“Are you sure about this, Riggs?”
Midshipman Riggs nodded. “The micrographs don’t lie, Chief Carver. There are nanos all over that cable.”
I scratched my neck under my stiff white uniform collar. It was hard to keep my uniform clean within the water rations on the ship. Besides an inescapable slight stink—inescapable because the whole ship had the same stink of bodies confined for months—I was developing a bit of a rash. “But are you sure? We’re going to have to take this to Captain Aames.”
I saw the young British astronaut turn pale, almost as pale as his close-cropped blonde hair, and I managed to conceal my amusement. Riggs was new to the Aldrin, but already he lived in fear of Nick. Half the crew did the same, while the other half would never dare go to space without Nick in command. Some days I wasn’t sure which half I was in.
Riggs was understandably nervous: being challenged by the Chief Officer was bad enough, and bringing bad news to Nick would be even worse. But the midshipman hesitated only briefly before he swallowed and answered. “Yes, sir. Take a look. The micrographs don’t lie.”
I did take a look, pulling Riggs’s report onto my comp. I wasn’t an expert in nanomachines any more than Riggs was, but I could read the computer analysis easily enough. The frayed S3 cables were infested with dormant nanobots.
Well, I had been hoping for a distraction so I could stop thinking about Tracy. I had managed to avoid her even in the close confines of the Mars cycler, but I couldn’t avoid the memory of her without some distraction. This would certainly fit the bill. “All right, then. No sense in delay. Let’s go see the Captain.” I stood from my desk chair, automatically correcting to avoid rising too fast in the ship’s quarter gravity. As we headed out of my office, I noticed that Riggs still moved with exaggerated care. Eventually he would adjust—if Nick didn’t break him first.
Nick had broken more men than any three other commanders in the Corps. He loves to push a crew in drill: “Again. Again. Do it again, and get it right this time.” Sometimes that seems like the only word he knows: “Again”. Again and again until you break; but those he doesn’t break, we know our stuff. We have to. Being the best is the only way to get Nick to shut the hell up.
Probably Riggs would break, but I hoped not. He was a good kid, endearingly eager to be in space even if only as crew of a Mars cycler. We would never make planetfall, just follow a complex pseudo-cometary Solar orbit that took us back and forth between Earth and Mars every eleven months. We orbited the Sun; but as we got close to Earth, she grabbed us, swung as around a couple of times, and then tossed us back toward Mars; and then Mars grabbed us and tossed us back in a complicated dance that took only trivial amounts of fuel for occasional course corrections. It was a mathematically elegant and efficient way to travel; but it was about as exciting and eventful as driving a subway train. Most in the Corps saw cycler service as pretty low duty for an astronaut, tantamount to punishment. And working under Nick didn’t make that duty any more popular, which added to our attrition rate. I couldn’t guess whether Riggs would last or not. Nick couldn’t, either, which was why he insisted on testing people until he found out. Nick hated not knowing.
We walked through the ship as I ruminated, passing through one brownish-gray corridor after another. I had seen pictures of the ship when she was new, all orange-yellow (“ochre” the designers called it) and with the Holmes Interplanetary logo prominently displayed in most rooms. It had been a bit ostentatious, but it had looked polished. Then Holmes had gone out of business and Mission Control had scooped up their assets and repurposed them for government missions. One of the first things they had done was to paint over the ochre with government-issue gray; but because they had skimped on the gray, the result had a brownish tinge that looked grimy even when we cleaned it as best we could. We got used to the grimy look eventually, but we prized any little bit of color that broke up the dullness.
Eventually we arrived at Nick’s outer office—empty, since I was the one who usually manned the desk there—and passed through to the command office. The door opened as I approached. I ushered Riggs in and we stood before the display desk. Where most of the ship was brownish-gray, Nick had had his office painted in darker tones, mostly black. He also kept the lights low, except for the glow from his computer desk. He liked the room dark, with one giant window behind the desk showing the star field outside.
A chair was behind the desk, its high back facing us, and it didn’t budge as we entered and the door closed behind us. Nick was staring at the stars and probably ignoring us, but it was possible he hadn’t heard us. As usual, the office was filled with mellow Brazilian music. Many of us in the Corps have trained in Brazil and picked up a little Portuguese; but Nick had thoroughly adopted the country and its culture. I recognized “Brigas Nunca Mais,” one of Nick’s favorites. I always found some irony in that: the title translated roughly as “Never Fight Again,” and Nick was a tenacious fighter.
The chair back swayed slightly. Despite the music, I was sure Nick knew we were there. He was just ignoring us. Fine. I would wait him out.
Finally the song ended, and Nick’s voice came from behind the chair. “Are you going to stand there all day, Chief Carver? I know you didn’t leave.”
“How did you know it was me?” Did he analyze the sound of my walk? I couldn’t see how over the music.
“Elementary, my dear Carver. After Margo Azevedo’s breakdown at last month’s maudlin dinner, I would rather avoid any unnecessary contact with our passengers. That door is currently programmed to open for only one other person on this ship besides myself; and that one other person is you, Chief.”
“Someone could have broken your lock program and entered that way.”
“True. But there’s only one person on this ship whose programming skills are up to that task. And that person is also you. Ergo, if someone intrudes on my solitude, it could only be you. Oh, and Mr. Riggs, of course.” I saw Riggs flinch when Nick said his name. He looked at me and mouthed the word “how,” but I didn’t respond. I didn’t want to give Nick the satisfaction. Besides, he likely had a camera hidden in his office, so it wasn’t any big mystery.
Over the years I had learned the value of having more patience than Nick. It’s not easy, but I’ve done it. He has nearly zero patience when he wants something from you, but nearly infinite when he’s avoiding someone. So I just stood silently and waited him out. At last he spoke again. “So what is it, Chief Carver? More of the incessant mourning? Have our passengers decided they want to regale us with yet more stories of the late, great Professor and his botched expedition?”
“No, sir, but it does involve the expedition. Riggs has found evidence that Professor Azevedo’s S3 cable was sabotaged.”
It’s rare that I get to surprise Nick, even with bad news; so I took a secret, perverse delight in the way he spun the chair around. Instead of his usual casual slouch, he leaned intently forward: a medium-short man, fit and wiry with bushy red-gray hair and short beard. When he got like this, his energy seemed likely to burst out in a random direction on the smallest provocation. Again Riggs flinched as if Nick might leap at him or throw something at him; and I had to admit, it had happened to others in the crew.
Nick fixed Riggs with his best contemptuous stare. “Mr. Riggs, Synthetic Spider Silk breaks. It is incredibly strong, but it also breaks when not properly maintained over time. And Paolo Azevedo was notoriously sloppy—exactly as I warned his backers before the expedition, not that anyone listened to me. Half of his maintenance reports never got filed. So I have no doubt he fell behind on S3 inspections, and the cable broke as a result. Why would you suggest otherwise?”
Riggs straightened to attention under Nick’s stare, and he stood his ground. I could really get to like the kid. He had spunk. “Captain, I was performing the quarantine inventory, as per Chief Officer Carver’s orders.” We were less than two days away from Earth orbit, so it was standard practice to scan all transported gear for contaminants—including nanos, since many Earth jurisdictions have pretty strict laws about unlicensed nanomachines. “I inspected Professor Azevedo’s S3 cable, and I found a small colony of scavenger nanos. If I may, sir?”
Nick nodded, and Riggs swiped his finger across the comp in his sleeve, pushing his report to Nick’s display desk. Nick gestured us closer as he leaned over the electron micrograph, an image of several parallel gray tubules dotted with miniscule magenta specks. Riggs tapped his comp, and several circles zoomed out of the image for more detail. The tubules began to show as a fine matrix; and the specks became a number of small structures, false colored in shades of magenta to stand out against the gray background. “There they are, sir. Scanner says they conform 99.993% to the structure of standard scavenger nanos, one of the same lines that the expedition took along for scavenging raw materials. This particular line scavenges salt ions and fixes them to a substrate, manufacturing salts and salt-based compounds. And these—” Riggs tapped the comp again, and small flecks were highlighted in yellow. “—are salt ions trapped in the glycine matrix.”
Nick sneered at Riggs. “And why are you wasting my time over a bunch of salt ions?” But I knew that sneer from long experience: it meant that Nick was testing Riggs. Nick already knew the answer, and he suspected that just maybe Riggs wasn’t a complete incompetent. If Riggs could just keep his cool and make a thorough, professional report, he might actually impress Nick. And I knew as well as anyone how difficult it is to impress Nick.
Riggs held up under the sneer and continued his report. “Captain, the salt ions depolymerize the glycine, reverting it from a fibrous state to more of a gel. The silk becomes liquid again, Captain, and it stretches like taffy. It pulls thinner and thinner until it just wisps away. If the Captain is done with this micrograph?” Nick waved his hand dismissively, and Riggs brought up the next image. “This is the same zone, zoomed out by a factor of ten.” There were a number of gray strands, too small now to see the magenta specks; but the strands became progressively more yellow as they approached the upper right corner. They also narrowed dramatically. When the strands had diminished to roughly half their width, they started to bend and warp. And suddenly, almost in the corner of the image, they became a knotted yellow tangle, and they reached no further.
Nick turned one wide eye up at Riggs. “So, Mr. Riggs, you’re telling me that although Azevedo was an utter fool who had no business leading that expedition, he wasn’t at fault in his own death? You’re telling me that I was wrong?”
Riggs swallowed before he spoke. “Yes, Captain.”
“Good!” Nick looked back down at the desk. You would have to know him as well as I did to see the slight edge of a smile at the corner of his mouth. Riggs had impressed him. “Riggs, it is my job to be right. This ship and all aboard depend on that. It is your job to tell me when I’m not doing my job. I will tear you into small bloody bits when you do, because I’m never wrong; and I expect you to do so anyways, because sometimes I am wrong, and I will not tolerate that. If you can accept that, you might have a future on this ship. Can you?”
Riggs didn’t hesitate again. “I don’t know, Captain. We’ll find out.”
This time Nick even let his smile show. “Honesty. Another mark in your favor. Don’t ever lie to me, Riggs, and we’ll get along fine. So I trust you did research on these nanos. You know how they’re activated.”
“Concentrated UV light, Captain, of specific frequencies. The light excites certain outer electrons in the structure, ionizing the nanos and initiating a chain reaction that starts them in motion. I’m afraid chemistry isn’t my best subject, Captain, so I can explain how to activate them but not the details. The frequency and intensity required are such that they don’t occur naturally in the solar spectrum.”
“So they can’t activate by accident. Someone has to use an emitter.” Riggs nodded. “And that’s why you believe the break must have been sabotage.”
I decided Riggs had had enough of Nick’s attention, and it was time to draw some fire of my own. “Yes, Captain, and that’s why we had to bring this straight to you. Until we reach Earth’s gravipause, you are the highest legal authority aboard this ship.”
“Much as it chaps Lee Klein’s ass.” Nick had negotiated that clause in his contract with Holmes Interplanetary before he had accepted command of the Aldrin: while the ship was in free fall around Sol, Nick had nearly the sovereign power of an old British sea captain. Oh, he couldn’t have you flogged, but he had pretty broad authority to run his ship as he saw fit. When Mission Control bought out Holmes, Director Klein discovered that Nick had fashioned the contract with all of his trademark attention to detail. Nick’s autonomy survived the end of Holmes unless the new owner wanted to dismiss Nick and pay him his full wage for five years plus bonuses while Nick sat on a beach in Brazil and drank caipirinhas. Klein was not about to do that, and so Nick’s authority was pretty much total until Earth’s gravitational force acting on us exceeded Sol’s.
Nick didn’t continue, so I did. “And so it is your responsibility to investigate, Captain. Secure the evidence, prepare a report for the authorities on Earth, and make sure whoever is behind this isn’t a danger to our passengers and crew.”
“My responsibility?” Nick turned one glaring eye upon me.
“Yes, sir. And I guess this changes at least one thing.”
“Oh?”
“You were wrong about the expedition. The failure wasn’t their fault.”
“Oh, really?”
“Well, clearly, it was deliberate. It wasn’t an accident.”
“Oh, really? And what does that change?”
“Well . . . everything!” Nick exasperated me. As usual. I think exasperating was one of his primary joys in life. Defying expectations and challenging beliefs was one of his many ways of testing people.
“Does it change the fact that they didn’t plan for adequate backup water? Does it change the fact that they didn’t plan for the possible temperature extremes? Does it change the fact that they were completely unprepared for a Category V dust storm? Does it change the fact that they had no plan for what would happen if they lost their orbital platform like we lost ours?”
“Nnnnno.” I had intended to needle Nick, but I hadn’t expected him to react so strongly. Riggs was squirming. The crew didn’t usually see Nick and I duel like this.
“Then I wasn’t wrong! They had a poorly planned mission from start to finish. Though I grant you there’s one failure even I overlooked: they didn’t plan for a criminal on board.”
I saw my opening. “And that’s another reason why only you can investigate this murder. You understand their expedition and you know what to look for.”
Nick sighed, and I knew I had him. “Very well, then, Chief Carver. I guess I must end my exile here and deal with the members of the expedition. Interview them and find out who might have a motive for this crime.”
“So should I bring them in, sir?”
“Oh not all at once, one at a time. That’s all I want to deal with. Let us start with . . . I think we’ll start with Ms. Wells.”
Tracy! I tried to stall. “Nick, surely you don’t think she had anything to do with this.”
“What I think is none of your concern. Has she already messed up your head so much that you’ve forgotten how to follow orders?”
Damn it, Nick, get out of my head! “No, Captain, if that’s your order, I shall carry it out, sir.”
“That’s good, man, because I need to know if you’re going to have a problem with this. I need to know if you’re thinking with your brain, or somewhere lower.”
I had manipulated Nick into taking charge of the investigation, and he was going to make me suffer for that; but I wasn’t going to let that impair my performance of my duties. “Sir, I shall carry out my responsibilities exactly as expected.”
I left, Riggs in tow, and the door closed behind us. Facing off to Nick must have emboldened Riggs. Normally I wouldn’t expect personal questions from such a junior crewman, so his next question hit me by surprise. “Is there a problem with Ms. Wells, sir?”
“No, we just have a . . . history. I’ve been avoiding her. Too many uncomfortable memories.”
“He knows this? And he’s putting you in this bind deliberately? He’s a right bastard, isn’t he?”
“That he is, Mr. Riggs. That he is.” We reached the tube to the berthing ring, and I turned off while Riggs continued back to his post. Under my breath, I echoed Riggs. “A right bastard he is.”
I had dreaded that encounter, but I couldn’t put it off. Three months ago I had looked up the cabin number where Tracy bunked with Arla Simms, another member of the Azevedo expedition. I had managed to stop myself from going there, but the number was lodged firmly in my brain.
And now I stood before 32-A and held my finger on the door buzzer. Nearly four years . . . Too soon, and far too long. I pressed the buzzer.
Arla opened the door: a trim young woman in a simple blue jumpsuit from the expedition, her blonde curls cut functionally short. We had met several times during the voyage, but never for very long. I had avoided prolonged contact with the passengers almost as thoroughly as Nick had. Arla seemed surprised to have a visitor. “Yes, Chief Carver?”
I straightened to attention, hiding behind formality as best I could. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but the Captain has sent me. He has asked me to fetch Ms. Wells—” I managed not to stammer at her name “—so that he may ask some questions about the expedition.”
“The expedition? Is there something wrong?”
“Nothing I can speak of, ma’am. The Captain is just thorough.” It wasn’t precisely a lie. Not that I would hesitate to lie to keep the investigation under control, but I would stick as close to the truth as I could.
“Well, come in, Chief. Tracy’s in here.” Damn. I had been afraid she would invite me in, and I hadn’t figured out a polite excuse to refuse. Arla stepped aside, and I entered the cabin.
Instantly my eyes were pulled to Tracy where she sat on her bunk, a desk folded out from the cabin wall. She was editing expedition videos, and she paused them as I came in. Tracy wore a blue jumpsuit like Arla’s, but she had altered the legs to thigh-length shorts. She had always liked her legs free, and I had never minded the chance to see them. She looked just as I had glimpsed her in random moments since the expedition came aboard: a little older than when we had parted, and a little thinner from the tight rations on Mars, and somehow that made her even more beautiful than the day we had met. Her face was the same cocoa shade that I remembered. Her hair was the same black that I knew so well, but pulled back in a bun to keep it out of ship’s air systems. The auburn highlights that fascinated me so were only visible when she let her hair flow free, so I was safe from them for the moment. Her eyes . . . Her deep brown eyes looked up at mine, and I looked just a bit away.
And her scent . . . It wasn’t possible, but the cabin smelled of lilacs. After months on Mars and more months on the trip there and back, she couldn’t possibly still have any of the lilac water she liked so much. I concentrated, and the odor faded away. It had been only a memory.
Tracy still knew all of my tricks, too. She shifted her head to meet my eye line. “What is it, Anson?” My pulse leapt. Practically no one called me by my first name, and no one at all since we had broken up.
I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to. I had to—but I couldn’t. “The Captain is conducting an investigation of the accident, and he has asked me to escort you to his office so that he may ask some questions.” There. I had gotten out a whole sentence.
“Certainly, Anson. Anything I can do to help.” Tracy folded up the desk and stood from her bunk. I managed not to analyze how her body moved in the low gravity. “If you’ll lead the way. I have no idea how to find the Captain’s office.”
Glad of the excuse, I turned on my heel and faced the door. I touched my cap. “My apologies for the intrusion, Ms. Simms.”
I left the cabin. I heard Tracy’s soft tread behind me, and then the door closed. I waited until she was almost beside me, and then I set off through the passageway.
I knew the silence wouldn’t last forever, but I still felt a stab when Tracy broke it. “You said there’s nothing you can speak of; so I assume there’s something you can’t speak of?”
I never could fool Tracy. “I’m sorry you heard that.”
“‘I’m sorry you heard that, Tracy.’ It’s okay to say my name, you know.”
I missed my stride, but only by a fraction of a second. I tried for casual: “Why waste words? We both know who I’m talking to.”
Tracy sped up, edged around me in the narrow passageway, and stopped in front of me, forcing me to stop as well. “You’re not talking, not really. You’re avoiding talking.”
Before I knew what was happening, I answered: “We talked four years ago. That didn’t turn out so well.” I should’ve let it rest, I knew I should’ve. This could only get worse.
And it did. “And you’re still angry? After four years?”
“Still angry that you left me? Absolutely!”
“I left you for Mars! My chance to film the documentary of my dreams! I couldn’t pass up that opportunity! You should know, you did the same to me when you left on the Bradbury.”
“That was different!” I tried to control my emotions, but they were building higher.
“Different? Different how?”
“We barely knew each other then. We had only been together for a couple months. We hardly meant anything to each other then. Not like . . . Not like breaking our engagement.”
“I had to break it! It wasn’t fair. I was going to Mars for nearly four years, with training and travel. I couldn’t ask you to wait that long!”
“You couldn’t . . . ?” And suddenly my restraints broke. “You couldn’t ask me? Why not? That made me angry, the way you just decided without asking me. But oh, I got past angry.” That took nearly a year. Then I tried hurt for a while. Hurt and drunk. Then just drunk, and then drunk and bitter. Eventually Nick dried me out and kicked my tail and got me to focus on work again. That’s what I have now: my work, and I’m damned good at it. “I ferry passengers to and from Mars now, and that’s all that’s going on here.”
Tracy was silent for almost a minute; and when she did speak, I could barely hear her. “I thought maybe . . . maybe you joined this crew so you could . . . see me . . . ”
I looked away. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing how much that had touched me. She wasn’t my reason, though part of me wished she had been.
Trying to keep a steady tone, I answered, “No, I joined this crew to serve under Captain Aames.”
“Nick? He’s a bastard!”
“That ‘bastard’ is the only reason I’m alive today. Me and the twelve other survivors from the second Bradbury expedition.”
“Yes, but . . . The way he treats you! How can you put up with that abuse?”
How could I explain it to her when sometimes I couldn’t even explain it to myself? But I had to try. “The safest place to be in this Solar System is under the command of Nick Aames—but just outside of shouting distance.”
“And inside shouting distance?”
“Third safest. Second safest if you can get him shouting at somebody else.”
Tracy smiled. Despite myself, I did, too. Damn it! I couldn’t do this. I had to keep my distance. If I relaxed, if I let myself loose, it would happen all over again. I couldn’t take another round of losing her.
I squeezed past her. “Come on. The bastard is waiting.”
Nick’s door opened, and the liquid notes of a trumpet emerged, accompanied by a soft drum beat and guitar. It was a sad, sweet tune, “Mue Esquema.” Now there was a title that suited Nick: “My Scheme.” We entered. Nick looked up and silenced the music.
I stood by the door. “As you requested, Captain, Ms. Wells is here to speak with you. I’ll be in my office.”
“No, Chief Carver, stay. I need your perspective on these interviews.”
Nick had me right where he wanted me, but I wasn’t going to acknowledge it. “As the Captain wishes.”
“Ms. Wells, have a seat.”
“Thank you, Nick.” Tracy had never been big on formality, and it looked like she wasn’t going to play by Nick’s rules. No surprise there. She casually dropped into the guest chair, settling easily in the low gravity.
Nick stared directly at Tracy, his hands clasped on the desk. “So . . . You’ve had quite an expedition. It’s been a long time. How long?”
“Almost four years, as you know. You always know details like that.”
“Certainly! Attention to detail is my specialty. And yours, apparently, is distracting and ruining my best officer.”
Tracy held her casual pose, but I could see the rising ire in her eyes. “I ruined him?”
“Look at him standing there, all tense, ready to flinch at any moment.”
“I wasn’t the one who talked him out of his opportunity to go back to Mars! And . . . ”
“I did no such thing.”
“You know full well you did!” Tracy leaned forward. Despite her resolve, Nick was getting to her. He always did. “When you turned down the Liaison post on the Azevedo expedition, you knew there was no way Anson would go with us if you didn’t! Of course he wanted to go back to Mars! What member of the Corps didn’t? Three-quarters of your crew were on our applicant list. I’ve seen it! But not Anson, nooooo! He wouldn’t go on any expedition where you didn’t approve. He wouldn’t leave you.”
“Not even to be with you.”
“Not even to be with me.”
“And that bothers you.”
“No, not any more. It stopped bothering me a long time ago. But it bothered me then.”
“And that’s why you broke up with him.”
“Captain!” I had had enough of the two of them arguing over me as if I weren’t there. “You’re supposed to be investigating—”
“Chief Carver, I am investigating, and I’ll do it my way. I expect you to respect my line of questioning and trust that I have my reasons.”
I sighed, but not loudly. “Aye, Captain.”
Tracy glared at me. “‘Aye, Captain.’ It’s still like that? All right, if you want to pretend this is germane, I won’t give you the satisfaction of fighting with you. I broke up with Anson because it would’ve been unfair to ask him to wait for me for nearly four years through the training and the expedition. It would’ve been different if we were together, but you made sure that wouldn’t happen. He had to get on with his life, even if his ‘life’ was following you and taking your orders.”
“Taking orders. Discipline. Concepts you never really understood, aren’t they? That’s why you fit in so perfectly in the Azevedo expedition.” Tracy didn’t respond, but I could see she wanted to. “Carver tried to warn you about their poor planning, I know he did; but you were Mars struck. Or should I say star struck, perhaps? The great Professor Azevedo was going to Mars, the first mission of the Civilian Exploration Program, and he was taking the best of the best with him! Or at least that’s what his press releases said. And he chose you, a practically unknown film student, to record his journey! You weren’t about to let anything stop you from going. The dazzle of the spotlight blinded you to the actual state of the mission.”
“It didn’t blind me.”
“No?”
“All right, it sounded glamorous and exciting at the start. All my life, I had dreamed of shooting documentaries on other planets and between planets. I wanted to capture life in space and on ships and space stations. That’s how I met Anson, when I was filming at Mission Control one time.”
Nick didn’t interrupt, but I knew what he was thinking. He had told me often that he thought Tracy had used me as a stepping stone for her video ambitions. Tracy’s admissions came uncomfortably close to proving his point.
“But I took my training seriously. Azevedo didn’t train us, you know, we had training from the Corps. From your protocols! And oh, I took notes, and I learned. I wanted to understand what Anson thought was so important, so vital that he would turn down a promotion if he thought the mission was poorly planned. I wanted to learn what made your way so important to him.”
“And did you learn?”
Tracy paused. I knew her face too well, I could read the reluctance there; but then she nodded. “I did. I learned the value of precision and protocol and observation. And . . . your way is right. So I learned.”
“Uh-huh. And your proof is . . . ?”
Tracy pushed a file from her comp to Nick’s desk. “Here’s a list of my reports. And notice in particular the variances: every time I observed a deviation from protocols, I filed a variance. Every variance includes a risk assessment as well, and also my contingency recommendations. Every one filed with Professor Azevedo and also with Gale as the Corps Liaison. It got so they both stopped reviewing my reports. I was never wrong, but still they just kept doing what they wanted. Despite them, I did everything by the book. By your book, Nick.”
“Hmmm . . . We’ll see, won’t we? These records do look impressive. I’ve had Bosun Smith running an inventory of the expedition gear. It’s sloppy, poorly maintained, articles are missing or misplaced . . . As I expected, most of your team weren’t as meticulous as you’ve been here.”
Tracy stared blankly. She was used to abuse and criticism from Nick; but something close to a compliment seemed to baffle her.
When Tracy didn’t respond, Nick prompted her to continue. “All right . . . Tell me about the Chronius Mons trip, and the accident.” I relaxed a bit. Finally we were moving on from personal matters—my personal matters—to the actual subject of the investigation.
Tracy, on the other hand, became less relaxed. As she started into her report, she sat up and looked alert and . . . serious, in a way I wasn’t accustomed to from her. “As you know, Professor Azevedo selected Terra Cimmeria for the first CEP expedition due to two unusual phenomenon observed there, one measured and one inferred. The Mars Global Surveyor measured large magnetic stripes in Cimmeria and Terra Sirenum, which are hypothesized to be evidence of ancient tectonic activity; and albedo spectroscopy had indicated possible carbonate deposits that could be evidence of ancient life. The Professor hoped that by choosing that locale, he would double the chances of a momentous discovery that would bring in new investors for future expeditions.
“But by our hundredth day on Mars, Terra Cimmeria had proven frustrating and disappointing. It wasn’t even that we had negative data to report, just no statistically valid conclusions either way. The magnetic stripes didn’t conform exactly to any of the three standard tectonic models; but they didn’t vary far enough to disprove any of the models, either, nor enough to choose between them. All our data really told us was we would need a lot more data. In the same way, the carbonate deposits were largely albedo spectres; and what deposits we did find were too small, too dispersed for us to make much sense of. They could’ve been remnants of ancient biotics, but they could just be natural mineral phenomena.”
I managed not to stare, but I was surprised. Tracy had never shown much science knowledge before. Oh, she had always been smart, but she had concentrated on filmmaking and project management. She was an artist, not a researcher, and Azevedo had hired her for her video skills. Somehow in the past four years she had developed a whole new side to her.
Tracy continued, “So the Professor decided to make the trek to Chronius Mons. He . . . Well, it might be easier if I just played back my journal.”
Tracy tapped her sleeve comp, and a strange voice emerged. It was almost recognizable, but pitched to a high octave like a cartoon character. “Azevedo Expedition Journal, Day 106. Videographer Wells reporting. After considering my advice—refer variance report 104-27w—Professor Azevedo has filed a revised exploration plan for a two-day hike to Chronius Mons. He believes we may find—”
“Stop!” Nick shouted, and Tracy paused the log. “Enough with the chipmunk log!”
“I’m sorry,” Tracy said, “I don’t even notice it any more. After five months of breathing heliox, I speak ‘chipmunk’ fluently.” To reduce payload mass, Azevedo’s team had brought a helium-oxygen breathing gas mix rather than standard air. It massed only one-third as much, but it had the unfortunate side effect of raising human voices by an octave or more due to the thinner gas. We didn’t bother with it on the Aldrin, since our orbit required almost zero fuel to maintain; but the choice had made a huge impact on Azevedo’s mass budget.
“Well, I hate heliox,” Nick said. “For the sake of my ears, I’d like you to summarize. We can skip the journals.”
“If I have to do a lot of talking, can I get some water? I got spoiled by the heliox, it’s easier to breathe. I’m still readjusting to normal air. My throat always seems dry.”
Nick looked at me. “Carver, fetch the lady some water.” I went to the sink in the corner, poured a glass, and brought it to Tracy. Our fingers touched briefly as she took the glass. I managed to keep my hand from trembling.
Tracy took a drink, and then she resumed. “With the carbonates disappointing and the plate tectonics inconclusive, Professor Azevedo didn’t have much to show for the expedition. So he announced a new mission objective. I told him that was clearly outside of all protocols; but he overruled my objections, as usual, and said we had plenty of safety margin for a trek to Chronius Mons. He said we had spectroscopic evidence of significant and unusual phosphorus outcroppings on the upper slopes. We had no particular theory to test, no reason for scouting for phosphorus. It was data gathering and grandstanding, nothing more. And the spectroscopic assay was far from conclusive, as I told him.”
“Oh? And when did you get a degree in chemistry?”
Nick’s question had been mocking, so Tracy’s answer surprised him as well as me. “I started the program during mission training, and then I got my degree on the trip out on the Collins. I had to do something to fill my spare time.” She glanced in my direction, then looked back to Nick. “Anson always told me how important it is for expedition members to cross train so that critical skills have backups. ‘Videographer’ isn’t a critical mission skill, even if the Professor saw it as such; but a grounding in chemistry made me a backup for a number of personnel.”
I actually saw Nick nod at Tracy’s answer. That was as close to praise as she was likely to get.
When Tracy realized Nick had nothing to say, she continued. “So Professor Azevedo insisted on Chronius Mons. In truth, I think he was looking for challenge and adventure. He kept talking about scaling the highest point on the Terra and the great panoramas I could film from up there. He wanted something that would make great publicity. This wasn’t really for the scientists, it was all for the money folks and the media back home.
“He also insisted that we could hike the distance in two days and make the climb in two more, rather than risk a lander flight in the questionable winds. We had no ground vehicles, so it was hike or fly or stay at the camp; and he wouldn’t consider the last two choices.
“Professor Azevedo selected Lieutenant Gale and Dr. Ivanovitch for the hike, and also myself to record it. Gale selected himself, really: as Astronaut Corps Liaison, he had supervisory authority over any trip outside the bounds of the camp. He didn’t always exercise that authority, but he insisted for that trip. Margo also insisted on coming, and the Professor wasn’t inclined to say no to his wife—especially since she financed much of the expedition.
“We loaded up sledges with supplies. I personally prepared the equipment plan, but then was overruled time and again by the Professor and Gale. Still, I think we were adequately prepared when we left. We had three Mars tents—”
Nick’s eyebrow raised. “Three tents? For five people?”
“I know, protocols call for two: a primary for all of us, and a backup. But again, I was overruled. We also had food, water, tanks of heliox, spare clothes, comm gear, spare clothes, the doctor’s med kit, a telescope, a microscope, shovels, sample bags, pitons, hammers, plenty of S3 cable, computers, a satellite locator, flare guns, an emergency beacon, a chemical mini lab, a mineralogical kit, videography gear, suit repair kits.
“Despite the frequent stops for photo ops, the hike to the mountain went quickly, and it was pretty uneventful. Even pulling the loaded sledges, it was light work in the Martian gravity. We walked all day and set up camp, two nights in a row as scheduled. Inevitably Dr. Ivanovitch broke out his vodka. I had long since given up fighting that, and he was too professional to drink to excess when he was the sole medic on that trip. But I had to nag him and Gale to see to equipment maintenance before they started drinking each night.”
“And did they?”
“See the reports, here. I didn’t have the opportunity to inspect the gear stored in the other two tents. I encouraged the others to do standard inspections. As you can see, the inspections were spotty; but in aggregate, most of the gear was covered. Except . . . ” She paused and pointed.
“Except the Professor’s climbing gear, including the S3 cables.”
“Mmmhmmm. It hadn’t been unpacked since we left Earth, so he saw no need to inspect that.
“And then we reached the mountain. Chronius Mons, the highest peak in that quadrant. We had done mountaineering training in Peru, all in full Mars suits. The mountain was tall, but it looked like only an average difficulty climb, and even less thanks to the gravity. And I’ll give the team credit: while they were lax on most mission protocols, they took the climb seriously. They tested every handhold, double checked every piton. And so . . . it came as a complete shock to me . . . when . . . ” Tracy stopped, her face anguished. Old instincts kicked in, and I wanted to comfort her; but before I had to decide whether to follow those instincts, she gathered her strength and continued. “Professor Azevedo’s cable snapped. Any one of us could’ve been on that cable at that time, but it happened to be him. He . . . fell. He fell so slowly in the Martian gravity. He had plenty of time to cry out for help. But even on Mars, three-hundred feet is . . . too far. His cries ended in a sickening crunch before his suit comm cut out.
“Margo wanted to rush down to him, and it was all we could do to restrain her so we didn’t end up with another casualty. Carefully we rappelled and climbed down to him, taking nearly five minutes. Thanks to his suit’s automatic seals and med systems, he was still alive; but the doctor shook his head. He said the Professor needed emergency surgery immediately.
“And that just wasn’t possible. We had to descend another hundred feet to a ledge large enough to set up a Mars tent. Despite our best efforts, the climb inflicted further injuries. Then we had to set up the tent, pressurize it, and get the Professor out of his suit. Dr. Ivanovitch set up for emergency surgery, and Gale and I assisted. The doctor gave his best effort, but it was far too late.” Tracy swallowed drily. “The Professor died twenty minutes after the start of surgery. He had never really stood a chance.”
I was . . . puzzled. Puzzled but impressed. The old Tracy would often be overwhelmed by her empathy. Sometimes I thought she used the camera to put up a layer between her and the suffering she observed. But now . . . Now she was distraught, but she reported the incident in full, maintaining her composure for the most part. She had grown stronger—but not, I hoped, less empathetic.
As I thought on this, Tracy continued. “With the Professor dead, Gale assumed command. Oh, Margo might have contested that if she had tried, but she was in no shape to make any decisions. We bundled the Professor back into his suit for transport, and Gale led us back down the slope. There we had to rest for another night. We were physically and emotionally spent. The next day we double-timed it back to the camp.
“The rest is in my reports over the remaining month and a half until your pickup. We did our best to continue exploration and sampling, trying to salvage what we could for our objectives. Margo slowly regained enough energy to argue about who was in charge of the expedition. Legally she had the stronger case, but Gale kept arguing that we needed a professional in charge.”
Nick nodded. “You did. Too bad all you had was Gale.”
Tracy almost smiled at that. “The camp was pretty small, so their arguments made the place very unpleasant, with different members of the expedition lining up with her or with him. Dr. Ivanovitch and I eventually managed to calm things down by appealing to Azevedo’s memory. His personality had united the expedition in the first place, and it was enough in the end to keep us alive until you arrived. The rest is in my reports.”
Tracy took one last drink of water and then set her glass down on Nick’s desk. “So that’s my summary. Is that what you need?”
“Yes, if you’ve told me the whole story, then we’re done here.
“I wouldn’t keep anything secret. That’s against mission protocols.”
“Ms. Wells, I have learned in my command career that people keep all sorts of things secret when they’re trying to protect their own careers and their own reputations. If they have a guilty conscience or they think perhaps they contributed to some mistake, they keep secrets, and they lie. I’ve learned to ferret out details that people would rather hide. I won’t be lied to on my ship.”
“You will find that my reports are complete in every detail, and as factual as I could make them. I did everything I could, but I lacked the authority to override Professor Azevedo’s decisions.”
Nick looked over his comp. “I wouldn’t have expected it, but it does seem that way. So considering everything, I have to say that perhaps your training wasn’t wasted. You mastered the protocols, which is more than I can say for your leadership.”
Tracy stared blankly at Nick. I did as well. He had just come very close to complimenting her, at least by Nick’s standards.
But she quickly recovered. “Then if you don’t mind, I still have videos to edit before we get to Earth.” Tracy stood to leave, but she stopped and turned at the door. “Goodbye, Anson.” And then she left.
After Tracy was gone, I turned on Nick. “You never once asked her about the cable and the nanos! The . . . the murder!”
“I didn’t need to.”
“What?”
“I heard what I needed to hear. Now I know the basic outline of the trip and Azevedo’s death: who was present, what their roles were, and so on. I’ll talk to her again later if I need more details.”
I knew better than to push Nick. He would keep his secrets until he saw a need to reveal them. Besides, I had something else on my mind. I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t stop myself from asking: “Did you have to be so hard on her?”
“Yes, Mr. Carver, I did. I have my reasons.”
“And you had to drag me into it? What was the point of that?”
“Carver, I am conducting a criminal investigation. Didn’t you ever read mysteries? Means, motive, opportunity: those are the classic requirements for solving a crime, and a key part of that is motives. I have to understand the people involved and what drives them. So I had to know where she stood in regards to you and in regards to that expedition. I had to know everything about her.”
I was in no mood to be mollified. “You just can’t resist picking at old wounds, can you?”
“Your wounds or hers? I’m not convinced she has any.”
“What did she do to deserve that?”
“What did she do? You ought to remember! Are you going to let her do this to you again?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You are! You’re going to let her just use you for whatever it is she’s up to: chew you up, spit you out, and leave you crying in your beer. Again!”
“It’s not like that!”
“It’s always like that!”
“Look, just because your wife and your kids aren’t talking to you any more doesn’t mean it’s like that for everyone!”
“It was last time!”
“It wasn’t like that last time, either. Relationships just sometimes . . . They just sometimes end!”
“Yep, it ended when she got what she wanted.”
“That’s not fair! She had the chance to go to Mars, and she took it! I did the same thing when I had the chance. I can’t blame her for that.”
“Uh-huh. You went with me. She went with Azevedo, and now he’s dead. That was mighty poor judgment on her part. She’s lucky she’s still alive.”
“That’s not fair! You heard her. She studied! She learned your mission protocols. She did everything possible to ensure the success of that expedition.”
“Hmmm . . . Yes, she did, didn’t she? I have to admit, that surprised me. A chemistry degree? Surprising, yes.”
Nick sat in silence, clasping his hands and staring at his fingers. I realized he had gotten to me again. He always probed for weakness, always had to know where someone might fail him. I stood, fuming but patient, determined not to give in to his testing.
At last Nick looked up. “All right, Ms. Wells has given her report, and that’s a start. But I need another perspective. Carver, express my condolences, but bring me Margo Azevedo.”
I found Mrs. Azevedo alone in her cabin. She had it to herself, a luxury we normally couldn’t spare even for important passengers such as her. But on this trip, I had triple-berthed some junior crew to open up a private cabin for her. I figured she deserved some solitude if she needed it. The ship might be too damned crowded for her otherwise.
When I signaled the door, it took Mrs. Azevedo almost a minute to open it. She was a tall, dark-toned woman with dark hair that showed some gray. In her pre-mission photos there had been no gray, but hair dye was just another luxury not to be found on Mars. Despite the gray, she still looked much like the fashion model she had been in her youth, back before she turned her earnings into shrewd business investments and a major fortune.
Her once elegant face was lined with grief. She wasn’t red-eyed from crying like she had been earlier in the voyage. Five months of travel from Mars had gotten her past the deepest grief. But she still looked very weary, and I felt guilty for having to disturb her. But guilty feeling or no, Nick had his reasons and I had my orders.
Mrs. Azevedo summoned the energy to speak. “Yes, Chief Carver, can I help you?”
“Begging your pardon, ma’am. I hate to disturb you, but I have orders from the Captain. He has sent me to request that you come to his office. He has some matters to discuss.”
“What . . . What’s it about?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m not at liberty to comment on the Captain’s business.” That was a lie, of course, but I didn’t want to explain to her that someone had killed her husband. And I didn’t want to even consider that she might be a suspect. But as we walked through the ship, I realized I had an obligation to prepare her for Nick’s investigation. “Ma’am, you know that Captain Aames can be a bit . . . brusque.”
“‘Brusque’ hardly goes far enough.”
“Ma’am, I don’t think you understand.”
“Please, Chief, don’t treat me like a china doll. This is a rough time for me, but believe me, I’ll get by. I’ve been making my fortune the hard way since before you were born: first on the fashion runways, and then on the spaceplane runways. And I saw plenty of ugly corporate battles in between, I survived all of them, and I triumphed. I’ve faced opponents far ruder than Captain Aames.”
Despite myself, I grinned. “There’s no one ruder than Captain Aames.”
She laughed; and for a moment I saw the charm she had used to win backing for this expedition. “Nick Aames can be a smug, self-righteous asshole, no doubt. I appreciate your concern. But don’t worry. I’ve handled Nick before, and I can handle him today.”
“Of course.” I knew the basics, so she didn’t have to explain; but she seemed to need to talk, like the silence was too much for her.
“Nick was . . . Paolo’s first choice for the Astronaut Corps Liaison for our expedition. I thought it was a done deal, but Nick and Paolo couldn’t agree on terms. Nick insisted on rewriting the entire mission plan to his exacting standards.”
I nodded. “The Captain would do that.”
“But his standards . . . were too exacting. Too much redundancy, too much expense. Paolo wanted a streamlined mission—still a safe mission!—so that we could keep to an affordable budget. He said a mission to Nick’s standards would never get launched; and Nick said that was fine with him, and he hoped Paolo’s mission would never launch, either. He said the Civilian Exploration Program couldn’t afford to have its first expedition go wrong, and that that would undermine support for the program. And now . . . I fear he’ll be proven correct.” Her face darkened, and I looked discreetly away. “Nick stormed out that day, and we had to hire Lieutenant Gale instead. Gale is a fine officer, and he gave us none of Nick’s troubles. But rest assured, I know Nick’s moods, and I’m ready for him.”
“I hope so, ma’am.”
We arrived at Nick’s outer office. We entered the command office in the middle of a samba tune. Nick stood to the side of the desk, absently bouncing to the beat. If we had been alone, I would’ve told him what a lousy dancer he is, even in one-quarter G. That’s a common jibe in our ongoing duels. But I would never disrespect an officer in his official capacity.
The song soon ended, and Nick sat down. I pulled out the visitor chair for Mrs. Azevedo.
Nick leaned on his desk. “Ah, Mrs. Azevedo. Much as I wish otherwise, I’m afraid I’ve opened an investigation into the tragic incident on your expedition. Some information has come to me about your equipment, and it’s very troubling.”
Mrs. Azevedo started to speak, looking agitated; then she paused and regained her control. “Captain Aames, are we going to discuss this again?”
“I have some concerns.”
“Yes, Nick, I’m well aware of your concerns from before.”
“And now you can see that I was right, and Paolo’s carelessness has gotten someone killed. At least it was him, not someone who trusted him.”
“Nick!” I couldn’t help myself. That was over the line, even for Nick.
But Mrs. Azevedo wasn’t disturbed. “No, Chief, he’s just trying to provoke me. I won’t let him do that. Yes, Captain, you predicted a disaster, and it happened. But none of your dire predictions came to pass. What happened was something you never foresaw, a freak cable accident and nothing more. I stand by my original decision that your fears were groundless, and you were afflicted with your usual excess of caution and your pathological need for control.”
“And I stand by my original decision. I wanted nothing to do with your poorly planned vanity expedition. Only a fool would take your offer, and I’m no fool. But you found your fool in Gale, didn’t you?”
“All right, Nick, if it makes you happy: I wish you had taken my offer. Maybe if you had been our Liaison . . . ” She trailed off, but we all knew what went unspoken: maybe Nick could’ve gotten Azevedo safely back to shelter in time to save his life. Or maybe Nick would’ve prevented the accident in the first place.
Nick’s face turned more serious. Perhaps his conscience was tweaking him just a bit. “I’m sorry, Margo, that would never happen. I can’t take a mission I don’t believe in.”
“And so you took this instead?” Mrs. Azevedo leaned forward. “I know there are some in the Corps and in Mission Control who will never forgive you for the second Bradbury incident, even though the review board ratified your every decision. There were many who told me I was a fool for wanting you for Liaison for this expedition. I wanted you anyway. Okay, you turned me down, you explained your reasons. But then, to take this job . . . Nick, you’re throwing away your talents here. You’re better than this! You’re more than . . . more than a glorified subway conductor! If you didn’t want to be on my mission, you would’ve been invaluable in program management.”
“And work with fools like Lee Klein? Not a chance.”
“Judgmental as always, aren’t you? Everyone in your eyes is a loser or a fool.”
“No, not everyone. There are fifteen billion people back there on those two worlds. They’re not all losers. Ninety percent of them are ordinary folks, minding their own business, going about their day, not causing me any trouble. And there’s maybe half a dozen people worth actually spending time with. But that leaves that 10 percent—one and a half billion—idiots, jerks, losers, and psychopaths.”
“And so you’ll lock yourself up here with only a couple of dozen.”
“Yep. A couple of dozen, and I’m smarter than all of ’em. And I’m in charge.”
“All right. You’re the Captain, you’re in charge here. Are you happy now?”
Nick paused. When he started again, his tone was lower and more reserved. Nick can be respectful when he chooses. “Margo, I know we clash. And I clashed with Paolo, too. It’s my nature, not anything to do with you. I call them like I see them, and sometimes I neglect how people might feel. So please accept my condolences. I didn’t agree with Paolo’s plans, but it wasn’t personal. He was a good man. I’m very sorry.”
Mrs. Azevedo stared down at the floor, but she nodded. “Thank you, Nick. That means . . . a lot. Chief Carver says you have questions for me?”
Nick hesitated again. “This will be . . . difficult, I’m afraid. But I need to hear about the trip to Chronius Mons.”
Mrs. Azevedo’s tone was flat. “It’s in our reports.”
“I know. It’s . . . important that I hear it in your own words.”
She nodded; and then she started slowly retelling the story. She echoed Tracy’s version, but without Tracy’s critical judgments about mission protocols. In fact she made every effort to portray her husband in a positive light. On the subject of Terra Cimmeria, she saw the site selection as a great success: “Oh, we didn’t find evidence to decide among the competing theories, but we have radically improved on the precision of the orbital data. Now we know exactly where we should plan new expeditions to definitively rewrite the geological history of Mars. Paolo already submitted a paper on that before . . . the accident.” She similarly saw the carbonate data as eliminating a lot of possibilities, pointing the way to new research.
And then she got to a crucial point: the reasons for the Chronius Mons trip. She saw it very differently than Tracy had. “That was in the back of Paolo’s mind all along. That was why he insisted on bringing Wells on the expedition in the first place: he wanted to show humanity the grandeur of Mars, the grand vistas and the sweep of the unknown. He wanted . . . He wanted to excite people, ignite their sense of adventure.”
“Yes,” Nick agreed, “he was a visionary. Or that’s how he saw himself, which is visionary enough. That was what worried me about him: that vision blinded him to flaws in his plans. He had this sense that ‘destiny’ would see him past any problems.” Mrs. Azevedo didn’t answer, but her face turned down. “And he would tackle any obstacle, follow any path for that destiny. How fortunate for him that he married into enough money to fund his visions.”
“Nick!” Again I was stunned that even Nick could be so callous; but before I could say more, Mrs. Azevedo held up a hand to stop me. She glared at Nick.
“So that comes up again.” Her tone was bitter. “You said as much during expedition planning. You think he married me for money?”
“Well, there are always many motivations that lead into a decision like that. You were young and attractive, and you bought into his vision. The money was just an added benefit; but as it happened, it was a crucial benefit in order for him to succeed.”
She paused; and when she answered, she spoke slowly, restraining her emotions. “I know you’re a cynic, Nick. I know you would never understand what Paolo and I had. But to question it . . . now . . . I didn’t think even you could be that cruel.”
Nick leaned back in his chair and shrugged. “You call it cruel, I call it diligent. I have to get some answers.”
“Fine, here are your answers. I love Paolo. He . . . loved me. We had problems, everyone does, but we shared so much more than just Mars plans.”
Nick looked down at his desk. “So noted. My apologies, but I have to be thorough. Please, continue.”
Mrs. Azevedo looked at Nick, considered, and then went on. Soon she got to the subject of supplying the expedition, and Nick again asked about the three tents. She seemed surprised by the question. “Why is that important?”
“I can’t tell what’s important,” Nick explained. “Details matter. That’s what I tried to tell your husband: details matter, and you can’t guess which ones. So why three tents?”
“Well, we had them to spare, so why not? Paolo and I had a tent for ourselves. The command tent, as it were. Besides, we were entitled to our privacy. Ivan and Gale shared another tent, and Wells slept in the third. We divided supplies among the three tents so that an accident with one wouldn’t affect other supplies. You should approve of precautions like that.”
“Hmmm. Yes, I approve of precautions; but protocol here is entirely different. For a mission that size, two tents would have been proper: one for all of you to share, and one as a backup for that. It might be less comfortable to squeeze five into a tent, but it would’ve given adequate safety margins and less mass to transport.”
“Yes, yes, I’ve read your recommendation. We decided we could handle the mass, and we wanted the comfort. And ultimately it had nothing to do with Paolo’s accident, so can we just drop it?”
Nick didn’t answer. He had made his point, so he let her continue. He also didn’t comment when Mrs. Azevedo discussed their stops for the night; but even I could see that Tracy had been correct: the team had performed only perfunctory equipment inspections. Their uneventful time on Mars to that point had made them sloppy—or sloppier, as Nick would say.
And there was something else: something about the expedition had distressed her, and she had difficulty discussing it. She drew out the discussion with a lot of trivialities, stopping and repeating points. It took her twice as long to describe the trip as it had Tracy, and yet she revealed less. Was she just postponing the discussion yet to come? Maybe; but I saw Nick eyeing her carefully as if he suspected something more.
And then finally she discussed the climb; and then the fall and the attempted rescue. She started to choke up when she got to the surgery, tears flowing; and Nick showed unexpected kindness by stopping her there. “That’s enough, Margo. I only need to know what led to the incident. I have a clear picture of what came after. Carver, give her your handkerchief.” I did, and she dabbed her eyes.
Nick was being uncharacteristically kind, but I knew it couldn’t last. Sooner or later, he would point out again how this was all Professor Azevedo’s fault. Before he could get the chance, I spoke up. “Captain, if we’re done, Mrs. Azevedo has had a long day. Can I escort her back to her cabin?”
Nick seemed a little distant. “What?” Then he recovered. “Oh, yes, we’re done here. But I’ve summoned Bosun Smith. She can see to Margo. I have more duties for you.”
Just then the office door opened, and Smith came in: a large, competent woman who I knew to also have a compassionate side when she needed it. Nick was right: Mrs. Azevedo might appreciate having a woman’s support after putting up with him. But he would never admit that was his motive.
Bosun Smith stood at attention. Nick looked at her, a questioning look on his face. “Well?”
Smith lifted her sleeve comp and pushed a file to Nick’s desk. “There’s my full report, Captain. A number of items are missing, as indicated, and the necessary maintenance reports haven’t been filed for much of the rest.”
Nick nodded at Smith, and then rose. “Margo, again, I’m sorry. If I could’ve prevented this pain for you, I would’ve. We’ll talk again. Ms. Smith, please see Mrs. Azevedo to her cabin.” Smith saluted and then offered an arm. Mrs. Azevedo took it and leaned on Smith’s shoulder as they left the office.
When the door closed, I turned back to Nick. My questions were the same as before. “I hate to repeat myself—”
“Then don’t,” Nick interrupted. “Everything is going as I planned.”
“This is a plan?” I couldn’t see how Nick could learn anything about the murder this way.
“Yes. I’m learning what I need to know. Besides, didn’t you hear that undertone? There’s something she’s not saying, something she feels guilty about.”
I hadn’t heard it. I mean, I’d heard something wrong, and noted it; but I hadn’t picked up on guilt. She was a grieving widow! I expected some distress. But Nick had always been better at reading people than I was. He himself might come across as a one-note scold and a control junkie, but he was excellent at ferreting out hidden motivations and secrets.
“What would she have to feel guilty about?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve no idea. For that I need the help of an incurable gossip. And so I guess it’s time to speak with Horace Gale.”
I tracked down Lieutenant Gale in the Rec Lounge. As had been the norm on this trip, knots of expedition crew occupied the tables, and our off-duty crew hung near, each imagining what it must have been like to be down on Mars. But strangely, when I found Gale in the corner with Riggs they were discussing football, not Mars.
“Yes sir, Lieutenant.” Riggs’s enthusiasm was all over his face. He was eager to talk about football leagues with a fellow Brit. “Absolutely it’s Manchester’s year. They’ve been rebuilding for five now. It’s their time!”
“Well, Karl, I’m not so sure. Liverpool is looking pretty strong.”
“Liverpool?” Riggs nearly exploded with laughter. “They’ll barely finish the season. They’re old and tired.”
“You’re right, you’re right. Still, they have experience.”
Riggs raised an eyebrow. “In football, sir, isn’t that just another word for ‘old’?”
“All right, they’re old, I’ll admit it.” Gale laughed. “But just remember: in the Astronaut Corps, it’s not age, it’s seniority.” Riggs joined the laughter on that line, though I thought his sounded a bit forced.
I cleared my throat, and Gale looked up. “Yes, Chief Carver?”
“Lieutenant Gale, the Captain would like to see you, sir.”
“Oh, Nick causing trouble again, eh?”
“It’s not my place to comment on what trouble the Captain might cause, sir. If you’ll come with me, please.”
“I suppose. I knew this was coming eventually. Well, Mr. Riggs, it has been a pleasure. See you at SP?”
Riggs raised a glass to Gale. “Indeed, sir. Thank you!”
We set off to the Captain’s cabin. As soon as we were alone, Gale turned to the subject I knew was coming. “So, Carver, have you had enough of Aames and this tin can yet?”
I deflected. “The Aldrin is no ‘tin can’, sir. It’s a masterwork of engineering, and it gets better every cycle as we add rings and capacity.”
But Gale wasn’t about to let up so easily. “Yes, yes, but it’s still a glorified transport ship. You’re a fine officer, Carver, you deserve better. If you had the Space Professionals behind you, you might get a better posting.”
The SPs were something of an “astronauts’ guild”, though they never used that term. They advocated for more influence over mission planning. Ideally that would be something Nick would support. His feuds with Mission Control were legendary in the Corps. But Nick had laughingly rebuffed their efforts to recruit him, saying that they were more Politicals than Professionals. And that included Gale, who had a lot of influence in the movement. As Nick explained it to me: “It’s the only way a bumbler like Gale can hope to get work. Before long they’ll have work rules that say I can’t dismiss any crew member any damned time I please; and next thing you know someone’ll get killed because of those rules. Why would I be part of that?”
Since they had failed to recruit Nick, the SPs had worked on me, hoping I might influence him; but I found Nick’s arguments to be irrefutable as usual. There were some good people in the SPs, but a lot of them were just looking for more money for less work. I was tempted to answer as bluntly as Nick would; but instead I simply said, “I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but I can’t imagine a better posting than this, or a better commander than Captain Aames.”
And with that, I opened the door to Nick’s office. We entered to the sounds of bossa nova, but this time Nick didn’t make us wait, turning off the music immediately. “Ah, Horace . . . ” Nick exaggerated the name: “Horace.”
“Hello, Nick. So this is where you say ‘I told you so’?”
Nick waved his hand dismissively. “Waste of my time. We both know it.”
“Yes, but I’m sure you’ve just been waiting for the chance.”
“No, I’ve been avoiding the lot of you as best I can. I may have to transport you, but that doesn’t mean I have to sit here and listen to the mistakes I knew would happen.”
Gale sat in the visitor chair while I remained standing. “So, Nick, what’s this about?”
“Well, Horace, we do need some discussion regarding the fate of your ill-planned mission.”
“Yes.” Gale sighed. “Get on with it.”
“That final trip across the desert . . . It was just the five of you?”
“Yes: me, Paolo, Margo, Ivan, and Tracy.”
“So you had five people, and yet you had three Mars tents. Wasn’t that a little bit of excess weight to carry? You could’ve carried more consumables?”
I was confused. Again with the tents? What did that have to do with the sabotage of Azevedo’s cable? But Gale didn’t seem to find the question unusual. “The Mars protocols—which you wrote—say we should have a backup for every piece of essential equipment. Mars isn’t Earth, where we might survive without a tent.”
“Yes, so two tents would give you a backup. But three? Those tents will hold six.”
“Yes . . . ”
“So why did you have three? You didn’t need them for storage.”
“Well, we did store supplies separately in each tent. ‘No single point of failure,’ that’s in the protocols, too. If something happened to one supply cache, we would still have the others.”
“Oh, so you didn’t even reserve them as backups? You deployed all three tents?” Nick already knew that from Tracy and Mrs. Azevedo. I could only assume he was feigning ignorance to keep Gale talking.
“Yes. Paolo and Margo wanted their privacy, you know.” Nick looked up, but Gale shook his head. “No, not for sex, for fighting. They did an awful lot of arguing on the expedition . . . I’m sure Margo regrets it now.”
I nodded. That might explain the guilt that Nick had detected. But Nick showed no reaction and continued his questioning. “So the lovebirds insisted on their own tent. And the three of you remaining needed two tents because . . . ?”
“Well, Tracy insisted we should share a tent. ‘That’s the protocol,’ she said, ‘and I don’t want to write up another variance.’ The girl is almost as mad as you, Nick, always writing up variances and insisting on following protocols to the letter. She acted like she was in charge, not just a videographer. But Ivan said he wanted more space.”
“I see. And you bunked with Ivan because . . . ”
“Well, because Tracy was making such a row about protocols, I finally got fed up with her.”
“But why, Horace? You knew she was right.”
“Of course she was ‘right’.”
“Then why—”
“Because I didn’t want to keep fighting about it!” Gale was red-faced. I could tell that Nick knew his buttons; and Nick can never resist pushing buttons, testing to see where your breaking point is. It looked like he had found Gale’s. “Why make such a big deal about it?”
Nick steepled his fingers and looked up at the ceiling. “I’m finding I have a new respect for Ms. Wells. If she annoyed you this much, she must’ve been doing something right.” Gale scowled, and Nick smiled. “Same old Horace . . . You’re smart enough to know what the right thing is, but you’re too weak to fight for it.”
“I heard enough of this from you before the expedition, and I am tired of it now!”
“Good! If I provoke you enough, you can show a little backbone. But you never seem to when it matters. That’s why Paolo chose you as Corps Liaison, you know.”
“What?”
“You won’t argue with the wrong decision, even if you know it might get somebody killed. You’re too eager to get along. You’re too nice. Space doesn’t give a damn about nice.”
“If you’re going to bring that up again, then I think this conversation is over.”
“No. I’m still Captain on this ship, and we’re still outside the gravipause. This conversation is over when I say it’s over. Chief Carver?”
I straightened. “Yes, Captain.”
“If he tries to leave, sit on him.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Horace, you are a weak man. I wouldn’t send my worst enemy on an expedition where you made the decisions. You won’t stand up for what’s right, and that may have gotten Paolo killed.” Gale’s face showed dismay, but not shock. Suddenly I was sure he had already reached the same conclusion, and guilt was tearing at him. And then I was also sure: if he felt his mistakes might be responsible for Paolo’s death, and he felt remorse at the possibility, then he couldn’t be the murderer.
Gale seemed to rally, mounting a weak counter offense. “I needn’t worry about sending men on an expedition with you, since no one in the Corps will have you.”
“Nope, they won’t. Klein and the rest of Mission Control want a bunch of yes men and toadies.”
Gale sat in silence, looking at the floor in sullen silence. Nick let the silence hang for several seconds before continuing. “One more thing . . . What did Paolo and Margo argue about?”
It took Gale a few moments to answer. Finally he looked up at Nick. “I shouldn’t . . . shouldn’t say. It’s a personal matter, and it’s in bad form to mention it now. But I know you, Nick. You’re going to gnaw on this until you get an answer, aren’t you?” Nick just stared at Gale. Gale looked away. “All right . . . Margo was jealous of Tracy. She said several times that she was sure Paolo and Tracy were sleeping together.” I winced, but I managed to control my reaction beyond that. “I’m not sure when they would’ve had the opportunity. It’s very close quarters on Mars, and very tight schedules, as you know. But she was sure they were grabbing spare moments here and there. Certainly Paolo showed an excessive interest in Tracy.”
“Ah, there we go! A classic motivation for mischief, eh?”
“Mischief? Who said anything about mischief?”
“Oh, I’m looking for motivations. That was one of Azevedo’s biggest mistakes, you know, he didn’t consider the range of interpersonal problems that might arise. And you didn’t help him any.” Gale glared again, and Nick returned to his previous tack. “So you have no reason to suspect foul play?”
“Oh, no! And especially not Margo! She couldn’t have. Oh, they fought, but . . . ”
“So she couldn’t have. And you, no doubt, will proclaim your innocence. You’re narrowing down the list of suspects.”
“What’s all this about suspects, Nick? What, you think some sort of crime was committed?”
“Oh, I am certain that a crime has been committed. Now I’m just trying to determine by whom. All right, Mr. Carver, I’m through with him. You can let him leave.”
Gale stood stiffly and headed for the door. He glanced at me, but he turned away at my impassive response; and then he left.
I looked at Nick. “So I suppose you want me to summon Dr. Ivanovitch next?”
“Oh? No, I have no need to talk with the good doctor.”
“You don’t think he could’ve killed Azevedo? Maybe he sabotaged the cable; and then after Azevedo survived, he did a poor job of treating him?”
“No, I am quite certain that Dr. Ivanovitch is much too smart for this crime.”
I didn’t understand what intelligence had to do with it; but I knew Nick would explain when he was ready, and not until. So I tried another line of questioning. “At last you’ve gotten around to the subject of the crime; but why didn’t you ask Gale about the cable?”
“Oh, trust me, I’m very curious about the cable. But I was waiting to see if he would bring it up.”
“What? Why would he do that?”
“Why, indeed? That’s what I’ve been waiting for: one of them to bring up the cable.”
“Nick, that makes no sense. The last thing the murderer would want to do is draw attention to the cable. That’s evidence!”
“Ummhmmm.” But Nick said no more. He just stared at me as if waiting for me to reach some obvious conclusion. But whatever that conclusion was, it eluded me.
Besides, I had another concern tugging at my mind. “What’s with your obsession with their sleeping arrangements? You don’t seriously believe that . . . that Tracy was . . . ”
“Whether I believe it or not is inconsequential. And I’m not sure why it matters to you, either, if you’re over her like you say you are. But if it soothes your worries any: no, I don’t believe it. Unless she’s fooling me—and she’s not—she has changed. She’s too professional to risk the expedition over an affair.
“But what matters is: does Margo believe it? If so, that might have motivated her anger during the expedition, as Gale said; and perhaps it motivates her guilt now. This is a complex case, and it’s all about motivations at this point. I understand the crime, so now I just need to understand who had a motive.”
“So what now? More interviews? Whom do I fetch next?”
Nick shook his head. “No more interviews quite yet. I need to think. Tell Bosun Smith I have some errands for her, and then you can go about your duties.”
Nick didn’t bother dismissing me. I knew him well enough to know I was dismissed when he turned on the music. It was another classic, “Parece Mentira,” from an old Brazilian saying: “It seems like a lie.”
But instead of going about my duties, my watch was over. Not that that really mattered: on Nick’s ship, you were off duty when Nick said you were off duty, and not until. And that was doubly true for me as his second in command. Still, I had nothing on my schedule; and I had had a long, emotionally draining day already. I needed to unwind like I hadn’t needed in nearly . . . four years. So I headed back to the Rec Lounge.
But when I got there, I knew I wouldn’t be able to escape my troubles after all. Tracy was there, and she had a large audience gathered for a preview of the final cut of her big documentary. There was a large mix of expedition members and Aldrin crew. Tracy opened with some production notes and then started the show; but she stopped occasionally for more notes or to invite comments from expedition members. Riggs sat in the front, right next to Gale, and he asked lots of questions and took notes on Gale’s answers.
But my attention was reserved for Tracy. She had cleaned up for this presentation, switching to a freshly pressed jumpsuit. She had let her hair down so it hung around her shoulders the way I always liked it. Again I smelled lilac water, and I tried to shake it out of my memory; but it wouldn’t go away. Her eyes lit up as she explained details of the expedition and her filming; and she was an engaging speaker, as always. I knew that wasn’t just my heart speaking, as the crowd hung on her every word. But the documentary stood on its own just fine even without her production notes and her enthusiasm.
It was really good. She covered the highlights of planning and training. She showed just enough of the flight out on the Collins to give the flavor without losing the viewer in the tedium of five months in orbit. She vividly captured the blend of exhilaration and terror of landing in the Ishiro-class shuttles. She showed the camp setup and the scientific experiments, including both the disappointments and the tantalizing hints for the future.
And she covered Professor Azevedo’s death. Oh, she had no film of the incident itself. The rescue had taken all their efforts, so there was no film. But she had a computer animation of the scene, with stick figures tastefully substituted for the real participants. She showed exactly what went wrong—except, of course, that she didn’t mention the salt contamination. Nick hadn’t revealed that yet; and if Tracy knew . . . No, I didn’t want to contemplate how she might know.
I was still wrapped up in these thoughts, not even noticing that the film had ended, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Before I turned, the scent of lilacs swept over me. It was Tracy. Old habits took over before I could even think, and I smiled at her. When she smiled back at me, I almost reached out for her; but at least I held that reaction in check.
“So what did you think?” she asked as she sat across from me.
“I . . . ” I searched for the words. Then I decided to just be upfront. “It’s brilliant. Your best work ever.”
“Thank you, Anson. That means a lot.”
“Except . . . In your report to Nick, you were so harsh on Azevedo and his team for their poor planning. You didn’t miss a note, and you didn’t pull a punch. And yet none of that came through here.”
Tracy hesitated. I could see that I had caught her in a conflict. “Anson, there are two stories of the expedition: the story of what went wrong, and the story of what went right. A lot went wrong, and that’s all in my reports; but even with all the inconclusive experiments, even with the Professor’s death, he accomplished his primary goals. He showed that Mars is a place where people will go, not just an elite group of professional astronauts. And where people go, people will die. People make mistakes. We’re not all perfect robots. We’re . . . We’re not all Nick Aames. If we let imperfection stop us, we’ll never go anywhere.”
“Imperfection gets people killed.”
“Yes, and perfection can’t always save them, either. Have you forgotten the Bradbury?”
I would never forget the Bradbury, and she knew that. We had lost a lot of good crew in that incident. “But don’t you feel like this is a lie?”
“No, it’s the other side of the story. When we get to Earth, I know the media will be full of reports of the accident again—my own reports. They’re going to give Gale and that bunch another weapon to use in their argument: ‘Space isn’t safe for ordinary people. Leave it to us professionals.’ They will find reasons to be safe, to avoid risks. We can’t afford that. We need people to take chances. That was the Professor’s goal and Margo’s goal, and it’s still my goal. I thought . . . it was a goal you understood.”
I understood; but I understood Nick’s point of view as well. I felt like they were doing it to me again, forcing me to choose all over again between his caution and her dreams.
I couldn’t choose, so I said nothing; and I saw disappointment in her face. Once more, I hadn’t chosen her. I hadn’t chosen Nick, either, but I hadn’t chosen her.
But it seemed she wasn’t ready to give up, not again. She pulled her chair around beside mine, uncomfortably close. The lilac water couldn’t be imaginary, as clear as the scent was. She must’ve preserved a vial. I remembered other nights when I smelled it so close, and I squirmed; but Tracy didn’t seem to notice. “We were there for seven months. I’ve got months of footage to work with. This won’t be my only documentary coming out of the expedition. There will be one that tells the mistakes quite thoroughly. But this is the one that I need to tell now. The one that shows: We can do this!” She opened her comp so I could see it. “Here. This is my real last scene. I haven’t included it yet because I want to get Margo’s approval first. But it’s important that you see this, that you understand.”
She tapped her comp, and a new scene appeared. It was Mrs. Azevedo in a shelter in the camp. Her eyes were red from recent tears, but she had a defiant look on her face. The shelter was darkened with a hint of red, probably from natural Martian daylight outside; but a mild light shone down on her from above, accentuating the shadows in her face. She leaned forward, directly into the camera. “Am I going to give up? No. Never! If I give up, then Paolo is dead. When his dream dies, then I bury him in my heart. Until then . . . No, there is no then. I won’t give up, not ever. But maybe others will. Maybe I’ll have no choice. But my words, my money, my time, my power . . . I’ll use them all for Paolo’s dream. People will come here, they’ll keep coming here. And they’ll remember . . . They’ll remember Paolo, and how his spirit calls them to come here and live here and work here. And some of them . . . Well, they’ll be brave like Paolo. They’ll know the risks.”
And then the scene rolled back in time and space, all the way back to Earth, back to the earliest days of training. Professor Azevedo sat in a tent that bore a superficial resemblance to the Mars shelter; but the light was bright and blue-white, and Azevedo sat back in his chair. He wore a stubbly beard of gray with flecks of white, much like the hair that stuck out from his knit cap. I suspected they were on a mountain trip. He looked into the camera, and he smiled that smile that had won over so many skeptics. “Will people die in this program? Of course they’ll die, what kind of question is that? It’s the old Pioneers’ Creed: ‘The cowards never started, and the weak died along the way.’ People die on the frontier, and that’s no reason not to go. The ones who survive will be the strong and the smart and the lucky and the just-too-tough-to-kill.”
From off screen, Tracy asked, “And which are you?”
His grin broadened. “There’s only one way to find out. And no matter what, I will find out. Gladly. How about you?” And he laughed. And the screen faded to black, and white letters appeared: Paolo Azevedo, Ph.D., Founder of the Civilian Expedition Program. 1994–2037.
I stared at the simple words, dumbstruck. Tracy’s video made her argument far more eloquently than her words had. In that moment, I wanted to take her in my arms and tell her I was wrong. I wanted to take her to Mars.
And so, with his usual uncanny timing, that was the moment Nick’s voice came from my comm. “Chief Carver, we’re almost to the gravipause, and I’m ready to conclude our business. Please bring Mrs. Azevedo, Lieutenant Gale, and Ms. Wells to my office immediately.”
I ushered the expedition members into Nick’s office. By unspoken understanding, the others left the sole guest chair to Mrs. Azevedo. She sat and looked at Nick.
Nick stood behind his desk. In his hand he held a coil of S3 cable. He looked across the faces and then began to speak. “Well, here we are. One last time together. We’re entering Earth’s orbit, we’ve passed the gravipause, so this ship is now back under the authority of Mission Control. So I guess that wraps up my investigation.”
“Investigation?” They were all thinking it, but Mrs. Azevedo was the one who asked. “What investigation?”
“Oh, the investigation into this S3 cable. It has been an internal matter to this point, but now it’s time to present my findings to you all before I report to Mission Control. Midshipman Riggs has found conclusive evidence that this cable has been contaminated with salt ions, destroying its integrity; and then it stretched until it broke.” Mrs. Azevedo turned pale, but Nick gave her no time to interrupt. “Furthermore, there’s no doubt that this contamination was deliberate.”
This time Mrs. Azevedo did break in. “Deliberate? Paolo . . . ?”
But she got no further, and Nick continued. “Someone wanted it to break. It’s also clear that the cable is from your trip to Chronius Mons. Ms. Wells’s inventory reports are quite thorough, and they document precisely which gear you took with you.”
Tracy said, “But Mrs. Azevedo couldn’t—”
Nick interrupted her, nodding. “You’re right, she couldn’t. Oh, people do surprising things, angry spouses especially. Gale told me how Margo was jealous of you, Tracy, jealous that Paolo had his eye on you.”
Mrs. Azevedo stood, too fast for the low gravity. “That’s a lie!” In her anger, she ignored her unexpected bounce, but Nick seemed amused. “We were past all of that months ago! Paolo convinced me he had no interest in this . . . this little girl. We made up, and we were . . . We were closer than . . . ” She glared at Nick. “But how could I convince a cynic like you? You always believe the worst of people. What would you know about two people in love?”
That stopped Nick cold; and his face showed something close to sympathy. Then he shook his head. “No, I believe you. A gossip like Horace always exaggerates what he knows. But just because Paolo had no interest doesn’t mean Tracy had no interest.”
This time it was Tracy who was angry. “That’s ridiculous! I . . . I would never let personal feelings endanger the team. I admired the Professor, and I was grateful to be on this expedition; but that’s all there was between us!”
“Is it? Did you know, Ms. Wells, that when you broke up with Carver he wondered if perhaps you had your sights set on Professor Azevedo?”
“What?” Tracy practically shouted; and at the same time I said, “Nick, that’s out of line!”
“Oh, he was quite sure of that for a while. He said a lot of bitter things when he was drunk.”
“Anson! You didn’t believe that?”
“Tracy, I was hurt. I . . . No, I didn’t believe it, I just didn’t know what to believe. I wanted some explanation.”
“And maybe . . . ” Nick broke back in. “Maybe he was correct. Motivations, that’s what we’re after here. Was it perhaps the woman scorned? And that brings us back to this cable.” Nick held up the cable for us all to see. “I had Bosun Smith bring me this cable from the lab because there was one piece of information missing from our earlier report: the RFID tag woven into the cable end. And guess what? It’s not one that Professor Azevedo packed in his gear.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ms. Wells, the RFID tag is clear, and your meticulous inventory is equally clear: this cable came from your personal supplies. You had it stowed in your tent each night before the climb. Oh, and Bosun Smith also searched the rest of the expedition’s supplies very carefully; and the Professor’s cable is nowhere to be found. She checked the tag on every cable. Someone swapped this sabotaged cable for his.”
Someone swapped . . . And Tracy had packed this cable . . . And . . .
No. I couldn’t believe that. Tracy had surprised me before. She had disappointed me. She had broken my heart. But this? No. I knew that was impossible. I loved her, it couldn’t be possible.
But Nick was drawing the conclusions I refused to draw. “So the cable Paolo packed, the cable that would’ve been in his tent every night where Margo had access to it: that cable’s missing. And the cable you packed, Ms. Wells: that cable’s sabotaged.”
Tracy grew livid. “What are you implying?”
“I’m presenting facts, not implications. Now that we’re in Earth orbit, it’s up to Mission Control to make decisions from these facts. My duty is to report what I know, not to speculate.”
“So what will you report?”
“The facts exactly as I know them. I will report that this cable is not Professor Azevedo’s, it is yours. I will report that it was under your control the entire time it was on Mars. Professor Azevedo’s cable is missing, and no one in the expedition crew admits to knowing where it’s at. I will report that this cable has been contaminated with salt-affixing nanomachines. And I’ll report all the rest of our findings, and they can draw whatever conclusions they may.”
“And I will get a good lawyer to ensure that your accusations never make it into my record.”
“I’m not making accusations. The conclusions should be obvious to anyone with half a brain, so I expect the review board to miss them entirely.”
“And what are you going to do, Captain?” Tracy asked.
“Nothing, and you know it. Now that we’ve passed the gravipause, my powers are strictly curtailed. I can’t hold you. I have no authority here over anyone but my crew.”
“Well, that’s good news, because I’m innocent. As soon as the funeral’s done, I’ll clear my name.”
I knew that determined look on Tracy’s face. Every bit of self-control was at work, holding back her anger, and maybe her tears. I wanted to comfort her, but I had to stand my post. She looked at me, and I almost broke; but then she left for the docking bay.
No one else spoke. Mrs. Azevedo stood. She stared at Nick, her expression unreadable. Then Gale offered her an arm, and they left.
I stood where I was. I hadn’t been dismissed, and I had no orders, so I had nothing to do but stand there and stew over all that I had just heard. Stand and stew and stare at Nick.
Nick ignored me for almost a minute and a half; but finally he spoke. “Don’t stand there glowering at me. Can’t you make yourself useful?”
“‘Glowering’? Really?”
“It’s the perfect word to describe your expression, and I get to use it so seldom. But get over it already. Ms. Wells will be fine. In fact, I’ve entered a commendation into her record.” I must have looked puzzled, so Nick explained. “The silly little girl who broke your heart is gone. That woman who just left here is the only one on that whole team who understands how to properly plan a mission. I can’t guess what changed her, but I can’t deny the change. Azevedo was an ass. He chose his expedition members for their willingness to fawn over him and for how popular they would be in the press. Plus a bunch of other entirely personal reasons: camaraderie, influence, favors . . . You name it, anything but competence. But with her, despite himself he got lucky. The only one whom he chose who was worth a damn was Ms. Wells, and even I wouldn’t’ve guessed that. She surprised me.”
“What?”
“Look at her reports, Carver. Look at what she’s done. Look at everything. Despite my doubts, that woman has shown that the discipline that we need in space can be found far outside the Corps. The people who want to go to space, the ones who really should be there, are going to do it right. I couldn’t have predicted it four years ago; but if I had to staff a mission and my choices were ‘professionals’ like Gale or an amateur like Ms. Wells, I would choose her without hesitation.”
“But I thought—I thought you blamed Tracy! You practically accused her of murder!”
Nick sighed, his “you are beyond an idiot” sigh. “There was no murder here, Carver.”
“No murder?”
Nick tapped his desk and the comm chime sounded. “Mr. Riggs, you can come in now.” The door to the outer office opened, and Riggs entered, looking nervous as usual when crewmen are summoned before Nick. I ushered him in, and he stood at attention before Nick’s desk.
Nick wasted no time on pleasantries. He sat and looked up at Riggs, who stood neatly at attention. “Midshipman Karl Riggs . . . What do you know about salts in chemistry?”
“Not much, Captain, I’ll admit. I know I like salt on my chips!” It was a weak joke, and weaker in Riggs’s delivery. Nick had the man nervous, which wasn’t unusual.
“Ah, that’s right, you said you’re weak in chemistry. Unlike Ms. Wells, say. Quite a surprise, that chemistry degree of hers, it gave me a whole new perspective on that discovery of yours.
“Mr. Riggs, a salt is a compound wherein a positive and a negative ion exactly counter each other, yielding a neutral end product. They can be quite useful both biologically and in other reactions, and it’s very hard for us to get by without them. That’s why we’ve manufactured nano lines that can scavenge or even assemble the necessary ions from available stock.”
“I . . . see, sir.”
“But nano machines don’t have brains, Riggs. They only have simple chemical sensors, valence detectors particularly. They look for the proper valences, grab the ions, and affix them to other ions or to a substrate. They’re really just glorified enzymes in a sense. If they can’t find the precise valence signature and yet they’re still active, some of them will grab the nearest equivalent they can find: something close enough to the right ionic properties.
“Ah, but something close electrically can still be chemically a very different salt. For instance . . . ” Nick pulled up Riggs’s report on his desk comp. “These nanos in these micrographs you took, they were designed to scavenge carbonate items out of Mars’s atmosphere, with its high concentration of carbon dioxide. It’s almost 95% CO2, did you know that?”
“Well, I . . . I knew something like that, sir.”
“Yes. And in fact, Azevedo chose his site because of the high presence of carbonates, perfect for these nanos. But if they can’t find the carbon ions they’re designed for, many of them will find the next closest valence. For example, a nitrite ion would be electrically identical to a carbonate ion, and a nitrate might be close enough for a nano’s detectors.
“Now there’s something interesting about these micrographs you took. If you look at the chemical analysis attached—as I did when you brought them to me—you will find that the S3 cables have been contaminated with nitrite salts, and also a smaller proportion of nitrate salts, not carbonate salts. That means that when those nanos were active, they found predominantly nitrogen stock, not carbon dioxide. Nitrogen, you know, the stuff that makes up 79% of standard air mix.”
Riggs was silent. His normally fair complexion had turned even more pale.
“In fact, since they get much of their stock from the surrounding air, that implies that this contamination happened in a nitrogen atmosphere. Now you won’t find that on Mars, as I said. It’s nearly all CO2. And you wouldn’t even find it in the expedition’s shelters. They used heliox as their breathing gas to lower their payload mass. That, by the way, is why I was so insistent on confirming the details of which Mars tents were used and where and how the gear was stowed. I needed to be certain that I knew where these cables had been and what they might’ve been exposed to; and all three expedition members confirmed for me that the gear was safely stored in the Mars tents every night, in the heliox conditions. There would be trace amounts of nitrogen, surely, but it should be completely dominated by carbon dioxide. There was no chance for contamination there, so there’s only one place this contamination could have happened.”
I couldn’t keep quiet. “On the ship!”
“Yes, on the ship, Chief Carver. And since these cables were very thoroughly inspected and recorded by Ms. Wells—I’m quite astonished at her meticulous records, Carver, you could learn something from her—we can be certain that the cables were not contaminated when they left the Collins. And so the contamination could only have happened aboard the Aldrin—after Professor Azevedo’s all-too-avoidable death.”
Riggs found his voice. “I . . . see, sir.”
“Oh, I’m quite sure you do. And Mr. Carver is starting to see as well, though I think you had a head start on him. I knew right away: I wasn’t investigating a murder, I was investigating a frame-up. Someone is trying to frame someone for Azevedo’s death, and I needed to know who the someones were.
“So I had to ask myself the traditional questions: who had means, who had motive, and who had opportunity? At first I thought Ms. Wells had opportunity. She could’ve gotten to the cable at any time; and once we learned it was her cable, the opportunities expanded. But no, even before that, I learned of her chemistry degree. No chemist would make that mistake with the atmospheric ions. They would know it was a waste of time.
“As for Margo . . . What would she gain by making Azevedo’s death look like murder? Not much. For one thing, the spouse is always the first, most likely suspect in a homicide, especially given their well-known fights. Oh, in theory she might have tried to frame Ms. Wells by swapping the cables; but Margo had too much to lose either way. Her whole media campaign is about Azevedo’s great judgment, his people instincts that helped him to select an elite team of scientist explorers, the best of the best. If people think he let a murderer onto his crew, his entire myth falls apart. Not that I put any stock in that myth, mind you, but her investors do. She wouldn’t do anything to endanger that myth. It would ruin her.
“And Horace?” Nick chuckled. “What would he gain out of it? Cast suspicion on Margo, maybe? Hardly. He needs her. He’s a joke in the Corps. Yes, I know he’s a bigwig to you SPs, but no one in Mission Control trusts his decisions. He needs this Civilian Exploration Program to succeed if he wants to stay employed. Oh, I considered briefly that Horace might have a motive: if Azevedo’s death was murder, then it couldn’t be blamed on Horace’s poor planning. He could’ve been trying to duck responsibility. But Horace just isn’t that clever. Besides, he may be a damned fool, but he’s well versed in the atmospheric chemistry of Mars. He couldn’t make that mistake any more than Ms. Wells could.”
I broke in. “And that’s why you didn’t question Dr. Ivanovitch, either. You knew his chemistry knowledge ruled him out as a suspect.”
“Yes.”
“Then why’d you interview Gale at all?”
Nick grinned. “Because it amuses me to rub his nose in his mistakes. And I wanted his perspective on the personalities of the expedition. Horace Gale may be a pompous ass, but he’s also a political climber. He always knows the gossip.
“But that was before I realized I was looking in entirely the wrong direction, because I was only looking at the expedition personnel. If the sabotage happened here, that added dozens of potential suspects from our own crew. Mr. Riggs?”
Riggs was slow to respond. “Captain?”
“Reports are that you seem to be very friendly with Gale.”
“Yes, sir. We . . . worked together in the past. I trained under him on my first post. And besides, he’s the only other Brit on board. It’s nice to talk football with someone.”
“Indeed. My reports are that you’ve spent pretty much all of your free time with him.”
“Can you blame me, sir? It’s a chance to talk to a real explorer. Someone different on this ship, you know.”
“Um-hmmm. Perhaps you forget: both I and Chief Carver have already been to Mars on the second Bradbury expedition. I do hope we’re ‘real’ enough for you.” Riggs took the rebuke without blinking, and Nick continued. “And you—and you’re not alone in this, so don’t take offense—you’ve voiced concern in the past that the CEP is a mistake, and missions like this should be Corps missions. ‘Leave space to the professionals,’ I believe that’s what the SP activists say.”
“I’m entitled to my opinion, Captain. As you say, I’m not alone. We Space Professionals have a lot of influence in the Corps command.”
“Yes, yes, just what we need: more politics in the space program. Be that as it may . . . It looks like, despite poor planning and one unfortunate death, this expedition met most of their mission objectives. I would hazard a guess that Ms. Azevedo’s investors will be pleased over all, and will invest in further CEP expeditions. Once she buries her husband, Margo still has the clout and the drive and the financing to mount another expedition, and another.”
“I wouldn’t know, sir.”
“Oh, trust me, she does. These decisions are being made politically these days, not sensibly. And I’m sure you believe it as well.”
“Y-yes, sir.”
“But now if Margo were to be implicated in a murder—or for that matter, if any of the senior staff were, it hardly matters who—it would throw everything into disarray. Suddenly there would be investigations, there would be questions, there would be doubts . . . Investors would get nervous and pull financing. The Corps would feel pressure from the Space Professional contingent, and would likely push to cancel the CEP. The next mission would likely be under Corps command, probably under Horace Gale himself; and he would pick his loyal crew.”
Nick still held the coil of S3 cable in his hand, looking down at it, not at Riggs. “I have a report from your supervisor that you may be leaving us.”
“Sir?”
“He says you’ve applied for a transfer.”
“Well . . . Yes, sir, just . . . considering it.”
“Yes, and a chance to ingratiate yourself with them as well, especially with Horace Gale. Looking at the letters of recommendation you’ve requested—”
“Sir!”
“Pshht. You think any communication goes out from this ship without me knowing about it? Please. What kind of a Captain would I be if I didn’t keep up with details on my vessel? So it looks like in fact you’re hoping for reassignment to the Mars expedition on their next trip.”
“Well . . . ”
“And lo and behold, with the news from this expedition, there are sure to be some vacancies on that crew. Azevedo dead, and now Miss Wells tied up in legal battles, the whole CEP in jeopardy . . . There should be a complete shakeup. It’s likely the Space Professionals will get their way. Gale will end up in charge, and there could be an opening for the right man.”
“Well, I . . . guess . . . ”
“Oh, most certainly. Horace would want to take his chosen crew with him, men he knew and trusted. And you hope to be one of them.”
“Captain . . . ”
“Oh, don’t deny it. As I was told, three-quarters of my crew applied for that last expedition, you included. But there will be some difficulty with your transfer, I’m afraid.” Nick touched the comm control on his desk. “Bosun, come in, please.”
The office door opened, and Bosun Smith came in. She carried another coil of S3 cable.
“Well?” Nick looked from Smith to the cable.
Smith nodded. “It was in his cabin, sir, just like you said it would be. I found it coiled up in his pillowcase, crammed in between the bunk and the wall. You’d never notice it without a search. Well, you might, Captain, but not the average person.” She handed the cable to Nick. “The RFID tag confirms: that’s Professor Azevedo’s cable.”
Nick stood slowly, came around his desk, and stood nose to nose with Riggs. He didn’t yell. That’s when I know Nick is really angry, not just domineering: he gets very calm. He looked at Riggs and said, “Get off my ship.”
Riggs swallowed. “Sir?”
“You lied to me, Mr. Riggs.”
“Captain, I—”
“Don’t bother denying or explaining. We may be inside the gravipause; but when it comes to my crew, I am still judge, jury, and lord high executioner. And I do not want to hear more lies. I’m a realist, I know people lie for all sorts of stupid reasons. It’s part of their nature. But not to me, and not on my ship. That gets people dead, and I won’t tolerate that. Bosun, escort Mr. Riggs to his cabin. Watch him pack his kit. If he tries to go anywhere else or talk to anyone else, slam him into the nearest bulkhead. Twice. Once he’s packed, escort him to the docking bay and confine him there until the ferry arrives.”
“Yes, Captain.” Smith didn’t grin, but her eyes did. She was half again as large as Riggs, and she knew how to fight dirty. I think she wanted Riggs to make trouble. But he didn’t: he just left, and Smith followed.
My head spun. It was like my head was tossed into microgravity and all the facts I thought I had learned that day had been tumbled into space and rearranged themselves. I had been wrong. About all of it. And about Tracy. But Nick—I looked at him. “But if you knew this already, why didn’t you say so? Why did you let Tracy twist in the wind? Why did you let her suffer? She left here practically in tears!”
Nick sat in his chair, leaned back, knotted his fingers before him, and looked at me for several seconds. “Carver, you may have gotten over what she put you through, but I still had a bit of a grudge to work out. She almost cost me the best junior officer I’ve ever had. She appears to have grown up since then, but she still had earned a little suffering for that. And I knew you would never give her what she deserved, so I had to do it.”
“You . . . You planned that?”
“It was a simple calculation. I had nothing to gain. It’s not like exonerating her is going to endear me to her. It’s far too late for that. But I had nothing to lose as well. It’s not like she could hate me any more than she already did. So I might as well play the villain.”
“So you were cruel to her just because you had nothing to lose?”
“You missed the final line in my calculation: I would gain nothing by exonerating her; but if you get on that shuttle and present the evidence that clears her name, you’re her hero. You’ll come in and save her from my vile accusation.”
I blinked. Nick playing matchmaker? But . . . “No. I can’t play games like that with her. I won’t lie to her.”
“Oh, don’t be a complete ass, Carver. Tell her a lie, tell her the truth for all I care, but don’t you dare let her leave you behind the way she did last time. That woman is going to space, with or without you. So get going before you miss that shuttle. I don’t need you moping around for another six months. Go work out whatever it is you two have to work out.”
“Thank you, sir.” I leapt for the door.
“Oh, one last thing . . . ” Nick halted me on the threshold. “The Aldrin leaves Earth for Mars in three months, with or without you. If I’m wrong, and she’s not going back to space . . . If I’m going to need a new Chief Officer, please try to give me enough time to find a replacement who can measure up to your standards.”
“Yes, Nick. Permission to go ashore, Captain?” But Nick ignored me, turning his music on instead. Once again I heard “Brigas Nunca Mais.” Without waiting for an answer, I was already in the outer office and heading for the corridor.
I would be back on the Aldrin, I was certain of that. And I was just as sure that next time I wouldn’t be alone. That would give Nick something to complain about, so everyone would be happy.
Originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September 2013.