“All right, get this mess cleaned up.”
Lance used a vacuum cleaner to suck up globules of bile that drifted around the module like tarnished Christmas ornaments. Meanwhile, Dan instructed Stanley to hold Weiss steady. As Lorraine continued her dictation, Dan eyeballed every inch of the body. Weiss was frozen in fetal position. One arm seemed to clutch the backs of his raised thighs, the other was drawn across the front of his shoulders like a movie Dracula tossing his cape. His neck was loose and his head bobbed with each inadvertent movement made by Stanley. The tweed hat remained attached to Weiss’s ear by a single rubber band. The Minicam floated on its tether, still looped around the reporter’s broken neck. Weiss had been wearing his denim shirt with the pearl buttons. There was a small tear in the chest, and near the tear a button was missing. A few threads were still in place. Lorraine concluded her monologue.
“Broken neck,” she said in answer to Dan’s unspoken request to translate her medical jargon. She shoved the recorder into her pocket.
“When did it happen?” said Dan.
“Very hard to tell. Blood doesn’t pool in micro-gee, so I have to base an estimate on the rigidity of the body. I’d say no less than eight hours ago, but that’s a gross estimate.”
They both stared at the body. Dan thought of the fight between O’Donnell and Weiss. He remembered O’Donnell’s anxiety over his work the previous night. O’Donnell had skipped darts to spend time in his lab. Weiss was given to roaming the station at all hours. Dan tried to crowd the implications out of his mind.
“What now, Dan?” asked Lorraine. For the first time in what seemed to be several weeks she spoke to him without a trace of sarcasm in her voice.
“You and Lance get him into a body bag and stow it in the auxiliary airlock. Stanley, you take over for Freddy at the hatch. No one enters, no one asks questions, you don’t know anything.”
Dan exited the logistics module and signaled for Freddy to follow. As he flew toward the command module, he wondered if his orders had sounded as uncertain as he felt.
Once in his office, Dan inserted an encryption chip designated for operational emergencies into his comm console and called ground control in Houston. The accordion door to Dan’s office was closed. Freddy Aviles hovered against it, his normally jolly face somber, his eyes flicking back and forth between his commander and the image of Tom Henderson on the monitor.
“We have a real problem up here, Tom,” said Dan. “A fatality.”
Henderson smiled crookedly, as if hoping Dan suddenly had developed a warped sense of humor and would follow up with a punch line.
“Aaron Weiss, the CNN reporter,” continued Dan. “Looks like a broken neck.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Henderson. “How did it happen?”
“It wasn’t any damned accident. One of my men found him stuffed in an empty canister in the logistics module. Been dead about eight hours.”
Henderson let out a long whistle. “What are you going to do? The shuttle—”
“I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do! We don’t have a goddamn protocol for murder on an orbiting facility!”
“Easy, Dan,” said Henderson. “Let me get some people over here.”
Henderson disappeared from his console. Dan took a deep breath and looked at Freddy.
“They on the ground, man,” said Freddy. “They don’ know nothing.”
Dan nodded in agreement. That was the problem. People on the ground thought like people on the ground. No matter how much they claimed to understand, they didn’t realize that simply being in orbit—confined, weightless, entirely dependent upon a fragile web of technology to keep you alive—automatically transformed every facet of existence into an abnormal environment. Now the station was faced with the worst possible scenario: an abnormal situation in an abnormal environment.
Tom Henderson returned to his console. Several other people stood behind him, some in shirtsleeves, others in suits. All wore headsets with tiny microphones in front of their mouths.
“I have some people here,” began Henderson.
“Listen, Tom,” said Dan. “I know you can’t get a shuttle here anytime soon.”
“Or an aerospace plane, either,” said Henderson. “They—”
“Doesn’t matter. But you still can help me. I’m going to cut off all comm links between us and the ground.” Dan shot a glance at Freddy as if to say that he was the person who would actually effect the blackout. “Make up some bullshit as a cover. Tell ’em we’ve had another goddamn power-down. That’ll give you time to contrive some sort of story about Weiss’s death. Don’t say it was a murder. Not yet, anyway.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Henderson, running a nervous hand over his bald pate.
“Try to find out who did it.”
Henderson’s response was interrupted by one of the men standing behind him. He spoke with the man briefly, then returned his attention to Dan.
“What have you done with the body?” he asked.
“It’s in a body bag,” said Dan. “I’m going to stick it in the auxiliary airlock.”
The man behind Henderson leaned down into the screen. He looked like a lawyer-type in a baggy gray suit.
“I don’t think that is a proper method of preservation,” said the man as he adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses. “The authorities will want to inspect all evidence, including the body.”
“Quigley is right, Dan,” said Henderson. “You should try to preserve the body somehow. Maybe refrigerate it.”
“Tom, you know how we’re equipped up here. Do you think we have a walk-in freezer?”
Freddy chuckled.
“You could put the body in an EMU,” said Henderson. “The air conditioner will help it keep better.”
“I don’t believe this,” muttered Dan. Then he said to Henderson: “I may need all my suits.”
“Are you expecting trouble?” said Henderson.
“I have a murderer on board! Does that sound like trouble to you?”
Quigley started to protest, but Henderson pushed him out of the screen.
“Okay, Dan, it’s your ball game,” said Henderson.
“The auxiliary airlock’s in shadow almost all the time,” Dan said. “We can keep the outer hatch open, so it stays in vacuum. That ought to be as good as a refrigerator. Maybe better.”
Quigley looked skeptical. Henderson said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Dan.”
“I’m the only one who can do anything, Tom. We’re going to blackout in five minutes. I’ll talk to you as soon as I know something. Out.”
Dan broke the link before Henderson could acknowledge.
“That was helpful,” he said to himself, then turned to Freddy. “Five minutes enough time?”
“You got it, boss,” said Freddy.
After Freddy reported that all the comm links between the station and Earth were shut down, Dan announced over the loudspeaker that an extremely dire emergency had arisen. All personnel, regardless of their current activities, were to assemble in the rumpus room immediately. He expected that everyone would comply; the heavy tone of his voice was obvious.
Five minutes later, Dan pulled himself into a rumpus room that seemed to have shrunk around the press of floating bodies. The Japanese contingent was neatly dressed and wide awake, hovering by the big centrifuge in order of their rank. The Americans, Canadians, and Europeans seemed to have been taken by surprise. Some obviously had been rousted out of their sleep. Bianco hovered up at the front in a pair of handsome red-and-gold silk pajamas.
Kurt Jaeckle and Thora Skillen accosted Dan and demanded to be told the nature of the emergency. Dan was preoccupied with taking a head count and suggested absently that they wait along with everyone else. When the two scientists pressed him, he nodded toward Freddy. The crewman sliced between Jaeckle and Skillen and placed his powerful hands on their shoulders.