And there it was, floating in the vacuum of space, its course so resolute that it did not bob or shimmy as it followed them. It was uncanny the way it did that, almost serene, as though its existence could have been explained as a smear on the window. Colours danced and sparkled on its surface, a kaleidoscopic ripple of an alien sea somehow coming from deep within it, like it was a window to a distant planet. Perhaps it was? She could imagine the warmth of a faraway sun as she looked out over the iridescent sea, the dancing glimmer bright but never harsh, the radiant heat even and soothing.
‘Sally, are you okay?’
Gardner’s voice slashed through her with diamond-sharp clarity, and she jumped.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I didn’t see you there.’
She looked back out the window. UV One trailed along, lifeless and dull, bar the occasional wink of a star disappearing behind its black hull.
‘You weren’t in the lab, so I came looking for you. You had me worried.’
Sally snorted, thinking he was joking, but his expression was that of genuine concern. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, feeling a little foolish. ‘Sorry if I scared you. I just came down here to look, that’s all.’
‘Okay,’ Gardner said, ‘but I’m not sure I like you spending time down here alone.’
‘Why?’ Sally said, bemused.
Gardner narrowed his eyes, as if he misunderstood what she’d said, or didn’t believe she’d said it. ‘Sally, do you know how long you’ve been down here for?’
‘I don’t know, ten minutes maybe?’
‘Almost two hours.’
The door knocked and Sean got up to answer it. ‘Aleks?’ he said to the drenched Russian on the other side.
‘Yes. Hello.’ They shook hands. ‘I got here as fast as I could.’
His soaking coat pattered water onto the floor.
‘Come in, please,’ Sean said, moving aside to let him by. He bolted the door shut behind him.
‘The traffic was a nightmare,’ Aleks said. ‘It must be the weather.’
Sure enough, the rain that had drenched Aleks was still streaming down from slate-grey clouds. Sean had managed to miss it when he’d returned from David’s not half an hour ago. It was clear then, and now the rumbling of jets overhead was almost lost among the steady thrum of droplets hitting the window.
‘You can grab a towel from the bathroom and dry off if you like,’ Sean said.
Aleks thanked him and went to mop himself up. While Sean was waiting, he hung up Aleks’ coat — which dripped onto an expanding patch of dark carpet — and clicked on the coffee machine. ‘Just chuck the towel on the floor when you’re done,’ he called out. When Aleks emerged, looking fuzzy and damp, Sean handed him a cup and they sat down.
‘Funny,’ Sean said, taking a sip, ‘it wasn’t long ago that Lev was sat right where you’re sitting now.’
Aleks, who was hugging his cup, smiled a forlorn smile. ‘I’ll miss him,’ he said.
‘He was quite the character.’ And look where that got him.
Aleks nodded, looking around the room in a non-committal kind of way. ‘Yes, he was.’
Although Aleks seemed to be keeping his feelings as close to his chest as the cup of coffee, Sean could tell he and Lev had been close. Why else would he risk his life coming here?
‘When I last saw Lev,’ Sean said, ‘he left me this key card.’ He passed it to Aleks. ‘It’s registered to Bales, I know that much, but I can’t get anything off it and I can’t do anything with it. Do you think you might be able to help?’
‘I can certainly try,’ Aleks said, examining the card. ‘It looks like it should work with our card system. Do you have the login details for it?’
‘I don’t.’
‘Hmm. Do you know how Lev got it?’
‘I don’t know that, either. Can you crack it?’
‘I’m not really sure. Lev was the computer expert, not me.’
‘That figures.’
‘He was always very keen to keep our work secure. If he could break in, it wasn’t good enough. Cold War habits die hard.’
‘I bet. Do you think he might have left any clues?’
Aleks pondered the question. ‘It would make sense.’
‘Where would we find them?’
‘We could check his blog?’
Sean laughed, but his laugh faded as he realised Aleks wasn’t joking. ‘That guy — sorry, Lev — had a blog?’
‘Yes. He enjoyed posting on it.’
‘Did you ever read it?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know how to find it?’
‘Yes, of course.’
Sean booted up his laptop and put it on the table where he and Aleks could both see it. He pivoted it towards Aleks. ‘Type in the address at the top.’
Aleks typed and hit return. The website loaded.
‘That’s a pretty straightforward Wordpress template,’ Sean said, ‘nothing you could really hide anything in. Oh look — his last post was from the night of his death.’
They read the post. Sean shifted in his seat, disappointed. ‘It’s about his cat.’
‘He loved his cat.’
This wasn’t going to be easy.
‘Maybe if I look in the image metadata…’ Sean said, clicking on the image and looking through its properties. Nothing. He scrolled back through previous posts, which were prolific, but nothing jumped out at them. Sean scoured the code, hunting for any clues or hidden messages, but every avenue was a dead-end. ‘Well, I’m stumped. Must be nothing here,’ he said, returning to the blog’s home page where the shot of Lev’s cat stared back at them. ‘Any other ideas?’
Aleks started to chuckle, a small titter at first, then loud bursts of laughter.
‘What?’ Sean said. If this was a joke, he really didn’t get it.
‘That old dog…’
Sean looked at the page again. Still Lev’s cat. ‘What is it?’ he said, frustrated. The cat seemed to be taunting him.
Aleks composed himself, patting his stomach as if to wring out the last few laughs. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his grin wide. ‘When we were younger, we used to write secret messages into our dissertations to see who could get the most ridiculous statements published by the university. The best one was Lev’s: I have nothing but contempt for the odious man, Professor Tselner. Tselner even read the thesis to the class it was so good, but the message always stayed a secret.’
‘So there’s a message in this post then?’
‘Yes — it’s right there, clear as day.’
Sean looked again, leaning in close to scour the text. Frustration was becoming desperation, to the point where he was staring through the screen rather than at it. ‘Please just tell me,’ he said, despondent.
‘Write down the last letter of the last word of every sentence and tell me what you read. If the last word is a number, write down that number instead.’
Sean’s eyes bobbed up and down as he tried to work it out in his head, but he gave up after a minute and snatched his notepad from the bedside cabinet, almost knocking a stale glass of water over. ‘T…’ he said as he wrote, ‘… H…’ He continued writing until there were no more words. Then he spaced out the letters, organising them into more a understandable arrangement. He looked at his pad in disbelief.