Star Cops

by Chris Boucher

  Suddenly, eight of the sit-rep light blocks glowed black at the bottom of the grey screen, and a word faded up and shone in each: O – Rose – thou – art – sick – The – invisible – worm –. The words were briefly bright, then they and the blocks faded back into the overall blankness.

  “Did you see that?” Ben said, and when Leo did not answer, said again, “Did you see that?”

  Leo said, “I didn’t see anything.”

  “You must have seen it,” said Ben tearing his gaze from the screen long enough to glance at him.

  Leo’s eyes were tightly closed. “I didn’t see it,” he said. “I didn’t see anything. There was nothing to see.”

  “Leo?” Ben said, almost pleading.

  “No!”

  A few minutes later, the lights failed in the central control room. The atmosphere recycling system stopped about the same time. Over the emergency radio, Ben described what they had seen on the screen. Leo reluctantly confirmed the details. By the time the rescue services reached them, both men were dead.

  The Public Enquiry discounted and suppressed the more lurid aspects of their story, and found Ben and Leo each to be negligent. This was unfair, but inevitable. It was unfair, because they were helpless to affect anything. It was inevitable because taking the blame was, finally, all they were there for.

  The offices no longer looked like an unused research lab in the under-subscribed Science Annexe on Moonbase – but they didn’t look much like the headquarters of a police force, either, not even one as currently disreputable as the Star Cops. Nathan was aware that the delays in filling his requisitions for equipment and personnel were not entirely due to the supply difficulties all off-Earth installations experienced. He knew that he would have to make the ISPF a success before it would be given what it needed to succeed. But like they used to say back in Europol, if you’ve got no sense of humour, you shouldn’t have joined. Not a lot of laughs in cleaning house though, he thought, as he waited for Box to finish the analysis. He wasn’t sure which part of it was more unpleasant: discovering the corruption, or having to deal with it.

  “Another example has come to light that meets the stated criteria,” said Box, with Nathan’s voice, which didn’t sound to him like him, but did to everyone else, apparently.

  “Christ,” Nathan said, “there’ll be no-one left.”

  “Do you wish to see the data?”

  He sat down at his workstation. “Yes, please. Run it through for me. Let’s see if there’s a flaw.”

  Box began to feed the figures to the screen and outline the logic. Nathan tried to concentrate on what he was seeing. His chance of finding an error in the deductions was not good. Zero, pretty much. So why was he wasting the time? He hated the idea of letting a machine make up his mind for him, even Box – especially Box – but was that a good enough reason? Lee said he was irrational about computers, trying to compete, but she was dead, so what did she know? And these were decisions about people, and people should make decisions about people…

  “You ready?” Theroux said behind him.

  Nathan’s attention snapped back to the screen. “In a minute,” he said irritably. What the hell had happened to his attention span these days?

  “It’s a longish drive to Outpost Nine,” said Theroux mildly, and when Nathan ignored this he wandered over to the newly installed communications screen. “News,” he instructed quietly. The screen responded, switching slowly through the available news channels, with each offered broadcast precisely adjusted to match the volume of his voice command. “This,” he said, as slow-motion footage of a sequence of train wrecks filled the screen with vicious power.

  “…said as yet there appears to be no explanation of the computer failure which caused the multiple wreck in the tunnel under the English Channel.” If the newscaster was aware of the pictures the station was transmitting, his upbeat commentating style showed no sign of it. “These pictures taken direct from the accident monitors, the only pictures of the disaster as it happened, are brought to you exclusively by TWBC. If it’s news, you’ll see it first on TWBC, the all new News Channel.”

  The images came from the surface units linked to hundreds of self-contained black box accident recorders in the tunnels. Visuals were just a small part of what these crude automatics were designed to relay so the quality was poor. To compensate for this, a skilfully intercut sequence had been assembled, a montage of the destruction: collapsing trains engulfed by each other; sudden bursts of flame; glimpses of what might have been people falling, crawling, smashed in the heaving concussion waves; black billows of fiery smoke exploding with tightened power through the containing tunnels. Theroux watched with fascinated horror, then caught himself, and said, “Screen off!” As it blanked he said, “I cannot believe those bastards getting away with that stuff.”

  “What?” Nathan asked vaguely.

  “TWBC. They must have greased some palms to get hold of those pictures.”

  “It’s what makes the world go round,” Nathan said, staring at the last of Box’s evidence.

  “I thought it was against the law,” Theroux said.

  Nathan leaned back in his seat and sighed. “You might try telling that to Inspector Hubble.”

  “Hubble, as in Kirk ‘Boldly-go’ Hubble? Our token American?”

  “Our token bent American,” Nathan said flatly.

  Theroux looked unimpressed. “I hope the evidence is better than what you’ve got against Kenzy.”

  “It’s virtually the same.”

  “Hubble has more money than he should have. Various characters he’s been involved with have less.”

  Nathan killed his workscreen and pocketed Box. Moving towards the door he said, “Now tell me what a good poker player he is.” The sarcasm was understated, and the more cutting for that. Theroux said nothing as he followed Nathan out.

  The Moonrover was the best piece of basic engineering to come out of the Moonbase Technology Section. In fact, it was the only basic engineering they completed. Their other projects, like a purpose-built lunar shuttle, got no further than the planning stage before international co-operation broke down and funding dried up. The MoRo was a triumph though. A pressurized cabin was slung between eight shock-absorbing wheels each fitted with a giant, soft-compound solid tyre measuring fourteen feet in diameter. Simple computer controls smoothed the ride further by raising and lowering the vehicle on its suspension in response to the terrain. All the wheels were driven and steered independently, with the computer co-ordinating the system. In an emergency, however, the automatics could be overridden and the MoRo then became a standard eight-wheel drive crater-buggy. Inside the cabin was a shirtsleeve environment with room for six people and the Earth-weight equivalent of one and three-quarter tonnes of freight. The motive power, atmosphere and temperature maintenance came from fuel cells with a twenty-six hour reserve and solar panel recharge. The driving controls were a simple directional joystick with integrated accelerator and a dead-man brake. Direct forward vision was supplemented by all-round video, ground radar and beacon-grid navigation. Alternatively, the computer had a full autopilot option. The MoRo was robust, flexible and safe. It was designed to be the ideal work horse vehicle for its operating environment, and of the sixteen currently in use around and about on the lunar surface, none had ever been the cause of a moment’s anxiety.

  None of this made the slightest difference to Nathan. He hated riding the things with a white-knuckled passion. Once he left Earth, being afraid was, like feeling nauseous, a routine experience for him – but this was different. He felt this fear was shaming, somehow, since it was so clearly irrational. He had tried to think it away, but reasoning it through wasn’t easy when he couldn’t decide if it was the vehicle with its seasick-soft ride which frightened him, or the vivid moonscape, harsh and discomfiting, to which it clung. He wonder
ed whether it was precisely because the Moon’s surface was less alien than space itself that it actually seemed more disorienting than weightlessness. Maybe it was the too-jagged rockscapes, drab even when they were bright enough to hurt your eyes; or the dust that kicked up but didn’t cloud and blow about and didn’t fall back naturally; or black sky with blazing light, and the same black sky with freezing dark; or Earth seen clearly from the surface of not-Earth. Maybe it was the way things played to your instincts, and then used those instincts to make you uneasy – which was frightening, like the beginnings of madness. The MoRo lurched gently, and Nathan realized that his mind had been wandering again.

  Theroux eased up on the acceleration a little and said, “Sorry about that.”

  “No problem,” Nathan said and checked that the helmet and gloves which he needed to complete the spacesuit he was wearing were still within easy reach.

  “So what do you think?” Theroux asked conversationally.

  “I think I prefer the autopilot. It doesn’t have designs on the Trans-lunar Rally.”

  “Hubble and Kenzy? That is what you were trying to decide, yeah?”

  Look thoughtful, Nathan thought and, people – bright people like Theroux – assume you’re reasoning through some urgent problem, rather than wondering why you feel sick or how to stop your arse itching. “It’s not a difficult decision,” he said. “They’re out. See? Easy-peasy.”

  “Okay,” Theroux said, turning to Nathan to make his point, “I guess on past performance, they’re not our most reliable people.”

  “True. Understated, but true,” said Nathan, conscious that although Theroux’s hand moved on the joystick he was no longer paying any attention to where the MoRo was heading. “You want to keep an eye on the road?” he suggested.

  Theroux leaned forward slightly to look out. “But don’t you think maybe you should give them a second chance?”

  “No.”

  Theroux took his hand off the joystick altogether, and Nathan braced himself for the sudden stop. It was only when the dead-man brake did not kick in that he noticed the autopilot indicator was showing at the top of the navigation screen.

  “We’re almost down off the scarp now,” Theroux said. “Shouldn’t be any problems. Crater floor is pretty smooth. You can just about see Outpost Nine from here. Way over the far side. Tucked in below the rim.” He pointed. “See?”

  Nathan steeled himself, and peered across the wide, shallow basin. It was a nightmare desert of coarse dust, rock pocked and vacuum stark. There was something in the distance that might have been a dome. The navigation screen said it was the half-buried entrance to one of the general purpose research facilities and living quarters which Moonbase continued to spawn. His eyes said it was an unfocused speck a nervously long way away. As he stared, the MoRo whined on down the slope, its gyroscopes labouring to keep the cabin straight and level. It felt like the damn thing was trying to pull itself free and glide off from a slope of thick treacle. “Yeah,” he said, and had to stop himself from grabbing for his helmet and gloves.

  “You’ve decided, then?” Theroux persisted. “You’re going to fire two of the longest serving officers in your command? No warning: just ‘thanks, guys, and goodbye’?”

  “I wasn’t going to thank them, actually,” Nathan said, without smiling.

  “Those two have got friends, did you think about that?”

  “I’m aware that you’re a fan of Kenzy’s, if that’s what you mean,” Nathan said and thought, cheap shot, shouldn’t take cheap shots at friends. So he fancies the woman. Being corrupt doesn’t necessarily make her repulsive, and there’s no accounting for lust.

  “I mean people with power,” Theroux was saying. “Influential friends.”

  “I never knew a successful crook yet who hadn’t got friends like that,” Nathan said.

  Theroux said, “And you don’t have any real proof against either one.”

  “Hubble and Kenzy are dirty. Both of them.”

  “It’d never stand up in court.”

  “Which is the only reason I’m not insisting they do.”

  “Come on, Nathan.” Theroux was getting exasperated. “Even if they were a bit –”

  “Corrupt,” said Nathan.

  “It’s not that unusual.”

  “It’s going to be, David. In the Star Cops, it’s fucking well going to be.”

  Theroux looked thoughtful. “What do you call corrupt?” he asked.

  “Using your power to steal from people.”

  “That’s sort of a loose definition. You could end up as a chief with no Indians.”

  Nathan thought, You’re not trying to confess, are you, David? Christ, I hope not, and he said, “It’s only Hubble and Kenzy. So far.”

  The MoRo reached the bottom of the crater wall and speeded up a little as it levelled out and set off across the plain.

  “You picked the most difficult first, that’s for sure,” Theroux said. “Kenzy’s a national figure.”

  “Only in Australia.” Nathan smiled. “And what have they done for us recently?”

  “Hubble’s the only American we have on the Ronald Reagan.”

  “For what that’s worth,” Nathan said. “We should have at least three men on that station. Two permanently based there, one seconded to us here.”

  Theroux snorted. “You do know what the State Department thinks of us?”

  “Does someone in the State Department think? As far as I’m aware, they haven’t got anyone who can read without moving their lips.”

  “It’s my experience they don’t have anyone who can look at the pictures without moving their lips, but where does it say you gotta be bright to be powerful?”

  The MoRo was accelerating steadily now. Nathan glanced at the screens but there was no indication of any problems that he could see. The autopilot was still in control and Theroux seemed unconcerned. He tried to relax. The first step to feeling relaxed is to act relaxed. That’s what the trainers had told him. It was bullshit, of course. He shrugged. “Wasn’t it one of their tame journos who came up with the ‘Star Cops’ tag?”

  Theroux inclined his head and pointed with his index finger, his thumb cocked like the hammer of a gun. “And that’s when we had a US cop,” he said. “You want to guess what’ll happen after you can him?”

  “We’ve still got you,” said Nathan.

  Theroux said, “Shit, are we in trouble…”

  A moment later, the MoRo ground jerkily to a halt. As the motors cut out and the cabin rocked gently, the movement slowly damped by the computer, Nathan murmured, “Are we in trouble?”

  The navigation screen was flashing a small warning symbol and a soft electronic klaxon drew attention to the legend: Brake override – ID check. Theroux touched the icon and the klaxon stopped. “Security perimeter,” he said casually. “Automatic cut-off while they check us out.”

  “Just routine?”

  “Yeah.”

  Nathan rubbed his eyes lightly, and sighed. “It won’t upset anything if I scream, then?”

  “I’m sorry,” Theroux said. “I should have warned you what was going to happen.”

  “You did,” said Nathan, surprised to find his relaxed pose still more or less intact. “So did all the training people. Leave Earth and anything you forgot to bring with you will kill you. And anything you remembered to bring with you that doesn’t work properly will kill you. When in doubt, assume everything is going to kill you.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe all that stuff.”

  “That’s the trouble with training. Even when you don’t believe it, you believe it.”

  From the communications system a warm, sincere voice interrupted them. The unnaturally charming inflections identified the speaker as the security computer. “Moonrove
r Seven, please prepare for voice identification as a preliminary to security clearance for access to Outpost Nine.”

  Theroux said, “This is MoRo Seven ready for –”

  “Please speak now,” the voice said, speaking over him.

  “It used to take talent and the right sort of upbringing,” Nathan said, “to be polite and have shitty manners at the same time. Now all it takes is a computer.”

  “Commander Nathan Spring is identified, thank you.”

  “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” Theroux said.

  “Inspector David Theroux is identified, thank you. International Space Police Force personnel journey authorization codes have been confirmed.” The navigation screen returned to normal, the drive units hummed back into life and, with a barely discernible shudder, the MoRo began to move again.

  “D’you know who said ‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do’?” Theroux asked settling back in his seat.

  “Just about every drunk who ever went for a piss and thought he was funny,” Nathan said.

  Theroux looked smug. “A movie buff should really know the answer.”

  “Are you sure I don’t?”

  “I’m ready to bet money you don’t.”

  “You wouldn’t be trying to box me in here would you?” said Nathan. He hadn’t leaned on the word ‘box’, but simply saying it should have been enough to activate Box.

  “Ten bucks says you don’t know,” said Theroux.

  “I have to know what movie character said: A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

  “Right.”

  “For twenty bucks,” Nathan said.

  “You’re on.”

  “Let me think’ now.”

  “Either you know it or you don’t.”

  Nathan ran his hand down over his face and was just rubbing it over his mouth and chin, when Box – muffled by the coverall pocket – said: “It was Shane, though it is a paraphrase.”