“Almost? You’d think they wouldn’t have trouble getting that exactly right.”
“Maybe. I’m not sure what this kind of temperature extreme and direct sunlight does to pigment. If it hadn’t been for the discoloration, I never would have found it. And speaking of which, the biologist, Samantha Turco, she may have caught me prying the thing loose and was convinced I was a some kind of undercover investigator looking into the automated vehicle explosion.”
“What did you tell her?” asks Jessup.
“I denied everything. She seemed pretty distraught by the incident. She said that she was originally going to go back to Earth on the vehicle. After it blew up she’s been worried that someone was out to get her and hasn’t returned to Earth.”
“Did she give a reason for why somebody would want to kill here?”
“Not really. It seemed more like shock than some kind of belief arrived at from reason. Was she the one that was supposed to go down?”
“Yes. Although that shouldn’t discount her as a suspect. In fact, it makes her even more suspicious.”
“I can understand that.”
“What’s your personal opinion of her?”
For a split second I’m about to say that I find her attractive, but realize he means if I trust her or not.
“I don’t know what to make of her. She’s been coming on very strong to me.”
“Hitting on you?” Baylor raises an eyebrow. “You’ve barely been there a day.”
“Time moves fast in space.”
“How have you responded to this?” asks Jessup.
“Visibly flattered, but I just told another researcher that I had a complicated situation back on Earth.”
“And you think this will throw Turco off the hunt?” Baylor asks skeptically.
“It’ll at least give me an excuse to play hard to get, other than the fact that I’m on a secret government mission and can’t mix business with pleasure.”
“I never forbade that,” says Jessup. “But I trust you to use your own judgement.”
“I trust that I have very poor judgement in these matters.”
“If Turco is the spy, that could be very dangerous.”
“I’ve thought about that.” A lot. “And if she’s not, it’s an unnecessary distraction. I plan to keep playing intrigued, yet coy.”
“You know very little about women,” says Baylor.
“I wouldn’t disagree with that.”
“What’s your next step?” asks Jessup.
“Now that we have evidence of tampering, I want to figure out how they got the sample. I’m going to ask Dr. Ling to show me a little bit more of his lab while Attwell isn’t around. Although the jammer suggests how someone could trip the DARPA folks into using the keypad, it still doesn’t tell me precisely how they got the crystal.
“Was it stolen outright from the trash? Replaced? I’m hoping I can get Ling to tell me more about their procedures. I’m afraid with Attwell nearby I’ll get an earful about what they’re supposed to do, but not their actual procedures.
“Hopefully knowing what those are will indicate who was in the best position to snatch the crystal.”
“Very good,” says Jessup. “The sooner I can get you off the station, the better.”
“What’s the time crunch?”
“The Chinese have changed the orbit of the CS satellite. They’re either trying to bring it into a reentry burn, or they’re going to try to boost it higher. If that’s the case, and they find out they’re missing an astronaut, they might deduce that we’re trying to find the source of the stolen crystal, which would put you in a dangerous situation.”
I knew my days of after work Mai Tais and offers of attachment-free zero-g sex were numbered.
Forty-Four
Protocol
I’m in the hotel kitchen pouring myself a cup of coffee when I see Attwell enter and put a dinner tray into the oven. He looks half asleep.
“Heading to the lab?” I ask.
He wipes at his eyes. “No. I’ve been there all night trying to solve a glitch. I’m about to crash.”
Which means I have a really good chance of getting Ling by himself. “Oh. Well, good night.” I start for the door.
“Where are you headed?”
“I was going to the observation bubble.”
“With that?” He points to my coffee mug.
I stare at it for a moment, thinking that he just saw through my lie, then realize I can’t take this out of the artificial gravity wheel and expect it to stay in the mug.
“Oh, that. I’m still adjusting.”
“I tried brushing my teeth in the zero-g lavatory once,” he explains. “I ended up with a meter long line of toothpaste when I absentmindedly squeezed the tube. Quite fun to play with, actually. It gave me a few ideas. Chief among them was to never do that again.”
“Good point. I guess I should finish this.” I start to gulp down the coffee.
“Or get Turco to give you one of her coffee bulbs.” He pauses, then adds, “If she hasn’t already.”
“I haven’t seen those,” I reply as I put my empty mug into the washing machine.
It’s like the world’s smallest town up here. Everybody is into everybody else’s business like there’s nothing else going on in the world.
I guess technically, this is its own world. But still.
I’m glad I didn’t even hint to being an operative to Tamara or anyone else. I’m sure it would be all over the station by now. And whoever is the one that’s working for the Chinese would have an advantage over me that could cost me my life.
All the more reason to take Jessup’s advice to find out what I can then get the hell off this crazy station.
Ling greets me at the door of his hatch with confusion then a smile when he remembers who the hell I am. He’d been locked up inside of here since I last saw him.
I get the impression that Attwell basically leaves the young man alone with his work.
“Mr. Dixon,” says Ling as he pulls the hatch open slightly. “What’s going on?”
“You got a second?” I look over my shoulder a little dramatically. I want him to invite me inside in case Attwell comes back through this section.
“Yeah. Everything okay?”
“I just have a confidential question.”
He pulls the hatch open and lets me inside. “Is it about my work?”
“What? You’re doing force fields and stuff?”
“No. That’s Dr. Attwell. I do lasers.”
“Right. Right. Impressive stuff. Well, maybe you can help me out with this question anyway.”
I made up the lie once I realized I needed to question him alone without him realizing he was being questioned.
“Sure?” He pulls himself over to his computer workstation and wraps a belt around his waist then takes up a lotus position in mid-air.
“Do you always sit like that?”
“I’ve been trying different yoga positions to see if they help deal with muscle loss in zero-g.”
“Really? Any success?”
“Possibly. I’ll need a control group. I might write a paper, but don’t tell Dr. Warren that.”
“Your secret is safe with me. Anyway, my question is about secrets. Some of the stuff I’m working on is very proprietary. Not all of it works. Anything useful I’m supposed to send back down to Earth. But I’m not quite sure what I should do with any prototypes that don’t cut it. Back on Earth I’d just toss them into a big shredder. I don’t have one of those up here.”
“Are you worried about someone on the station stealing something?” asks Ling.
“Me? No. But if a competitor came out with something similar, I need to show my employers that I handled all the prototypes properly and didn’t let them fall into someone else’s hands.”
“I see. I’m surprised they didn’t have a procedure for this.”