields and Saturn’s moons.
“Captain Doubrava. Do you wish your usual table?”
The rich, contralto voice pulled Janna’s attention from the restaurant to a smiling female maître d’ who appeared in front of them. Not a human female, however. Janna knew individuals with cone-shaped wheelchairs enclosing them from the waist down, but the precise speech and perfect café au lait complexion of this tuxedo-jacketed fem identified her as an android. Rhea according to her name tag.
“This way.”
She glided to a table midway around the “rings”, with two chairs on each side. Fixed to the deck, of course, like the couches in their quarters. These swiveled, Janna discovered while lowering herself into one near the “windows”. And as she sat, it secured her in place with sides folding up over her thighs.
Beside Janna, Mama asked, “Is that our next generation of service personnel?”
Across the table Doubrava spoke softly, as if to keep the departing waitron from hearing. “The design has sold to a corporation that might have them on the market in a year. Complete with legs. I expect only up-scale establishments will afford them initially.”
Janna found herself lowering her voice, too. “Is she and this restaurant incentive to work here or, like our quarters, help junketing poobahs feel at home?”
“Both. Personally, I come because civilized dining should be done sitting down.”
Coming often enough, obviously, to have a “usual” table.
The waitron had left them no menus. Looking the direction she disappeared, Janna discovered the Saturn theme continuing on the bulkhead at the front of the restaurant . . . a holo of the planet, the rings continuing on around it blending perfectly with those on the deck.
“The decor here and in the bars is impressive,” Mama said.
Doubrava lifted a brow. “Need I remind you of the brains in residence? These are games for the electronics and computer Q’s.”
“They do this for fun?” Janna said.
He shook his head. “Quid pro quo. Whoever designed this holo probably eats here gratis for the length of their stay. I know the team who put together the effects for Event Horizon drink for free. Shall we order?” He tapped the table in front of him and a menu glowed to life in the surface.
Janna tapped for her own menu.
Doubrava said, “Touch your choice to order. It’s all good.”
Janna opted for shish kebab . . . meat and veggies in one connected package.
Mama eyed his menu. “While I don’t wish to criticize, I recognize some of the items as what we had for lunch.”
Doubrava shrugged. “The constraints of cooking for weightlessness means most of the menu duplicates what you’ll find in the cafeteria. Yes, you pay here, where there the meals come with the job, but Rings has a few exclusive items, plus atmosphere . . .” He waved around them. “The wine list is short, since the grape varieties are limited by the vineyard growing table grapes, too. But I consider them decent vintages, having drunk first-class wines in the course of my assignments for Millennium. Plus, they don’t come in bulbs here.”
A very short wine list, Janna saw . . . Chardonnay, Riesling, and Merlot . . . two whites and a red.
Mama said, “You’ve probably enjoyed gourmet food, too. Do you miss that?”
Was Mama testing his earlier remark about Doubrava having developed a taste for luxury?
Doubrava shook his head. “Not really. This is what I’ll miss.”
“You’re leaving?” Janna said.
“Sometime. I never planned to stay forever. It’s just the edge of the frontier. The rest is waiting out there.” He waved at the star images on the bulkhead.
Janna thought of his Moon holiday invitation to his stockbroker femfriend, and recalled the psych evaluation saying he saw space as romantic.
“Where do you want to go?” Mama said.
He considered. “Maybe the asteroids. That’s true frontier. The mining stations there must need security officers.”
“You wouldn’t join a colonial company?”
“Travel to the stars to become a farmer?” Doubrava snorted. “Over my dead body.”
Chardonnay for wine, Janna decided. After touching done on the menu she leaned back in the chair. “Speaking of security, how did we miss seeing our suspect on—”
Doubrava cut her off with a raised hand. “No shop talk.”
She lifted her brows. “You had your fill of that at dinner growing up?”
“The acoustics mean we might be overheard. Listen.”
She listened. Voices reached her, conversations sounding as close as the next table. Except no one sat on either side of them. While unable to determine the origin of each voice, focusing let her separate the conversations.
“Then call this a pre-celebration,” a male voice said. “Eighteen is ready for occupancy as soon as we turn on the heat and lights. And thanks to the spider pair skinning Twenty’s hull in record time, we can pressurize it, and probably heat it, which will eliminate the need for VE suits and let the crews finish its interior very quickly.”
He sounded like someone in construction. Maybe a foreman, referring to “crews” rather than saying “we.”
“Spider pair?” a female voice asked.
Another female voice answered, “They worked in tandem, weaving the exterior and interior hulls simultaneously. That let us lay down deck and install walls as soon as they finished each section.”
“Not that we came close to keeping up with them,” the male said.
Janna decided they must be the trio at a table near the restaurant entrance. “What’s this spider?”
“A device that weaves a hull,” Doubrava murmured. “How is a detail above my IQ level, but its obviously performing splendidly. Lanour
can expect to make many millions selling it.”
“If the smuggler hasn’t beaten them to it,” Janna said.
He grimaced. “You think that’s what was on the data stick?”
“Something worth millions makes it a possibility.” Mama paused. “Good investment info, too, for passing on to Ms. Cooper.”
Janna winced inwardly. Yeah, be subtle, Mama.
Doubrava responded with a wry smile. “You’ve been checking my communications, of course. You won’t find me indulging in insider trading, though. I like my job too much to risk being caught at that.”
“So much space in those rings, plus gravity,” the first female in the construction group said. “I wonder what kind of labs they’ll be used for.”
Janna caught a pause before the male answered. “No idea.”
The food arrived, distracting Janna from wondering about that pause.
She had expected some technologically elaborate delivery. Dishes rising from the middle of the table — like drinks down at Prospero’s — or via drone. Instead, another android waitron brought it, a male version in a white waiter’s coat.
Taking apart the stack of trays, the waitron set square, domed plates on the table, a napkin tucked under one edge of the main plate. All the plates remaining in place without suction cups or hooks around the table edge. So did the water and wine . . . which came in square stemless glasses with a top that left a slit opening on the rim.
Lifting one edge of her main plate, Janna felt the pull of magnetism. Faint, but enough to hold the plate in place as she lifted off the dome. A dome that remained attached to the plate’s rear, just fan-folded back out of the way. Under it, a knife and fork slotted into the sides of the plate.
The shish kebab came not on a spike but atop sticky rice. To her surprise it also included orange and apple slices along with the peppers, onions, tomatoes, and meat. The meat had an odd-looking texture.
Doubrava caught her eyeing it. “It’s genetically beef.”
Meaning cloned and vat grown?
Vat grown or not, it tasted like beef. She ate carefully, trying not to spatter as she cut everything into bite-sized pieces, and when juice escaped, captured the drops with the napkin.
