“Troy.” Antreen smiled then, lessening the tension. “And we look forward to working with you. Any cooperation we can give you–anything at all–we want to be there helping out.”

“That’s very . . .”

“Understood?”

“Certainly, Captain. Thanks.”

 

 

Antreen extended her hand; they shook vigorously. “Inspector Troy, this is my aide Lieutenant Kitamuki. And this is Inspector Proboda.”

Sparta shook hands with the others–Kitamuki, a slender woman with long black hair knotted back and floating over one shoulder in a sinuous ponytail, Proboda, a roughhewn blond male giant, Polish or maybe Ukrainian, with a touch of the old hell-for-leather cossacks about his slanted eyes. Antreen was all smiles, but her two sidekicks studied Sparta as if considering arresting her on the spot.

“Let’s get into some gravity,” Antreen said. “We’ll show you to your quarters, Troy. And when you’re settled we’ll see if we can clear off a desk for you at unit HQ.” She moved off quickly; Kitamuki and Proboda parted to let Sparta through, then closed in tight formation behind her.

Sparta followed Antreen easily enough through the weightless passage–she’d had three days without acceleration in the middle of her trip and she hadn’t lost the body-memory of what it was like to have space legs–passing from the station’s motionless hub through the gray metal bulkheads of the security sector. They passed the station’s huge sliding collar, and Sparta paused a moment to adjust to the spin.

They moved on, through black-and yellow-striped emergency hatches into wider corridors, until they reached one of the main halls in the turning section of the station, far enough outside the hub to create fractional gees which established a “floor,” that being the inner cylindrical surface of the hall itself.

Once in the hall, Antreen turned planetward, toward the Space Board headquarters in the station’s central sphere.

Sparta paused. Kitamuki and Proboda almost tumbled into her. “Something wrong, Inspector?” Antreen asked.

“It’s very good of you,” Sparta said, smiling. “But time is too short, I’ll have to check out my quarters later.”

“If you say so. I’m sure we can get you settled at HQ, anyway.”

“I’ll be going to traffic control first. Star Queen is due within the hour.”

“We haven’t arranged authorization,” Antreen said.

“No problem,” Sparta replied.

Antreen nodded. “You’re right, of course. Your badge is enough. Do you know the way?”

“If any of you want to come with me . . .” Sparta said.

“Inspector Proboda will accompany you. He’ll take care of anything you need,” Antreen said.

 

 

“Okay, thanks. Let’s go.” Sparta was already moving starward, heading for the transparent traffic control dome that capped the huge space station. Although she had never been beyond Earth’s moon, she knew the layout of Port Hesperus in such detail she would have astonished its oldest residents, even its designers and builders.

It took her only moments to thread through the passages and corridors, past busy workers and clerks. By the time she arrived at the center’s double glass doors, Proboda had closed in behind her. He was her equal in rank, but older; handling that was going to be the first challenge of her assignment.

The local station patroller glanced at Sparta’s badge and then at the hard-breathing Proboda, whom he recognized. The guard waved them both through the glass lock, into the glittering darkness of Hesperus Traffic Control.

Through the arching glass dome Sparta could see the hard points of thousands of fixed stars. Below the dome, row upon circular row of softly glowing terminals were arranged like benches in a Roman amphitheater. In front of each console floated a weightless controller in loose harness. The doors through which Sparta and Proboda had entered were in the center of the ring, and they came in like a pair of gladiators onto the sand, although no one noticed their arrival. High above their heads, higher than the highest row of consoles, the chief controller’s platform was suspended on three fine struts at the dishshaped room’s parabolic focus.

Sparta launched herself upward.

She turned as she touched down lightly on the platform edge. The chief controller and his deputy seemed only mildly interested in her arrival.

“I’m Inspector Ellen Troy of Central Investigative Services, Mr. Tanaka. . . .”–she’d stored the names of all the key personnel in the station–“And this is Inspector Proboda,” she added as the blond hulk arrived behind her, scowling. “I’m instructed to direct the investigation of Star Queen. ”

“Hi, Vik,” the controller said cheerily, grinning at the flustered cop. He nodded to Sparta. “Okay, Inspector. We’ve had Star Queen on auto for the past thirty-six hours. We should have her onboard in about seventy-two minutes.”

“Where are you parking the ship, sir?”

“We’re not. You’re right, normally we wouldn’t dock a ship of this mass, we’d stand her in the roads.

But Captain Antreen of your office here suggested we bring Star Queen on into the security sector to facilitate the removal of the . . . survivor. That will be dock Q3, Inspector.” Sparta was mildly surprised at Antreen’s order–the crewman on Star Queen had survived a week on his

own, and the extra half hour it would take to bring him in from a parking orbit on a utility shuttle would hardly make a difference.

“I’d like to stay to observe the docking procedure, if you don’t mind,” she said. “And I’ll want to be first in line when the lock is opened, if you’d be good enough to inform your personnel of that.” She turned her head, sensing that Proboda was about to object. “Of course you’ll be with me at the airlock, Inspector,” she said.

“That’s fine with us,” Tanaka said. He could care less. “Our job’s over when the ship’s in and secured.

Now if you’ll excuse me. . . .” The muscular little man ran a thick hand lightly over his black crewcut.

Not until he moved forward out of the harness in which he’d been floating did Sparta notice he had no legs.

 

An hour passed in Traffic Control; the hot sun rose somewhere below. From her perch on the chief controller’s platform Sparta could see up to the stars and across to the intense ascending sun; she could see down to the first ring of multi-ringed Port Hesperus, which turned ceaselessly about its stationary hub like a heavenly carousel. She could not see the disk of Venus, which was immediately under the station, but the glare of the planet’s sulfuric-acid clouds reflected onto the station’s painted metalwork was almost as bright from below as the direct rays of the sun were from above.

Sparta’s attention was not on the station but on the hundred-meter white ship, standing straight up against the stars, which lowered itself by inches with spurts of its maneuvering thrusters, toward the gaping bay in the hub below the traffic control dome.

The sight triggered an odd memory, of a backyard barbecue in Maryland–who had been there? Her father? Her mother? No. A man, a woman with gray hair, other older couples whom she could not now quite picture or place–but that was not the memory, the memory was of a bird feeder suspended from the branch of an elm in the backyard by a long, thin wire, the sort of wire used as baling wire, and at the end of this wire was the bird feeder full of seeds, hanging from the wire a good two meters below the branch and a meter above the ground, to protect the seeds from squirrels. But one squirrel was not to be thwarted; this squirrel had learned to grip the wire with all four paws and slide–slowly, and with obvious trepidation–headfirst down the wire, from the branch above to the feeder below. The people who were giving the barbecue were so impressed by the squirrel’s daring they had not even bothered yet with any new scheme to frustrate it. They were so proud they wanted Sparta to see the animal perform its trick.

And here was a huge white space freighter, sliding headfirst down an invisible wire, into the maw of the docking bay. . . .

Something else that memory was trying to tell her . . . but she couldn’t dredge it up. She forced her attention back to the moment. Star Queen was almost docked.

 

 

 

Outside the security sector the passage to the lock was jammed with media people. Sparta, with Proboda dogging her, arrived at the back of the crowd.

“I wonder what he’s feeling like now?” a cameraman was saying, fussing with his videochip photogram.

“I can tell you,” replied a sleek brushcut type, a standup reporter. “He’s so pleased to be alive . . .” Sparta sensed that Proboda, beside her, was about to pull his rank and clear the mediahounds out of the passage. She gently preempted him. “I want to hear this,” she murmured, touching his arm.

“. . . that he doesn’t give a damn about anything else,” the reporter concluded.

“I’m not so sure I’d want to leave a mate in space so I could get home.”

“Who would? But you heard the transmission–they talked it over and the loser went out the lock. It was the only sensible way.”

“Sensible? If you say so–but it’s pretty horrible to let somebody sacrifice himself so you can live . . .”

“Don’t act the bloody sentimentalist. If that happened to us you’d shove me out before I’d had a chance to say my prayers.”

“Unless you did it to me first . . .”

Sparta had heard enough. She pushed close to the reporter and said quietly, “Space Control. Move aside, please,” and kept repeating it, “Space Control, move aside please . . .”–effortlessly opening a path before her. Proboda followed.

They left the pack behind at the security sector lock. Beyond the sealed collar of the core they reached the Q3 lock, which was almost as crowded with technicians and medical personnel. Through the big plate glass port the bulbous head of Star Queen was nosing into place a few meters away, patiently tugged and shoved by mechanical tractors. Sparta had a few words with the medics and the others as the tube fastened itself over the ship’s main airlock.

When the pressure popped and Star Queen’s hatch opened, Sparta was standing in front of it, alone.

The smell from inside the ship was an assault. Nevertheless she inhaled deeply, tasted the air with her tongue. She learned things from the flavor of the air that no subsequent tests could have told her.

Almost a minute passed before, rising from the depths of the ship, a haggard man drifted into the circle

of light. He paused while still inside Star Queen, just shy of the docking tube. He took a deep, shuddering breath–and another–and then he let his watery eyes focus on Sparta.

“We’re happy to have you safe with us, Mr. McNeil,” she said.

He watched her for a moment, then nodded.

“My name’s Ellen Troy. I’m from the Board of Space Control. I’ll be going with you while the medics assist you. I must ask you not to speak to anyone but me, until I give you permission–no matter who asks, or what they ask. Is that acceptable to you, sir?”

Wearily, McNeil nodded again.

“If you will move toward me, sir . . .”

McNeil did as he was told. When he was clear of the hatch Sparta darted past him and twisted the handle of the exterior lock. The massive outer door slid closed, seating itself with a palpable thud. Sparta pushed her hand into the right thigh pocket of her cargo pants and pulled out a bright red flexible plastic disk, which she slapped over the rim of the hatch–sealing it like a lump of wax over the flap of an envelope. She turned and took McNeil by the arm. “Come with me, please.” Viktor Proboda was blocking the tube exit. “Inspector Troy, it is my understanding that this man is to be placed under arrest, and that the ship is to be inspected without delay.”

“You are mistaken, Inspector Proboda.” Good, she was thinking, he didn’t use the word “orders,” as in

“my orders are . . . ”–which meant that she could put off the inevitable confrontation a little longer. “Mr.

McNeil is to be extended every courtesy. I’m taking him to the clinic now. When he feels up to it, he and I will talk. Until then, no one–not anyone–is to enter Star Queen. ” Her gaze had not left Proboda’s pale blue eyes. “I’m confident you’ll be diligent in carrying out Central’s orders, Viktor.” It was an old trick, but he was surprised when she used his first name, as she’d intended. This slender girl was perhaps twenty-five, he was well into his thirties, and he’d struggled a decade to achieve his rank–but her easy assumption of authority was genuine, and Proboda, a good soldier, recognized it. “As you say,” he gruffly conceded.

Sparta guided engineer McNeil, who seemed on the point of nodding off, to the waiting medics. One of them clamped an oxygen mask over McNeil’s face: McNeil’s expression was that of a man taking a drink of cold water after a week in the tropical sun. Sparta repeated her injunction to the medics about talking to the media; they would disobey her, of course, but not until she had left McNeil’s side.

The little group emerged from the security lock. McNeil, with an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, guided by medics, with Sparta and Proboda bringing up the rear, ran the gauntlet of frantic questions. . . .

 

 

 

But, after another week of waiting, the media had only the arrival of Star Queen and the confirmation of McNeil’s survival to add to the electrifying radio message that had initiated their death watch. The broadcast had been as succinct as it was chilling:

“This is Star Queen, Commander Peter Grant speaking. Engineering officer Angus McNeil and I have jointly concluded that there is sufficient oxygen now remaining for one man and one man only to live until our ship docks at Port Hesperus. Therefore one of us must die if either of us is to live. We have mutually agreed to decide the matter with a single draw of playing cards. Whoever draws the low card will take his own life.”

A second voice had spoken: “McNeil here, confirmin’ that I’m in agreement with everything the commander says.”

The radiolink had been silent then, for several seconds, except for the shuffle and snap of playing cards.

Then Grant came back on the air. “This is Grant. I’ve drawn the low card. I want to make it clear that what I’m about to do is the result of my personal decision, freely undertaken. To my wife and children, I should like to affirm my love for them; I’ve left letters for them in my cabin. A final request: I wish to be buried in space. I’m going to put my suit on now, before I do anything else. I’m asking Officer McNeil to put me out the lock when it’s all over and send me away from the ship. Please don’t search for my body.”

Aside from routine automated telemetry, that was the last anyone had heard from Star Queen until today.

 

The Port Hesperus clinic was in the station’s halfgee torus. An hour after his arrival McNeil lay propped up between clean sheets. His color was rosy, although the dark circles under his eyes remained and the once full flesh of his cheeks hung in folds. He was a much thinner man than he had been when he left Earth. There had been more than enough food on Star Queen, but for the last few days under deceleration he’d had hardly enough energy to drag himself to the galley.

He’d just begun to remedy that lack with a dinner of medium-rare Chateaubriand, accompanied by puff potatoes and garden vegetables, and preceded by a crisp green salad with a light herb vinaigrette and accompanied by a half-bottle of velvety California Zinfandel–all of which had been laid on by the Board of Space Control according to Sparta’s instructions.

She knocked lightly on the door, and when he said “Come in” she entered the room, followed by the brooding Proboda.

“I hope everything was all right?” she asked. The salad was gone but the Chateaubriand was only half

eaten and many of the vegetables were untouched. Not so the wine; bottle and glass were empty. McNeil was wreathed in tobacco smoke, halfway through a pungent unfiltered cigarette.

“It was delicious, Inspector, simply delicious, and I’m sorry to let the rest go. But I’m afraid my stomach’s shrunk–that bit just filled me up.”

“That’s certainly understandable, sir. Well, if you feel rested . . .” McNeil smiled patiently. “Aye, there’ll be lots of questions now, won’t there be?”

“If you’d rather we came back later . . .”

“No point in putting off the inevitable.”

“We sincerely appreciate your cooperation. Inspector Proboda will record our conversation.” When everyone was settled McNeil launched into his tale. He spoke quite calmly and impersonally, as if he were relating some adventure that had happened to another person, or indeed had never happened at all–which, Sparta suspected, was to some extent the case, although it would be unfair to suggest that McNeil was lying. He wasn’t making anything up. She would instantly have detected that from the rhythm of his speech, but he was leaving a good deal out of his well-rehearsed narrative.

When, after several minutes, he’d finished speaking, Sparta sat thoughtfully in silence. Then she said,

“That seems to wrap it up, then.” She turned to Proboda. “Are there any points you’d like to explore further, Inspector?”

Again Proboda was caught by surprise–any points he’d like to explore? He’d already resigned himself to a passive role in the investigation. “One or two,” he said, clearing his throat, “as a matter of fact.” McNeil drew on his cigarette. “Have at me,” he said with a cynical grin.

“Now, you say you lost your grip–I believe those were your words–when the meteoroid or whatever it was struck the ship? What exactly did you do?”

McNeil’s pale features darkened. “I blubbered–if you want to know the details. Curled up in my cabin like a little boy with a skinned knee and let the tears come. Grant was a better man than I, calm as could be throughout it all. But I hadn’t been a meter away from the oxygen tanks when they exploded, you see–

just the other side of the wall in fact–loudest damn noise I’ve heard in my life.”

“How did you happen to be at just that place at just that moment?” Proboda asked.

 

 

“Well, I’d been down doing the periodic check on the temperature and humidity in Hold A. The top compartment of that hold’s pressurized and temperature-controlled because we’re carrying things like specialty foods, cigars and so forth, organics–whereas in the vacuum holds we’ve got inert stuff, machinery mostly. I’d just come up through the hold airlock and I was in that part of the central corridor that passes through the life support deck, on my way up to the flight deck, when– blam. ”

“The life support deck was also pressurized?”

“We normally keep it that way so we can get into it from inside the crew module. It’s really a very small space, crammed with tanks and pipes, but you can reach in there if you have to. When it was hit the inside hatches seized up automatically.”

“Now, this business about the wine crate . . .”

McNeil grinned sheepishly. “Yes, I did behave rather badly. I suppose I’m going to have to pay someone a pretty penny for the bottles I managed to down before Grant caught me.”

“That wine was the personal property of the director of the Hesperian Museum, Mr. Darlington,” Proboda grunted. “I imagine he’ll have something to say about it. . . . But you say Grant put the partial crate back where you got it?”

“Yes, and then he changed the combination on the airlock so I couldn’t get back in.” A feral gleam appeared in Proboda’s pale eye. “You claim the airlock of that hold hasn’t been opened since the day after the accident?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“But the top compartment of that hold is pressurized. It’s a vessel almost half the volume of the command module. And it was full of fresh air!”

“Aye, it was, and if we’d had another like it, Peter Grant would be alive today,” McNeil said quietly.

“Originally we were to carry some seedlings. They wouldn’t have saved us, but the extra air that came with ’em might have.” He seemed to notice Proboda’s confusion for the first time. “Oh, I see your problem, sir. And you’re right, about the old ships . . . but Star Queen and most of the newer freighters are piped to allow any combination of gas exchange through all the airtight compartments, without having to open the airlocks. That allows us to carry cargo that the shipper wouldn’t want us to know about or get into, you see. If they’re willin’ to pay freight on the entire hold. Which is the usual procedure on military contracts.”

“So you had access to the air in that compartment even though you couldn’t get inside?”

“Right. If we’d wanted, we could have pumped the air out of that hold and jettisoned the whole thing, got rid of the mass. In fact Grant ran some calculations, but we wouldn’t have saved enough time.” Proboda was disappointed, but still he persisted. “But after Grant had, uh, left the ship . . . you could have found his new combination for the airlock, couldn’t you?”

“Could be, but I doubt it, even if I’d been interested. I’m no computer whiz, and a man’s private files aren’t easy to crack into. But why would I have wanted to?” Proboda glanced significantly at the empty bottle and glass beside McNeil’s half full plate. “Because there were still three and a half crates of wine in there, for one thing. And no one to stop you from drinking it.”

McNeil studied the blond inspector with an expression that struck Sparta as calculating. “I like a glass as well as the next person, Inspector. Maybe better. Maybe a little too much better. I’ve been called a hedonist and maybe I am that, but I’m not a complete fool.” McNeil ground out the remains of his cigarette.

“What did you have to fear,” Proboda insisted, “beyond the commission of a felony, of course, if that really did concern you?”

“Just this,” McNeil said quietly, and the steel edge of his affable personality finally slid out from under the smile, glittering. “Alcohol interferes with the functioning of your lungs and constricts your blood vessels. If you’re going to die anyway, you might not mind that. But if you intend to survive in an oxygen-poor environment, you won’t be taking a drink.”

“And cigarettes? Do they interfere with the functioning of the lungs?”

“After two packs a day for twenty years, Inspector, two cigarettes a day are but a crutch for the nerves.” Proboda was about to plunge on when Sparta interrupted. “I think we ought to leave Mr. McNeil in peace for now, Viktor. We can continue at a later time.” She had watched the exchange with interest. As a cop, Proboda had his strong points–she liked his bulldog persistence even when he knew he looked foolish–but his shortcomings were numerous. He was easily sidetracked, having here fixated on the trivial issue of destruction of property–Sparta suspected that was due to an excessive concern for powerful interests in the Port Hesperus community–and he hadn’t done his homework, or he would have known about the hold airlocks.

But his most serious error was that he had already passed moral judgment on McNeil. McNeil was not to be judged so easily. Everything he had said about himself was true. He was not a fool. And he intended to survive.

 

 

Sparta rose and said, “You are free to go wherever you like on the station when the medics release you, Mr. McNeil, although if you prefer to avoid the media this is probably the best place to do it. Star Queen is off limits, of course. I’m sure you understand.”

“Perfectly, Inspector. Thanks again for arrangin’ this lovely dinner.” He gave her a jaunty salute from the comfort of his bed.

 

Before they reached the corridor, Sparta turned to Proboda and smiled. “You and I make a good team, Viktor. Good guy, bad guy, you know. We’re naturals.”

“Who’s the good guy?” he asked.

She laughed. “Right. You were hard on McNeil, but I read you as the good guy when it comes to your neighbors. Whereas I intend to show them no mercy.”

“I don’t follow. How could anybody on Port Hesperus be involved in this?”

“Viktor, let’s go climb into spacesuits and take a look at that hole in the hull, shall we?”

“All right.”

“But first we’ve got to get through the mob.”

They stepped lightly through the clinic doors, into a crowd of waiting mediahounds. “Inspector Troy!”

“Hey, Vik, old buddy . . .” “Please, Inspector, what have you got for us? You’ve got something for us, right . . . ?”

XIV

They left the howling newspack outside the security sector. “I’ve never seen them like this,” Proboda muttered. “You’d think they’d never had a chance to report a real story before.” Sparta had no experience with the media. She’d thought she could use the standard techniques of command and control, the voice and personality tricks, and they did work up to a point, but she had underestimated the mob’s ability to tear at her concentration, to sour her internal functions. “Viktor, excuse me–I’ve got to have a moment.” She paused in a corner of the empty passage, closing her eyes, floating in midair, willing the tension in her neck and shoulders to dissolve. Her mind emptied itself of conscious thought.

Proboda eyed her curiously, hoping no one would come along and he would have to explain. The

formidable young Inspector Troy was suddenly vulnerable, her eyes closed and her head pitched forward, floating with her hands up like a small animal’s paws; he could see the down on the back of her slender white neck, bared where her straight blond hair had fallen clear.

Seconds later, Sparta allowed her eyes to open fully. “Viktor, I need a spacesuit. I’m a size five and a half,” she said, and just like that her expression was firm again.

“I’ll see what I can find in the lockers.”

“And we’ll need some tools. Limpet clamps and suction cups. Grip struts. Inertial wrench with a full set of heads and bits. Bags and tape and stuff.”

“That’s all in a grade ten mechanic’s kit. Anything special?”

“No. I’ll meet you at the lock.”

She moved forward, toward the Star Queen docking tube, and Proboda went off to the tool shed.

Two patrollers were on duty beside the entrance to the tube, wearing blue spacesuits with helmets on, although unlatched. They were armed with stunguns–air rifles using rubber bullets that were capable of severely injuring a human, even one in a spacesuit, although not likely to puncture crucial space station systems. Metal cartridges and the weapons that fired them were barred on Port Hesperus.

Through the double glass windows behind the guards the enormous bulk of Star Queen almost filled the docking bay. Star Queen was of average size as freighters go, but she was much larger than the tenders, launches, and shuttles that normally docked inside Port Hesperus.

“Has anyone been here since McNeil was taken off the ship?” Sparta asked the guards.

They glanced at each other and shook their heads. “No, Inspector.” “No one, Inspector.” They betrayed it in their voices and they smelled of it: they were lying.

“Good,” she said. “I want you to report to me or Inspector Proboda if anyone attempts to get past you.

Anyone at all, even someone from our office. Understood?”

“Right, Inspector.”

“Certainly, Inspector. You bet.”

Sparta went into the boarding tube. The red plastic seal was still in place over the rim of the hatch. She laid her hand over it and leaned close to it.

 

 

The plastic seal was little more than it seemed, an adhesive patch. It concealed no microcircuitry, although its conducting polymers were sensitive to electric fields and preserved the patterns of any that had recently been applied. By placing her hand over the patch, by leaning close to it and inhaling its odor, Sparta learned what she needed.

The field detectors under her palm picked up the strongly impressed pattern of a diagnostic device–

someone had passed a field detector of their own over the plastic, hoping to discover its secrets.

Doubtless they had learned that it had no secrets. Then they’d grown bold enough to handle the seal, presumably with gloves. The inquisitive one had left no fingerprints, but from the odor that clung to the surface of the plastic, Sparta had no difficulty identifying who had been there.

Each person’s skin exudes oils and perspiration that contain a blend of chemicals, especially amino acids, in a combination as unique as the pattern of the iris. When Sparta inhaled these chemicals she instantly analyzed them. She could call the specific chemical formulas into consciousness or, more usefully, match them to patterns she had already stored. She routinely stored the amino acid signatures of most people she met, eventually discarding those of no interest.

Two hours ago she had stored the amino acid signature of Kara Antreen. She was not surprised to recognize it here. Nor could she blame the guards for lying to her. They’d been told to keep quiet; and they’d have to live with Antreen long after Sparta had gone back to Earth.

Sparta couldn’t blame Antreen for her curiosity, either. She’d examined the seal, but there was no evidence she had opened the hatch. The only other entrance to the ship was through the midships airlock aft of the cargo holds, and Sparta doubted she’d used that. Antreen would have been in full view of a hundred controllers and dockside workers had she donned a spacesuit and gone into the ship that way.

Viktor arrived, pulling the tool bag and a suit for her–a blue one, the uniform suit of the local law. He’d already climbed into his own suit; his gold badge was blazoned on his shoulder.

 

Minutes later they were drifting close to the spotlit hull of Star Queen, their attention concentrated on a small round hole in a metal plate.

Behind them in the cavernous docking bay great metal clamps clashed, shackling craft to the station, and self-guiding hoses and cables snaked out from the refueling manifolds, seeking the orifices of fuel tanks and capacitors. Tugs and tenders were arriving and launching from the bay, sliding in and out of the huge bay doors open to the stars. All this activity took place in the dead silence of vacuum. The Space Board cutter was moored next to Star Queen in the security sector. A launch stood by at the commercial lock across the way, fueled and ready to bring passengers into the station when the liner Helios arrived.

Over the whole scene the clear dome of Traffic Control presided.

They’d gone through one of the worker’s locks, dragging the translucent nylon bag of tools, tethered to

Proboda’s wrist, behind them. Sparta had carefully worked her way around the superconducting coils of the radiation shield that looped in a lacy hemisphere over the top of Star Queen’s crew module, keeping a respectful distance. If Proboda wondered why, he said nothing, and she didn’t care to explain what she’d learned through unsettling personal experience, that strong electric and magnetic fields were dangerous to her in intimate ways that other people could not sense: induced currents in the implanted metal elements next to her skeleton were disorienting and, in extremis, threatening to her vital organs.

But she maneuvered to hull plate L-43 without difficulty. It was not easily accessible for even one person in a spacesuit, since it was tucked away on the underside of the crew module just above the convex end of the long cylinder of Hold C.

“I’ll take a look,” she said, squeezing close. “Here, put this someplace else.” She popped the crablike robot eye off the hull where it perched over the hole and handed it to Proboda; the magnetic rollers on the ends of its legs were whirring as it searched for a grip. Proboda put it up higher on the module and it scurried away toward its home hatch.

Sparta got her head up next to the damaged plate and focused her right eye upon the hole. She zoomed in and examined it in microscopic detail.

“Doesn’t look like much from here,” Proboda’s voice said from the commlink in her right ear.

“Wait ’til you see inside. But let me get a picture of this first,” she murmured. She snapped it with the ordinary photogram camera looped around her left wrist.

What Sparta could see on the outside of the hull, even at a magnification that would have astonished Proboda, corresponded to just what she would have expected from the collision with the hull plate of a one-gram meteoroid traveling at forty kilometers per second–a hole the size of a BB, in the center of a small circle of gleaming smooth metal that had melted and recrystallized.

The damage done to a ship’s hull by a meteoroid travelling at typical interplanetary velocities approximates what happens when, say, a hypervelocity missile strikes armor. The indentation on the outside of the plate may be modest in itself, but the deposited energy creates a cone shaped shock wave travelling inward that spalls a wide circle of material off the inside of the plate. This molten material keeps on moving and does its own damage; meanwhile, if the interior of the hull is filled with air, the shock wave quickly expands, producing overpressures which are intensely destructive near the hole, although they fall off rapidly with distance.

“Is that one of the ones that comes off easily?” Proboda asked.

“We’re not quite that lucky,” she said. “Want to hand me that wrench and a standard Philips?” Almost a third of the surface area of the life support deck consisted of removable panels, and L-43 was

one of these–not, unfortunately, a door that conveniently swung open like others nearby, but a plate that could be removed by patiently unscrewing some fifty flathead bolts around its edges. Proboda took a power drill from the nylon tool bag and fixed a bit to it. “Here,” he said, handing it to her, “anything I can do to help?”

“Catch these damn little screws.” It took her almost ten minutes to remove the bolts. He plucked them from the vacuum and corralled them in a plastic bag.

“Let’s try the limpet now.”

He handed her a small, massive electromagnet and she set it against the painted yellow triangle in the center of the plate, which marked the presence of a ferrous laminate hardpoint. She flipped the magnet’s switch and tugged hard. The magnet stuck fast to the hardpoint, but–

“That’s what I was afraid of. Can you get your feet on something? Then tug on my legs.” He braced himself and grabbed her feet. He tugged on her and she tugged on the plate, but the plate was stuck fast in the hull.

“We’ll have to set up the grip rig.”

Proboda reached into the tool bag and withdrew a set of steel rods with sliding couplings. He fed her the pieces one by one, and in a few minutes she had rigged a bridge of parallel rods over the recalcitrant hull plate, set against the hull to either side on gimbaled feet. She mounted a worm gear in a heavy bracket in the center of the bridge. She fitted a crossbar handle to its top; its lower end rotated in a joint on the back of the magnet. When Sparta twisted the crossbars the worm gear turned and began to exert an inexorable pull. After three complete turns the bulging plate, like a stiff cork sliding out of a bottle, popped free.

“This is what was holding it.” She showed him the inside of the plate. “Sealant all over the place.” Blobs of hardened yellow plastic had held the plate tight, plastic foam that had spewed from emergency canisters inside the deck. Some of it had been carried by the outrush of air into the meteoroid hole, where it congealed and sealed the leak as it was designed to; the rest had simply made a mess.

Sparta inspected the inner side of the plate and the hard dark mound of plastic that covered the hole. She photogrammed it, then peered back over her shoulder. “Let me see that knife kit.” He held it out and she took a curved, thin-bladed knife from the set. “And give me some of those little bags.” She carefully worked the edge of the blade under the brittle plastic. She began peeling back the plastic, which came away in thin layers like sediment, like wood grain.

“What are you doing that for?”

“Don’t worry, I’m not destroying any evidence.” She saved the shavings in a clear bag. “I want to see

what the hole looks like under the goop.” Beneath the plastic was the wide side of the conical hole, as big as a nickel, surrounded by an aureole of bright recrystallized metal. “Well, that’s certainly by the book.” She photogrammed it again, then passed him the hull plate. “Let’s put all this in the sack.” Sparta shone her hand-lamp into the blackened interior of the life support deck. In her private way she spent a moment studying what she saw. Then she took more photograms. “Can you get your head in here, Viktor? I want you to see this.”

He squeezed his helmet in close beside hers, so that they were touching. “What a mess.” His voice was as loud by conduction through their helmets as it was by commlink.

Everything within two meters of the point of the hole in the hull was severely damaged. Pipes writhed crazily and ended in jagged mouths, like frozen benthic worms.

“Both oxygen tanks in one whack. Hardly a more vulnerable spot in the whole ship.” One oxygen sphere was torn open, while another lay in shards like a broken egg shell. Fragments of the shattered fuel cell still floated near the ceiling, where they had collected under the gentle deceleration of docking. “ ’Scuse me a minute, I’ve got to get my arm in there.” Sparta reached up and gathered glittering bits of debris from the ceiling. She carefully placed these and other samples in plastic bags. She took a final look around inside the ravaged deck, then withdrew.

They replaced the tools and the evidence they had gathered in the net bag. “That should do it here.”

“Did you find what you expected?”

“Maybe. We’ll have to wait for the analysis. Before we go back let’s have a peek inside the ship.” They pulled themselves along the bulging cylinder of Hold C, tugging themselves from one handhold to the next, until they reached Star Queen’s midships airlock.

The midships airlock was set into the long central shaft that separated Star Queen’s fuel tanks and nuclear engines from the holds and the crew module, just aft of the holds themselves. Sparta manipulated the external controls that opened the hatch–controls that by law were standardized on all spacecraft–then entered the cramped space. Proboda squeezed in behind her, towing the tool bag.

She closed the outer hatch. From inside she could pressurize the lock, if there were no overriding commands from inside the spacecraft. But a big red sign lit up beside the inner hatch wheel: WARNING. VACUUM.

“I’m going to pressurize,” she said. “This won’t smell too good.”

“Why don’t we just stay suited?”

 

 

“We’ve got to face it sooner or later, Viktor. Keep your helmet on, if you want.” He didn’t discuss it with her, but he did keep his helmet on. She didn’t let him see her grin. He had delicate feelings for a man of his size and profession.

She used the controls to pressurize the interior of the ship’s central shaft. After a few moments the warning indicator shifted from red to green–“Atmospheric pressure equalized”–but she did not yet open the inner hatch. First she pulled off her helmet.

Crashing into Sparta’s brain came the smell of sweat, stale food, cigarette smoke, spilled wine, ozone, new paint, machine oil, grease, human waste . . . and above it all, carbon dioxide. The air was not nearly as bad as it had been for McNeil in those final days, for it had already mingled with fresh air from the station, but it was bad enough; Sparta needed a moment of conscious effort to clear her head.

What she didn’t tell Proboda was that she wasn’t doing this for the sake of torturing herself.

Eventually she could not only directly sense the chemical constituents of her surroundings, but evaluate and bring to consciousness what she sensed. She had an urgent question to ask here, before going inside: had anyone used this lock during the voyage? The main airlock was not a problem. If either Grant or McNeil had left the ship through it during the flight, the other man would have known about it–until they went through it the last time together, of course, and only McNeil returned. But this airlock was another matter. Conceivably one of them might have snuck outside the ship through this secondary airlock while the other slept or was busy elsewhere. The question had recently assumed new importance.

The smell of the place answered her question.

“Okay, I think I can take it now.” She grinned at Proboda, who looked at her dubiously from within the safety of his helmet.

She twisted the wheel, opened the inner hatch, and entered the central corridor. For a moment the experience was profoundly disorienting: she was in a narrow shaft a hundred meters long, a constricted polished tube so straight that it seemed to vanish aft to a black point. For a moment she had the unsettling sensation of staring into a rifle barrel.

“Anything wrong?” Proboda’s voice was loud in her commlink.

“No . . . I’m fine.” She looked “up,” toward the bow of the ship, to the hatch of the hold airlock a few meters overhead. Above that hatch was access to the cargo hold, and then to the crew module itself.

The light beside it was green: “Atmospheric pressure equalized.” She turned the wheel, lifted the hatch,

and entered the large airlock that segregated the huge detachable holds–each of which had its own airlock–from the crew module. The outer hatches of the four hold airlocks surrounded her: bright red signs gleamed on three of them. DANGER. VACUUM.

The notice beside the hatch to Hold A, however, glowed a less frantic yellow: “Unauthorized entry strictly forbidden.”

All of them were of the standard design, heavy-duty wide spoked wheels in the midst of circular, hinged steel doors. Anyone who could strike the correct combination of numbers into the pad beside the wheel would gain quick entry.

She took a moment to bend her head close to each in turn, before Proboda clambered up from below with his bag of tools. Holds B and D hadn’t been touched in weeks, but Hold A’s keyboard and wheel showed expected signs of handling. So, less expectedly, did Hold C’s.

“A’s the only one that’s locked, Viktor,” as he climbed up beside her. “We’ll have to retrieve the combination later, or force it. Want to look in B? I’ll check out C.”

“Sure,” he said. He punched buttons to pressurize B’s airlock. She latched her helmet and entered Hold C. The ritual of closing the outer hatch behind her, evacuating the lock, and opening the inner hatch to the airless hold–restraining any temptation to impatience–had to be performed carefully. Then she was inside.

It was a steel cylinder as big as a grain silo, dark but for a worklight beside the airlock. In the dim green work-light the metal monsters, each almost six metric tons in mass, stood against the wall like a zaftig chorus line. They were all strongly shackled to the hold’s steel-alloy ribs and stringers. In the shadows they seemed to expand as she approached them, and their compound eyes of diamond seemed to follow her like the eyes in trompe l’oeil portraits.

They were nothing but inert machines, of course. Without their fissile fuel rods, stacked nearby within shielding assemblies of graphite, the huge robots could not move a millimeter. Yet Sparta could not deny the impression they made upon her, their segmented titanium bodies made to withstand furnace temperatures, their insectlike legs made for negotiating the most abrupt terrain, their diamond-edged mouth parts and claws made for shredding the most recalcitrant natural matrices . . .

And those glittering diamond eyes.

As Sparta floated closer to the nearest robot she felt a tingling in her inner ear. She paused a moment before recognizing the effects of latent radioactivity, recognizable by the same sort of induction currents–

minute, in this case–that she had feared from the ship’s radiation shield. A glance at the machine’s serial number confirmed that it was the one Sondra Sylvester had had tried at the Salisbury proving grounds three weeks before it was loaded aboard Star Queen.

 

 

She cautiously moved past the first robot and inspected the others, one by one, peering at their erect and fearsome heads. All but the first were cold as stones.

 

Back in the hold access, with the airlock sealed behind her, Sparta waited for Proboda to climb out of Hold D. Apparently he had satisfied himself with whatever he saw in B and had gone on into the remaining vacuum hold while she was still admiring the robots. The top of his head stuck out of the hatch, his helmet looking like an ant’s head. She tapped his blue plastic noggin. “Why don’t you take that thing off?” she said. “The stink won’t kill you.”

He looked at her and twisted the helmet off his head. He got one whiff and his bold Slavic nose wrinkled all the way up into his forehead. “He lived in this for a week,” he said.

She thought maybe the smell gave him a little better appreciation of McNeil, if not more respect for him.

“Viktor, I want you to do something for me. It means us splitting up for a few minutes.”

“Before we’re finished in here? We still have to check on McNeil’s story.”

“I’m pretty sure we’ve already got the important stuff. I want you to get this evidence to the lab.”

“Inspector Troy”–going all formal on her–“my orders are to be with you. Not to leave your side.”

“Okay, Viktor, tell Captain Antreen everything you think you have to.”

“First you have to tell me, ” he said, exasperated.

“I will. Then as soon as you get that stuff into the lab I want you to go out and intercept Helios. Before anybody disembarks. Keep them busy. . . .”

 

As soon as she had explained her suspicions and he understood them, he left. This business of being persuasive was draining, she found. Social intelligence–the peoplemanipulative intelligence–came hardest to her. Almost immediately, almost involuntarily, she collapsed into trance again.

The brief meditation restored her. As she allowed the external world to trickle back into her awareness, she began to listen. . . .

At first she did not filter or focus what she heard but took in the whole symphony of the great space station, spinning in space above Venus, its sounds vibrating through the wall of Star Queen. Gases and fluids coursed through its pumps and conduits, the bearings of its great hubs and rings rolled smoothly on their eternal rounds, the hum of thousands of circuits and high-voltage buses made the aether tremble.

 

 

She could hear the muted voices of the station’s hundred thousand inhabitants, a third of them at work, a third breathing deeply, asleep, a third concerned with the rich trivia of existence, buying, selling, teaching, learning, cooking, eating, fighting, playing. . . .

Simply by listening, she could not pick out individual conversations. No one seemed to be talking in the immediate neighborhood. She could have tuned in on the radio transmissions and the communications links, of course, had she chosen to go into receptor state, but that was not her purpose. She wanted a feel for the place. What was it like to live in a metal world constantly orbiting a hell planet? A world with parks and gardens and shops and schools and restaurants, to be sure–a world with unparalleled views of the starry night and the brilliant sun–but a contained world, one from which only the rich could easily get relief. It was a world where people from disparate cultures–Japanese, Arab, Russian, North American–were thrown into close proximity under conditions that inevitably produced strain. Some came for the money, some because they had imagined that space would somehow be free of the restrictions of crowded Earth. Some came, of course, because their parents brought them. But only a few had the pioneering spirit that made hardship an end itself. Port Hesperus was a company town, like an oil platform in the North Atlantic or a mill town in the Canadian forest.

The message Sparta had through the metal walls was one of tension in reserve, of time bided, of a feeling close to indentured servitude. And there was something more, partly among the recent, reluctant immigrants but especially among the younger residents, those who had been born on the station–a sense of humdrum, a certain resentment, the half-conscious undercurrent of brewing discontent–but for now the older generation was firmly in charge, and they had little in mind beyond vigorously exploiting the resources of Venus’s surface, making themselves as comfortable as possible while they did so, and earning the wherewithal to get off Port Hesperus forever. . . .

 

Almost a kilometer away from where Sparta drifted dreaming in the freighter, the off-duty life of Port Hesperus was at its busiest. The enormous central sphere of the station was belted with tall trees–their tops all pointing inward–and ribbed with louvered glass windows that continually adjusted to compensate for the whirl of Venuslight and sunlight. Among the trees, paths wove among lush gardens of passion flowers and orchids and bromeliads, under cycads and tree ferns, beside trickling brooks and still reflecting ponds of recirculated water, over arched bridges of wood or stone.

A stroller who made the entire three-and-a-half-kilometer circuit would come upon seven strikingly different views, separately climate-controlled, laid out by the master landscape architect Seno Sato to suggest the diversity of cultures that had contributed to build Port Hesperus, and the mythic past of its mother planet. Step through this torii: here is Kyoto, an eaved castle, raked pebbles, twisted pines. Brush aside these tamarisk branches: Samarkand, its arabesque pavilions of inlaid blue stone reflected in perfumed pools. Through these bare birches to Kiev, blue onion domes above a frozen canal, where today two skaters circle. The snow underfoot becomes powdered marble, then plain sand: here is the Sphinx, in a garden of bare red rocks. Up this rocky path and past this flowering plum to vanished Changan, a seven-story stone pagoda with gilded finials. Through these yellow ginkgos the boat pond of New York’s Central Park appears, complete with toy schooners, watched over with perplexed

amusement by the well-polished bronze of Alice. An aisle of silent hemlocks leads to Vancouver, dripping cedars and totem poles and verdigrised gargoyles. And under these dripping tree ferns to the fern swamps of legendary, fictitious Venus, with a notable collection of carnivorous plants glistening in the eternal rain. Around this tall monkey-puzzle: Kyoto’s gate . . .

On either side of the magnificent gardens, in parallel belts around the central sphere, were the Casbah, plaka, Champs Élysées, Red Square, Fifth Avenue, and Main Street of Port Hesperus–shops, galleries, dime stores, Russian tea shops, rug merchants, restaurants of fifteen distinct ethnic persuasions, fish markets (aquacultured bream a specialty), fruit and vegetable markets, flower stands, temples, mosques, synagogues, churches, discreetly naughty cabarets, the Port Hesperus Performing Arts Center, and the streets outside jammed with shoppers and hawkers, jugglers and strolling musicians, people wearing bright metals and plastics and their own colorized skin. Sato’s gardens brought wealthy tourists from throughout the solar system. Port Hesperus’s merchants and boosters were ready for them.

The central sphere was frequented by the station’s workers and families too, of course. It’s just that a Disney kind of world–even a Disney world equipped with a cosmopolitan selection of foods and beverages and real, sometimes kinky people–grows familiar after the fifth or sixth visit, and deadly dull after the hundredth. Every excuse for news, for a diversion, becomes precious. . . .

Which is why Vincent Darlington was in a snit.

 

Darlington waddled about the spectacularly gaudy main hall of the Hesperian Museum aimlessly straightening the baroque and rococo paintings in their ornate frames, trying to keep his fingers out of the piles of cultured shrimp and caviar and tiny lobster tails and synthetic ham rolls the caterers had hauled in by the kilo and which now gleamed oilily beneath the odd light of the room’s stained glass dome. Every few seconds Darlington returned to the empty display case at the head of the room–

positioned where, had this place been a church, as its spectacularly intricate overarching stained glass apotheosis suggested, the altar would have stood. He drummed his chubby fingers on the gilt frame. It had been specially built to hold his newest acquisition, and he’d placed it where no one entering the museum could possibly miss it–especially that Sylvester woman, if she had the brass to come.

One reason he’d staged the reception. And invited someone, that oh-so-special someone, who was quite likely to drag her along. He hoped she did come; he couldn’t wait to see the hunger on her face. . . .

But now the whole thing was off. Or at least postponed. First the news that his acquisition had been impounded. Then the news just now that the police were delaying the disembarkation of Helios! What in heaven’s name could be so complicated about a simple accident in space . . . ?

Horribly embarrassing, but he certainly had no intention of reopening the Hesperian Museum until his treasure was safely enthroned.

 

 

Darlington pushed himself away from the empty altar. He’d recoiled from the notion of mingling with the crowd of media persons and other rabble that had rushed to the security sector when Star Queen, at last, had arrived. He had subsequently placed one discreet call to the powersthat-be, urging–one might in fact say pleading, but only really in the gentlest possible fashion–that something be done about the red tape that prevented him from taking immediate delivery of the most valuable book in the entire history of the English language–and honestly now, if it weren’t the most valuable book, then why had he been forced to pay such an outrageous sum for it, surely the largest sum ever paid for a book in the English language in the history of the English language itself, and that surely said something . . . and out of his own pockets, which weren’t, shall we say, bottomless, after all . . . ?

Not, of course, that he cared about the book, actually, the actual contents of the book, that is to say, the words in the book. War stories, you know. Given that this fellow Lawrence was said to have written rather well, and there were those endorsements, G. B. Shaw, Robert Graves, whoever they were, but they were said to have written well themselves, for the period, that is, anyway someone said so, and really, any reputation that lasts a century has some value, wouldn’t-you-say? But not really what he thought he was getting, in fact–permitting himself to make a small confession to himself–some confusion actually, quite understandable, another chap named Lawrence from the same period, after all it was more than a hundred years ago.

Which was quite beside the point. He’d paid money for this bloody book. There were only five copies in the universe, and three of those were lost, and now there was only the one in the Library of Congress of the United States of America and his–the Hesperian Museum’s, which itself was his. And he’d bought it for one reason, to humiliate that woman, who had humiliated him in the aftermath of her disgraceful public pursuit of his . . . well, that oh-so-special someone. His legal companion, once.

He supposed he should simply say good riddance to the little slut. But he couldn’t. She had her quite remarkable charms, and Darlington was not likely to find her equivalent on this sardine-can-in-space.

Which set him to brooding, as he did endlessly, over whether he would ever get off Port Hesperus, whether he could ever go home again. He knew, deep down, that he wouldn’t. They’d bury poor Vince Darlington in space, unless by some miracle they buried his sisters first. Not a matter of fighting extradition to Earth, nothing so public, or so legal. No, it was the price the family–the poisonous sisters, actually–had exacted for keeping their persimmonlips puckered tightly–for keeping him out of a Swiss jail, to be precise. Of course it would have had to be their money . . .

This was the retreat he’d made for himself, and here he would stay, in these few small rooms with their velvet walls and this . . . really amazing glass dome (perhaps it really had been built as a church?), surrounded by his dead treasures.

He eyed the shrimps. They weren’t getting any fresher.

He set off on another round of picture straightening. When would he be allowed to take possession?

 

 

Perhaps he should cancel now. Captain Antreen had been most unhelpful. Oh, smiles and all that, said she’d do the best she could, but results? No promises there, darling. It all had a sour taste to it, rather curdling his intended triumph over Sylvester.

Darlington passed nervously into one of the smaller, darker side rooms, He stopped beside a glass case, caught by his reflection in its lid. He patted his thinning black hair and adjusting his old-fashioned horn-rimmed eyeglasses–hadn’t lost his looks quite yet, thank God–twitching his lips in a little moue, then moving on, ignoring the contents of the case.

What Darlington left behind in this small room were his real treasures, although he refused to acknowledge them. Here were those odd scraps of fossil imprints, found on the surface of Venus by robot explorers, which had made the Hesperian Museum a place of intense interest to scientists and scholars, and, after Sato’s gardens, one of the chief tourist attractions of Port Hesperus. But Darlington, absurdly wealthy even on a negotiated allowance, was a collector of second-rate European art of the melodrama-and-curlicue periods, and to him rocks and bones belonged in some desert gas station or Olde Curiosity Shoppe on Earth. His Venusian fossils brought him system-wide attention, so he grudgingly allowed them their space.

He continued to pace, staring at his garish paintings and sculptures and expensive bric-a-brac and brooding on what that busybody police person from Earth was up to, poking about on the derelict ship that held his precious book.

 

Shortly before Helios was due to rendezvous with Port Hesperus and shortly after Sparta had asked him to assure its quarantine while she went off on business of her own, Viktor Proboda presented himself at the Board of Space Control’s local headquarters. Captain Antreen called him into her office; Lieutenant Kitamuki, her aide, was already in the room.

“Your instructions were simple, Viktor.” Antreen’s smiling mask had slipped; she was rigid with anger.

“You were not to leave Troy’s side.”

“She trusts me, Captain. She has promised to inform me promptly of everything she finds.”

“And you trust her?” Kitamuki demanded.

“She seems to know what she’s doing, Lieutenant.” Proboda felt it was getting awfully warm in this office.

“And Central did put her in charge.”

“We requested a replacement. We didn’t ask that the investigation be taken away from us.” Antreen said.

 

 

“I didn’t like that any better than you did, Captain,” Proboda said stoutly. “In fact I took it personally at first, considering you’d already given me the assignment. But after all, most of the principals in the case are Earthbased. . . .”

“Most of the principals are Euro-Americans,” Kitamuki said. “Does that give you a clue?”

“Sorry,” Proboda said stoutly. He could see the conspiracy theory coming–Kitamuki was big on them–

but conspiracy theories were not his thing. He put his faith in simpler motivations, like vengeance, greed, and stupidity. “I really think you ought to take a look at these lab results. We did–Troy did, in fact–a very close inspection of the impact site, and what she found . . .”

“Someone back there has passed the word that this department is to be discredited,” Kitamuki interrupted. “Here on Port Hesperus, Azure Dragon is producing spectacular results, and some among the Euro-Americans, on the station and back on Earth, don’t like it.” She paused to let her dark suspicions sink in.

“We’ve got to watch our step, Viktor,” Antreen said evenly. “To preserve our integrity. Port Hesperus is a model of cooperation, and unfortunately some would like to destroy us.” Proboda suspected somebody was blowing smoke in his face–he wasn’t sure who. But while Captain Antreen didn’t always choose to make her reasoning clear, she did make her point. “How do you want me to handle it, then?”

“You do as Troy asks you. Just know that we’ll be working with you too, sometimes behind the scenes.

Troy is not to be made aware of this. We want the situation resolved, but there’s no need to go beyond the pertinent facts.”

“All right, then,” Proboda concurred. “Shall I see to Helios? ”

“You do that,” Lieutenant Kitamuki said. “Leave Troy to us.”

“Now what did you want to tell us about these lab results?” Antreen asked him.

XV

Alone in Star Queen, Sparta started her investigation from the top down.

Immediately below the inner hatch of the main airlock was a claustrophobic space jammed with stores and equipment lockers. Three spacesuits normally hung against the wall in one quadrant of the round deck. One was missing. Grant’s. Another appeared unused. Wycherly’s, the unfortunate pilot’s. Curious,

Sparta checked its oxygen supply and found it partially charged–enough there for half an hour. Had McNeil been saving it, in case things went wrong, and he too decided to lose himself in space? Sparta poked here and there among the supply lockers–tools, batteries, spare lithium hydroxide canisters and such–but she found nothing of significance here. She quickly moved down to the flight deck.

The flight deck was spacious by comparison, taking up a slice through the wide tropics of the crew module’s sphere. The consoles that circled the deck beneath the wide windows were alive with flickering lights, their blue and green and yellow indicator lamps glowing softly on auxiliary power.

Facing them were seats for commander, second pilot, and engineer–although Star Queen, like other modern freighters, could be flown by a single crewmember or none, if placed under remote control.

The room was a pragmatic mix of the exotic and the mundane. The computers were state of the art and so were the window shades, although the state of the window-shade art had not changed a whole lot in the past century, and the fire extinguishers were still just red-painted metal bottles, clipped to the bulkheads. There were racks and cabinets of machines, but there was also plenty of good working space and a good view out the surrounding windows; the deck had been designed in the awareness that crews would spend many months of their lives within its confines. Sparta was struck, however, that there were no personalizing touches, no cut-out cartoons or posters or pin-ups, no cute notes. Perhaps neo-commander Peter Grant had not been the sort to tolerate individual litter.

Besides the ship’s working programs, the logs–Grant’s verbal log and the ship’s black-box recorders–

were accessed from these consoles. In fact almost all of the codable information about the ship and its cargo, except Grant’s and McNeil’s personal computer files, was accessed from this deck.

Sparta expelled a breath and got down to work. From the chemical traces left on the consoles, armrests, handrails, and other surfaces she confirmed that no one besides Grant and McNeil had been on this deck for several weeks. There were still a jumble of traces, but most were months old, left by the workmen who had refurbished the ship.

Sparta had internalized the computer’s standard access codes. In little more time than it took to slip her gloves off and slide her PIN probes into the ports, she’d offloaded its memory into her own much denser, much more capacious cellular storage mechanisms.

She raced lightly through the first few files of interest. The cargo manifest was as she had memorized it on the trip from Earth–no additions, no subtractions, no surprises. Four detachable cargo holds, capable of pressurization. On this voyage, only the first compartment of Hold A pressurized–the usual foodstuffs, medicines, so on–and that diminutive bit of mass worth two million pounds Sterling, a book in its carrying case. . . .

A few other items in Hold A were insured for relatively large amounts of money per unit of mass: two crates of cigars consigned to none other than Kara Antreen, valued at a thousand pounds each–Sparta smiled at the thought of the stiff Space Board captain savoring her stogies–and four crates of wine, one

of which McNeil had already confessed to looting, worth a total of fifteen thousand American dollars and consigned to the same Vincent Darlington who was the new owner of the very famous book.

But there were also items that had cost more to ship than they were worth to insure: the newest BBC

epic on videochip, “While Rome Burns,” massing less than a kilo (and almost all of that was protective plastic packaging), wholly un insured. Although the original had cost millions to produce, the chips were much cheaper to re produce than an old-fashioned celluloid-based movie or a tape cassette, and indeed (admittedly with some loss of fidelity) the whole show could have been beamed to Venus for the cost of transmission time. Plus an item that had earlier struck Sparta as worthy of close attention: a case of

“miscellaneous books, 25 kilos, no intrinsic value” consigned to Sondra Sylvester.

The contents of Holds B, C, and D, which had remained in vacuum throughout the flight, were of much less interest–tools, machinery, inert matter (a tonne of carbon in the form of graphite bricks, for example, marginally cheaper to ship from Earth than to extract from the atmospheric carbon dioxide of Venus)–except for the “6 Rolls-Royce HDVM,” Heavy Duty Venus Miners, “at 5.5 tonnes each, total mass 33.5 tonnes gross including separate fuel assemblies,” etc., consigned to the Ishtar Mining Corporation. Sparta satisfied herself that the onboard manifest was identical with the one that had been published. And she and Proboda had already confirmed its accuracy.

Sparta turned quickly to the mission recorder, which contained the entire public record of the voyage.

Bringing the full record to consciousness, with the time-slip that involved, would be a lengthy process.

For the time being she contented herself with a rapid internal scan, searching for anomalies.

One anomaly stood out, in data space, in smell space, in harmony space–an explosion, secondary explosions, alarms, calls for help . . . human voices, shocked, coping, accusing–the black-box mission recorder contained the entire sequence of events attendant upon the meteoroid strike.

Sparta heard it through at lightning speed and played it back to herself mentally. It confirmed in fine detail what she had learned in her firsthand look at the site of the accident.

One other anomaly stood out in the mission recorder’s datastream, a conversation, taking place immediately before Grant’s fateful radio message had been beamed to Earth and Venus. “This is Star Queen, Commander Peter Grant speaking. Engineering Officer McNeil and I have jointly concluded that there is sufficient oxygen remaining for one man. . . .”

But in the moments preceding the announcement, Grant and McNeil had not been on the flight deck. . . .

The two men’s voices were muffled by the intervening bulkhead. One voice was momentarily raised to the threshold of audibility–McNeil’s–and his words were stern: “You’re in no position to accuse me of anything. . . .”

Accuse him . . . ?

 

 

The whole conversation might be recovered, but Sparta would have to put herself into light trance to do it. And there were other chunks of data that might yield to analysis, but she must set aside the time to deal with them. It was too soon to sacrifice alertness again. For now she had to move quickly. . . .

 

The fast liner Helios, driven by a powerful gaseouscore atomic reactor, had been a week out of Earth, a week and a day from Port Hesperus, when that somber message had been received throughout the solar system: “This is Star Queen, Commander Peter Grant speaking . . .” Within minutes–even before Peter Grant had left the Star Queen’s airlock for the last time–the skipper of Helios had received orders from the Board of Space Control, acting under interplanetary law, to notify his passengers and crew that all transmissions from Helios were being recorded and that any pertinent information thus obtained would be used in subsequent administrative and legal proceedings, including criminal proceedings, if any, bearing on the Star Queen incident.

In other words, everyone aboard Helios was a suspect in the investigation of some as yet unspecified misdeed on Star Queen.

Not without reason. Helios had left Earth on a hyperbolic orbit for Venus two days after the meteoroid struck Star Queen. The departure date for the fast liner had been on the boards for months, but at the last minute, after the meteoroid strike, Helios acquired several new passengers. Among them was Nikos Pavlakis, representing the owners of the stricken freighter. Another was a man named Percy Farnsworth, representing the Lloyd’s group who had insured the ship, its cargo, and the lives of its crew.

Other passengers had booked the flight long in advance. There was an emeritus professor of archaeology from Osaka, three Dutch teenage girls setting forth on a grand planetary tour, and half a dozen Arabian mining technicians accompanied by their veiled wives and rebellious children. The Dutch girls rather relished the notion of being suspected of interplanetary crime, while Sondra Sylvester, another passenger who had booked in advance, did not. Sylvester’s young travelling companion, Nancybeth Mokoroa, was simply bored rigid by the whole affair.

These were not the sort of passengers who mixed easily: the Japanese professor smiled and kept to himself, the Arabs kept to themselves without bothering to smile. The teenagers staggered about in their high-heeled shoes during periods of constant acceleration and twitched uncomfortably in their unaccustomed tight dresses, whether under acceleration or not, and at all times made a point of ogling the one unaccompanied male passenger over fifteen and under thirty. He did not return their compliment. He was Blake Redfield, a last minute addition to the manifest who kept very much to himself throughout the voyage.

Such social encounters as did occur took place in the ship’s lounge. There Nikos Pavlakis did his nervous best to be gracious to his client Sondra Sylvester whenever their paths crossed. That wasn’t often, as she generally avoided him. The poor man was distracted with worry anyway; he spent most of

his time nursing a solitary ouzo and a plastic bag of Kalamata olives. Farnsworth, the insurance man, was often to be found lurking in the nearby shadows, sipping on a bulb of straight gin and ostentatiously glowering at Pavlakis. Pavlakis and Sylvester both made it a point to avoid Farnsworth altogether.

But it was in the lounge, not long after Grant’s public sacrifice, that Sylvester found Farnsworth plying Nancybeth with a warm bulb of Calvados. The middle-aged man and the twenty-year-old woman were floating, weightless and slightly giddy, before a spectacular backdrop of real stars, and the sight infuriated Sylvester–as Nancybeth had no doubt intended. Before approaching them Sylvester thought about the situation–what, after all, should she care? The girl was possessed of heart-stopping beauty, but she had the loyalty of a mink. Nevertheless, Sylvester felt she could not afford to ignore the sly Farnsworth any longer.

Nancybeth watched Sylvester’s approach, her malice diffused only slightly by weightlessness and alcohol. “ ’Lo, Sondra. Meet m’ friend Prissy Barnsworth.”

“Percy Farnsworth, Mrs. Sylvester.” One did not get to one’s feet in microgravity, but Farnsworth straightened admirably nonetheless, and tucked his chin in a credible bow.

Sylvester looked him over with distaste: although he was approaching fifty, Farnsworth affected the look of a young army officer, off duty for the weekend to do a bit of pheasant slaughtering, say–Sylvester’s recent acquaintance at the Salisbury proving grounds, Lieutenant Colonel Witherspoon, was a model of the type. Farnsworth had the mustache and the elbow-patched shooting jacket and the rigid set of the neck right down. The public school accent and the clipped Desert Rat diction were strictly secondhand, however.

Sylvester looked past his outstretched hand. “You’ll want to be careful, Nancybeth. A brandy hangover’s not pleasant.”

“Dear mother Sylvester,” she simpered. “What’d I tell you, Farny? Expert on everthn’. I never heard of this stuff ’fore she innerduced me.” Nancybeth batted her bulb of apple brandy from hand to hand. On the third toss she missed, and Farnsworth snatched it out of the air for her, returning it without comment.

“Understand you had a very pleasant visit to the south of France, Mrs. Sylvester,” Farnsworth said, braving her determined unpleasantries.

Sylvester gave him a look intended to silence him, but Nancybeth piped up brightly. “She had verry pleasan’ two days. Three days? I had verr’ boring three weeks. ”

“Mr. Farnsworth,” Sylvester hastily interrupted, “your attempt to pump my companion for information that you imagine may somehow be of use to you is . . . is transparent.” Nancybeth’s eyes widened–“Pump me? Why, Mis ter Farmerworthy”–and she snatched dramatically at

the billowing skirt of her flowery print dress.

“And despicable,” Sylvester added.

But Farnsworth pretended to take no notice. “No offense meant, Mrs. Sylvester. Light chat, that’s all.

Comes to business, much prefer to talk to you straight from the shoulder. Eh?” Nancybeth growled, “Man to man, so to speak,” then pretended to flinch when Sylvester glared at her.

Evidently she was farther into her cups than Sylvester had feared.

“Got me wrong, Mrs. Sylvester,” Farnsworth said smoothly. “Represent your interests too, y’know. In a sense.”

“In the sense that you’ll be forced to pay your clients whatever sum you can’t weasel out of?” He drew himself up a bit. “You’ve nothing to fear, Mrs. Sylvester. Star Queen would dock safely with your cargo even if she were a ghost ship. Take more than a measly meteoroid to do in a Rolls-Royce robot, what?”

Throughout their exchange Nancybeth was contorting her face into a series of exaggerated masks, miming first Sylvester’s aloof contempt, then Farnsworth’s wounded innocence. It was the sort of childish display that under some circumstances lent her a gamin attractiveness. At the moment she was about as attractive as a two-year-old on a tantrum.

“Thanks for your interest, Mr. Farnsworth,” Sylvester said coldly. “And perhaps you would leave us alone now.”

“Let me be blunt, Mrs. Sylvester, begging your pardon–”

“No, why don’t you be pointed?” Nancybeth suggested brightly.

Farnsworth pushed on. “After all, we’re both aware of the difficulties of the Pavlakis Lines. Eh?”

“I’m aware of no such thing.”

“Doesn’t take much imagination to see what Pavlakis had to gain by doing in his own ship. Eh?”

“Nancybeth, I’d like you to leave with me, this moment,” Sylvester said, turning away.

“But he did it rather badly, didn’t he?” Farnsworth said, floating closer to Sylvester, his voice deeper and harsher. “No significant damage to the ship, no damage whatever to the cargo? Not even that

famous book you were so interested in?”

“Don’ forget crew,” cried Nancybeth, still the giddy imp. “Tried to kill ’em all!”

“Good God, Nancybeth . . .” Sylvester glanced across the lounge to where Nikos Pavlakis hovered over his ouzo. “How can you say such a thing? About a man you’ve never met?”

“Only got half of ’em, though,” the girl finished. “Good ol’ Angus won through.”

“That’s a shrewd guess, Mrs. Sylvester, and I’d lay odds she’s right.” Farnsworth’s insinuating gaze narrowed melodramatically. “Pavlakis Lines holds rather large accidental-death policies on its crewmembers–did you know that?”

Her eyes fastened on his, almost against her will. “No, Mr. Farnsworth, actually I didn’t.”

“But suicide, though. Now there’s another matter. . . .” Sylvester jerked her gaze away from him. Something about his teeth, his gingery hair, set her stomach to seething. She glared at Nancybeth, who peered back in fuddled and exaggerated innocence. Taking hold of a nearby convenience rail, Sylvester turned her back on both of them and launched herself hastily outward, into the gloom.

“Bye-bye, Sondra . . . sooorry we made you mad,” Nancybeth crooned as Sylvester disappeared through the nearest doorway. She squinted at Farnsworth. “Suicide? ‘Sat mean you don’ have to pay Grant? I mean, for Grant? ’Cause he killed himself?”

“Might mean.” Farnsworth peered back owlishly. “Unless he didn’t, of course.”

“Didn’t? Oh, yeah . . . an’ if he was murdered?”

“Ah, murder. Gray area, that.” Farnsworth tugged at the knot of his blood-colored polymer tie. “I say, been awfully good. But ’fraid I must run.”

“Yes, Wusspercy,” cooed the abandoned Nancybeth. So that’s what he’d wanted from her, nothing more than a conversation with Syl. “Run along, why don’t you? And while you’re at it, take a hint from Commander Grant . . . ? Lose your body too.”

 

Across the room, not far away, Nikos Pavlakis floated near the bar with his bulb of ouzo and his bag of olives. He was well aware that they had been talking about him. His temper urged him to confront Farnsworth, to call him to immediate account, but his business sense urged him to stay calm at all costs.

He was frantic over the condition of his beautiful new ship. He was almost equally sorrowful for the

man Grant, who had been a dependable employee of his and his father’s for many years, and for Grant’s widow and children. He was even more apprehensive about the prospects of McNeil, another good man. . . .

Pavlakis thought he knew what had happened to Star Queen. To him it was retrospectively obvious, transparently so–but not, he hoped, to anyone else. Nor could he afford to breathe a word of his suspicions to anyone. Farnsworth least of all.

 

As Helios slid into its parking orbit near Port Hesperus, Sparta was poking about in Angus McNeil’s private cabin on Star Queen.

She’d quickly looked through the galley, the personal hygiene facility, the common areas. She’d found nothing inconsistent with McNeil’s account. A slot in the medicine chest which would have held a tiny vial of tasteless, odorless poison was vacant. There were two packs of playing cards in the drawer of the table in the common room, one of which had never been opened, one of which had been handled by both McNeil and Grant–McNeil’s traces were strongest, although Grant had gripped one card tightly. She noted its face.

After the common areas Sparta had visited the pilot’s cabin next. It had not been entered since Wycherly was last on the ship, before it left Falaron Shipyard.

Grant’s cabin, then–notable mostly for what it failed to reveal. His bed was still made, the corners squared off and the blanket so tight one could have bounced a nickel off it at one gee. His clothes were neatly folded in the restraining hampers. His bookshelf and personal-computer files were mostly electronics manuals and self-improvement books; there were no signs that Grant did any reading for pleasure or had any hobbies except fiddling with microelectronics. The promised letters to his wife and children were clipped to the little fold-down writing desk, and Sparta left them there after ascertaining that no one except Grant had touched them. McNeil, if he’d been curious about their contents–as well he might have been–had had the integrity to leave them strictly alone. In fact there was no trace of McNeil’s presence anywhere in the room.

There was another letter, addressed to McNeil himself, in Grant’s desk drawer. But as McNeil had not searched the drawer, presumably he did not know of its existence.

McNeil’s cabin painted a portrait of quite a different man. His bed had not been made for days, perhaps weeks–Sparta noted purplish splotches of spilled wine on the sheets that, if he’d been telling the truth about not getting into Hold A after Grant changed the combination, had been there since four days after the explosion. His clothes were in a jumble, jammed into the hampers of his locker. His chip library was a fascinating mix of titles. There were works of mysticism: the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tsu, a treatise on alchemy, another on the Cabala. And of philosophy: Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic, Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy.

 

 

Some of McNeil’s books were real, photogrammed onto plastic sheets that imitated the paper of a hundred years ago. Games: a slim little book on parlor magic, another on chess, another on go. Novels: Cabell’s odd Jurgen, a recent work of the Martian futurists, Dionysus Redivivus.

McNeil’s personal computer files revealed a different but similarly wide range of interests–it took Sparta only moments to discover that he had been playing master level chess with his machine, that he had carefully followed the London, New York, Tokyo, and Hong Kong stock exchanges, that he subscribed to a variety of clubs, from rose-of-the-month to wine-of-the-month. Wine and roses–he must collect several months’ worth of each, between trips.

There were other files on the computer, protected by passwords that would have stopped a casual browser but which were so trivial Sparta barely noted them–files that made full use of the machine’s high-resolution graphics. The invention of the home video player a century ago had brought erotic films into the living room, but that was a mild innovation compared to what followed when the invention of the cheap supercomputer-on-a-chip brought new meaning to the phrase “interactive fantasy.” McNeil’s id was much on display in these private files, which Sparta closed hastily; despite her opinion of herself as sophisticated beyond her years, her face had turned bright pink.

She made her way into the corridor that passed through the center of the life support deck. Just on the other side of these close, curving, featureless steel walls the fatal explosion had occurred; at the same moment the access panels had been automatically dogged shut to prevent decompression of the crew module.

She went through the lock into the hold access then, to the three locks that warned VACUUM and the one that sternly wagged its bright yellow finger: “Unauthorized entry strictly forbidden.” McNeil had told the truth. The traces of his and many other hands resided on the keypad, but the most recent trace was Peter Grant’s–his touch on six of the keys overlaid all others. Sparta could not recover the order of touch–six keys gave rise to six-factorial possible combinations–but if she’d wanted to play a game with herself she probably could have deduced the likelier possibilities within a few seconds, from her knowledge of probabilities and, mostly, from what she’d learned of the man himself.

There was no point in taking the time. She’d already uncovered the combination where Grant had noted it in his personal computer files.

She tapped the keys. The indicator diode beside the lock blinked from red to green. She turned the wheel and tugged on the hatch. Inside the airlock the indicators confirmed that the interior pressures of the hold were equal to those outside the lock. She turned the wheel on the inner hatch and a moment later floated into the hold.

It was a cramped circular space, hardly big enough to stand erect in, ringed by steel racks filled with metal and plastic bags and cases. The roof of the compartment was the reinforced cap of the hold itself;

the floor was a removable steel partition, sealed to the walls. The wooden ships that once plied Earth’s oceans commonly carried sand and rocks for ballast when travelling without a paying cargo, but ballast was worse than useless in space. Aft of the few stacked shelves ringing the pressurized top of the hold, the vessel was just a big bottle of vacuum.

The pallets near the airlock were strapped down securely, carrying sacks of wild rice, asparagus tips in gel, cases of live game birds frozen in suspended animation–delicacies that, having made the trip from Earth, were worth far more than their weight in gold.

And of course that miscellany which had snagged Sparta’s attention in the manifest. Kara Antreen’s Cuban cigars. Sondra Sylvester’s “books of no intrinsic value.” Sylvester’s books were in a gray Styrene case which showed little sign of handling–Sparta noted Sylvester’s own traces, McNeil’s, Grant’s, others unknown, but none recent. Sparta quickly deduced the simple combination. Inside she found a number of plastic-wrapped paper and plastic books, some bound in cloth or leather, others with quaint and lurid illustrated covers, but nothing she did not expect to find. She resealed the case.

She moved next to Darlington’s consignment, a similar but not identical gray Styrene case equipped with an elaborate magnetic lock, something even more complex than the numeric pad on the airlock.

The case showed no signs of tampering. Oddly, it showed no signs of having been handled at all. The only chemical signals on the entire case were the strong contending odors of detergent, methyl alcohol, acetone, and carbon tetrachloride. It seemed to have been throughly scrubbed.

A defensive measure, that, like the human hair laid across the crack in the closet door, intended to divulge any attempts at searching or tampering? Well, there had been no tampering.

Sparta proceeded to tamper with it. The lock’s code was based on a short stack of rather small primes.

No one without Sparta’s sensitivities could have cracked the combination in less than a few days, without the aid of a sizable computer–it would take that long just to run through half the possible combinations. But Sparta eliminated possibilities by the millions and billions, instantly, simply by reading electronic pathways deep in the lock’s circuitry and discarding those that were dormant.

She was in trance while she did it. Five minutes later she had the lock open. Inside the case was the book.

The man who had had this book made for himself had reveled in fine things. He had valued the presentation of his hard-wrought words so much that he would not let those he hoped to impress with it, or even his friends, see anything but the best. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom had not only been given the trappings of a marbled slipcase, leather binding, and beautiful endpapers, it had been printed like the King James Bible itself, on Bible paper, set in double columns of linotype.

Sparta had heard about metal type, although she had never actually seen the effect of it. She slid the book from its case, let it gently push itself open. Sure enough, each single letter and character was

pressed onto the paper, not simply appearing there as a filmy overlay but as a precise quantity of ink pushed crisply into the pulp. That sort of craftsmanship in an object of “mass production” was beyond Sparta’s experience. The paper itself was thin and supple, not like the crumbling discolored sheets she had seen in the New York library, displayed as relics of the past. . . .

The richness and glory of the book in her hand was hypnotic, calling her to handle its pages. For the moment she forgot investigation. She only wanted to experience the thing. She studied the page to which it had spontaneously opened.

“An accident was meaner than deliberate fault,” the author had written. “If I did not hesitate to risk my life, why fuss to dirty it? Yet life and honour seemed in different categories. . . . or was honour like the Sybil’s leaves, the more that was lost the more precious the little left . . . ?” An odd thought. “Honour” considered as a commodity, the more that was lost the more precious what was left.

Sparta closed the fabulous book and slid it back into its slipcase, then settled the whole thick package into its padded case. She had seen what she needed to of Star Queen.

XVI

“Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to announce that there will be a delay in the disembarkation process. A representative from Port Hesperus will be joining us shortly to explain. To facilitate matters, all passengers should report to the lounge as soon as possible. Stewards will assist you.” Unlike Star Queen, Helios had arrived at Port Hesperus in the normal way, grappled into parking orbit by short-range tugs. Plainly visible through the windows of the ship’s lounge, the space station hung in the sky a kilometer away, its wheels revolving grandly against the bright crescent of Venus, the green of its famous gardens glinting through the banded skylights of its central sphere. Murmuring resentment, the passengers gathered in the lounge; the most reluctant found themselves “helped” by stewards who seemed to have forgotten deference. All aboard the ship, passengers and crew, were frustrated to have travelled millions of kilometers across a trackless sea and at the last moment to be prevented from setting foot on the shore.

A bright spark moved against the insect cloud of other spacecraft drifting about the station, and soon resolved itself into a tiny white launch bearing the familiar blue band and gold star insignia. The launch docked at the main airlock and a few minutes later a tall, square-jawed blond man pulled himself briskly into the lounge.

“I’m Inspector Viktor Proboda, Port Hesperus office of the Board of Space Control,” he said to the assembled passengers, most of whom were unhappily glowering. “You will be detained here temporarily while we continue our investigation into the recent events aboard Star Queen; we sincerely regret any

inconvenience this may cause. First I’ll need to establish that your registration slivers are in order. Then I will soon be approaching some of you individually and asking you to assist us in our inquiries. . . .” Ten minutes after she left Star Queen, Sparta knocked on the door of Angus McNeil’s private ward.

“Ellen Troy, Mr. McNeil.”

“C’m in,” he said cheerily, and when she opened the door he was standing there smiling at her from his freshly shaved face, wearing a freshly pressed, luxurious cotton shirt with its sleeves folded above the elbows and crisp plastic trousers, and puffing lightly on a cigarette he had evidently lit only moments before.

“I’m sorry to interrupt you,” she said, seeing the open kit on the bed. He had been packing bathroom articles; she noted that they seem to have been issued from the same government stores as her own hastily acquired toothbrush.

“Good time for a fresh start. Sorry you had to see that mess of mine–might just chuck the lot, whenever you decide to let me back aboard.”

“That will be a while yet, I’m afraid.”

“More questions, Inspector?” When she nodded yes, he gestured to a chair and took another for himself.

“Better make ourselves comfortable, then.”

Sparta sat down. For a moment she watched him without speaking. McNeil’s color was much better, and although he would be gaunt for some time to come, he appeared not to have lost his muscle tone. Even after days of near-starvation, his forearms were powerfully muscled. “Well, Mr. McNeil, it’s fascinating what the latest diagnostic techniques can recover from even the most obscure pools of data. Take Star Queen’s mission recorder, for example.”

McNeil drew on his cigarette and watched her. His pleasant expression did not change.

“All the data from the automatic systems is complete, of course. And the microphones get every word spoken on the flight deck. What I listened to confirmed your account of the incident in every detail.” McNeil raised an eyebrow. “You’ve hardly had time to screen a couple of weeks’ worth of real-time recordings, Inspector.”

“You’re right, of course. A thorough review will take months. I employed an algorithm that identifies areas of maximum interest. What I want to talk to you about now is the discussion that took place in the common area shortly before you and Grant made your last broadcast.”

“I’m not sure I recall . . .”

“That’s where these new diagnostic techniques are so helpful, you see.” She leaned forward, as if to share her enthusiasm. “Even though there are no microphones in the living areas, enough sound carries to be picked up by the main flight recorder. In the past we wouldn’t have been able to recover the exact words.”

She let that sink in. His expression still didn’t change, but his features almost imperceptibly stiffened.

She knew he was wondering whether she was bluffing.

She would remove that hope. “You’d just eaten dinner together. Grant had served you coffee–it was hotter than usual. He left you there and started for the corridor. ‘What’s the hurry?’ you asked him. ‘I though we had something to discuss. . . .’ ”

Now the last hint of relaxation left McNeil’s eyes. As he crushed his cigarette his fleshy cheeks jiggled.

“Well, Mr. McNeil,” Sparta said softly, “do you and I have something to discuss?” For a moment McNeil seemed to look past her, into the blank white wall behind her head. Then his eyes refocused on her face. He nodded. “Aye, I’ll tell you everythin’,” he whispered. “I would make one request–not a condition, I know better than that–but simply a request, that once you’ve heard me out, if you agree with my reasonin’, you’ll keep what I’m about to say off the record.”

“I’ll bear that request in mind,” she said.

McNeil sighed deeply. “Then here’s the whole truth, Inspector. . . .” Grant had already reached the central corridor when McNeil called softly after him, “What’s the hurry? I thought we had something to discuss.”

Grant grabbed a rail to halt his headlong flight. He turned slowly and stared unbelievingly at the engineer. McNeil should be already dead–but he was sitting quite comfortably, looking at him with a most peculiar expression.

“Come over here,” McNeil said sharply–and in that moment it suddenly seemed that all authority had passed to him. Grant returned to the table without volition, hovering near his useless chair. Something had gone wrong, though what it was he could not imagine.

The silence in the common area seemed to last for ages. Then McNeil said rather sadly, “I’d hoped better of you, Grant.”

 

 

At last Grant found his voice, though he could barely recognize it. “What do you mean?” he whispered.

“What do you think I mean?” replied McNeil, with what seemed no more than mild irritation. “This little attempt of yours to poison me, of course.”

Grant’s tottering world collapsed at last. Oddly, in his relief he no longer cared greatly that he’d been found out.

McNeil began to examine his beautifully kept fingernails with some attention. “As a matter of interest,” he asked, in the way that one might ask the time, “when did you decide to kill me?” The sense of unreality was so overwhelming that Grant felt he was acting a part, that this had nothing to do with real life at all. “Only this morning,” he said, and believed it.

“Hmm,” remarked McNeil, obviously without much conviction. He rose to his feet and moved over to the medicine chest. Grant’s eyes followed him as he fumbled in the compartment and came back with the little poison bottle. It still appeared to be full. Grant had been careful about that.

“I suppose I should get pretty mad about this whole business,” McNeil continued conversationally, holding the bottle between thumb and forefinger. “But somehow I’m not. Maybe it’s because I’ve never had many illusions about human nature. And, of course, I saw it coming a long time ago.” Only the last phrase really reached Grant’s consciousness. “You . . . saw it coming?”

“Heavens, yes! You’re too transparent to make a good criminal, I’m afraid. And now that your little plot’s failed it leaves us both in an embarrassing position, doesn’t it?” To this masterly understatement there seemed no possible reply.

“By rights,” continued the engineer thoughtfully, “I should now work myself into a good temper, call Port Hesperus, denounce you to the authorities. But it would be a rather pointless thing to do, and I’ve never been much good at losing my temper anyway. Of course, you’ll say that’s because I’m too lazy–

but I don’t think so.” He gave Grant a twisted smile. “Oh, I know what you think about me–you’ve got me neatly classified in that orderly mind of yours, haven’t you? I’m soft and self-indulgent, I haven’t any moral courage–any morals at all, for that matter–and I don’t give a damn for anyone but myself.

Well, I’m not denying it. Maybe it’s ninety percent true. But the odd ten percent is mighty important, Grant. At least to me.”

Grant felt in no condition to indulge in psychological analysis, and this seemed hardly the time for anything of the sort. He was still obsessed with the problem of his failure and the mystery of McNeil’s continued existence. And McNeil, who knew this perfectly well, seemed in no hurry to satisfy his curiosity.

 

 

“Well, what do you intend to do now?” Grant asked, anxious to get it over.

“I would like,” McNeil said calmly, “to carry on our discussion where it was interrupted by the coffee.”

“You don’t mean . . .”

“But I do. Just as if nothing had happened.”

“That doesn’t make sense! You’ve got something up your sleeve!” cried Grant.

McNeil sighed. “You know, Grant, you’re in no position to accuse me of plotting anything”–he released the little bottle to float above the surface of the table between them; he looked up sternly at Grant. “To repeat my earlier remarks, I am suggesting that we decide which one of us shall take poison. Only we don’t want any more unilateral decisions. Also”–and he drew another vial from his jacket pocket, similar in size to the first but bright blue in color; he allowed it to float beside the other–“it will be the real thing this time. The stuff in here,” he said, pointing to the clear bottle, “merely leaves a bad taste in the mouth.”

The light finally dawned in Grant’s mind. “You changed them.”

“Naturally. You may think you’re a good actor, Grant, but frankly, from the balcony, I thought the performance stank. I could tell you were plotting something, probably before you knew it yourself. In the last few days I’ve deloused the ship pretty thoroughly. Thinking of all the ways you might have done me in was quite amusing; it even helped pass the time. The poison was so obvious that it was almost the first thing I fixed.” He smiled wryly. “In fact I overdid the danger signal. I nearly gave myself away I took that first sip–salt doesn’t go at all well with coffee.” McNeil fixed unblinking eyes on the embittered Grant before going on. “Actually, I’d hoped for something more subtle. So far I’ve found fifteen infallible ways of murdering anyone aboard a spaceship.” He smiled again, grimly. “I don’t propose to describe them now.” This was simply fantastic, Grant thought. He was being treated, not like a criminal, but like a rather stupid schoolboy who hadn’t done his homework properly. “Yet you are willing to start all over again?” he asked, unbelieving. “And you’d take the poison yourself if you lost?” McNeil was silent for a long time. Then he said, slowly, “I can see that you still don’t believe me. It doesn’t fit at all nicely into your tidy little picture, does it? But perhaps I can make you understand. It’s really simple.” He paused, then continued more briskly. “I’ve enjoyed life, Grant, without many scruples or regrets–but the better part of it’s over now and I don’t cling to what’s left as desperately as you might imagine. Yet while I am alive I’m rather particular about some things.” He allowed himself to drift farther from the table. “It may surprise you to know that I’ve got any ideals at all. But I’ve always tried

to act like a civilized, rational being, even if I’ve not always succeeded. And when I’ve failed I’ve tried to redeem myself. You might say that’s what this is about.” He gestured at the tiny weightless bottles.

He paused, and when he resumed it was as though he, and not Grant, were on the defensive. “I’ve never exactly liked you, Grant, but I’ve often admired you and that’s why I’m sorry it’s come to this. I admired you most of all the day the ship was hit.” He seemed to have difficulty finding his words: he avoided Grant’s eyes. “I didn’t behave well then. I’ve always been quite sure, complacent really, that I’d never lose my nerve in an emergency–but then it happened right beside me, something I understood instantly and had always thought to be impossible–happened so suddenly, so loud, that it bowled me over.”

He attempted to hide his embarrassment with humor. “Of course I should have remembered–practically the same thing happened on my first trip. Spacesickness, that time . . . and I’d been supremely confident it couldn’t happen to me. Probably made it worse. But I got over it.” He met Grant’s eyes again. “And I got over this . . . and then I got the third big surprise of my life. I saw you, of all people, beginning to crack.”

Grant flushed angrily, but McNeil met him sharply. “Oh yes, let’s not forget the business of the wines.

No doubt that’s still on your mind. Your first good grudge against me. But that’s one thing I don’t regret. A civilized man should always know when to get drunk. And when to sober up. Perhaps you wouldn’t understand.”

Oddly, that’s just what Grant was beginning to do, at last. He had caught his first real glimpse of McNeil’s intricate and tortured personality and realized how utterly he had misjudged him. No–

misjudged was not the right word. In some ways his judgment had been correct. But it had only touched the surface; he had never suspected the depths that lay beneath.

And in his moment of insight Grant understood why McNeil was giving him a second chance. This was nothing so simple as a coward trying to reinstate himself in the eyes of the world: no one need ever know what happened aboard Star Queen. And in any case, McNeil probably cared nothing for the world’s opinion, thanks to the sleek self-sufficiency that had so often annoyed Grant. But that very self-sufficiency meant that at all costs he must preserve his own good opinion of himself. Without it life would not be worth living; McNeil had never accepted life save on his own terms.

McNeil was watching Grant intently and must have guessed that Grant was coming near the truth. He suddenly changed his tone, as if sorry he had revealed so much of his own character. “Don’t think I get some quixotic pleasure from turning the other cheek,” he said sharply, “it’s just that you’ve over-looked some rather basic logical difficulties. Really, Grant–didn’t it once occur to you that if only one of us survives without a covering message from the other, he’ll have a very uncomfortable time explaining what happened?”

Grant was dumbstruck. In the depths of his seething emotions, in the blindness of his fury, he had simply

failed to consider how he was going to exculpate himself. His righteousness had seemed so . . . so self evident.

“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” he murmured. Still, he privately wondered if a covering message was really all that important in McNeil’s thoughts. Perhaps McNeil was simply trying to convince him that his sincerity was based on cold reason.

Nevertheless, Grant felt better now. All the hate had drained out of him and he felt–almost–at peace. The truth was known and he accepted it. That it was rather different from what he had imagined hardly seemed to matter. “Well, let’s get it over,” he said, unemotionally. “Don’t we still have that new pack of cards?”

“Yes, a couple of them in the drawer there.” McNeil had taken off his jacket and was rolling up his shirtsleeves. “Find the one you want–but before you open it, Grant,” he said with peculiar emphasis, “I think we’d better speak to Port Hesperus. Both of us. And get our complete agreement on the record.” Grant nodded absently; he did not mind very much now, one way or the other. He grabbed a sealed pack of the metallized cards from the game drawer and followed McNeil up the corridor to the flight deck.

They left the glinting poison bottles floating where they were.

Grant even managed a ghost of a smile when, ten minutes later, he drew his card from the pack and laid it face upward beside McNeil’s. It fastened itself to the metal console with a faintly perceptible snap.

 

McNeil fell silent. For a minute he busied himself lighting a fresh cigarette. He inhaled the fragrant, poisonous smoke deeply. Then he said, “And the rest you already know, Inspector.”

“Except for a few minor details,” Sparta said coolly. “What became of the two bottles, the real poison and the other?”

“Out the airlock with Grant,” he replied shortly. “I thought it would be better to keep things simple, not run the risk of a chemical analysis–revealing traces of salt, that kind of thing.” Sparta brought a package of metallized playing cards from her jacket pocket. “Do you recognize these?” She handed them to him.

He took them in his large, curiously neat hands, hardly bothering to look at them. “They could be the ones we used. Or others like them.”

“Would you mind shuffling the pack, Mr. McNeil?”

The engineer glanced at her sharply, then did as he was told, expertly shuffling the thin, flexible cards in

midair between his curved palms and nimble fingers. Finished, he looked at her inquisitively.

“Cut, if you don’t mind,” she said.

“That would be your privilege, wouldn’t it?”

“You do it.”

He laid the deck on the nearby lamp table and swiftly moved the top section of the deck to one side, then placed the bottom section on top of it. He leaned away. “What now?”

“Now I’d like you to shuffle them again.”

The look on his face, as blank as he could make it, nevertheless barely concealed his contempt. He had shared one of the more significant episodes of his life with her, and her response was to ask him to play games–no doubt in some feeble attempt to trick him into something. But he shuffled the cards quickly, making no comment, letting the hiss and snarl of their separation and swift recombination make the comment for him. “And now?”

“Now I’ll choose a card.”

He fanned the deck and held it toward her. She reached for it but let her fingers hover over the cards, moving back and forth as if she were trying to make up her mind. Still concentrating, she said, “You’re quite expert at handling these, Mr. McNeil.”

“Nor have I made a secret of it, Inspector.”

“It was no secret to begin with, Mr. McNeil.” She tugged a card from the edge of the deck and held it up, toward him, without bothering to look at it herself.

He stared at it, shocked.

“That would be the jack of spades, wouldn’t it, Mr. McNeil? The card you drew against Commander Grant?”

He barely whispered yes before she plucked another card from the deck he still rigidly held out to her.

Again she showed it to him without looking at it. “And that would be the three of clubs. The card Grant drew, which sent him to his death.” She flipped the two cards onto the bed. “You can put the deck down now, Mr. McNeil.”

His cigarette burned unnoticed in the ashtray. He had already anticipated the point of her little

demonstration, and he waited for her to make it.

“Metallized cards aren’t allowed in professional play for a simple reason,” she said, “with which I’m sure you’re quite familiar. They aren’t as easy to mark with knicks and pinholes as the cardboard kind, but it’s a simple matter to impose a weak electric or magnetic pattern on them that can be picked up by an appropriate detector. Such a detector can be quite small–small enough, say, to fit into a ring like the one you’re wearing on your right hand. That’s a handsome piece–Venusian gold, isn’t it?” It was handsome and intricate, portraying a man and woman embracing; if examined closely, in fact, it was more than a little curious. Without hesitating, McNeil twisted the heavy sculpted ring over his knuckle. It came off easily, for his finger was thinner than it had been a week ago. He held it out to her, but to his surprise, she shook her head–

–and smiled. “I don’t need to look at it, Mr. McNeil. The only coherent patterns on these cards were imposed by me, a few minutes ago.” She leaned away from him, relaxing in her chair, inviting him to relax as well. “I used other methods to determine which cards had been drawn by you and Grant. They were the only two cards in the deck which seemed to have been handled beyond a light shuffle. Frankly, I was partly guessing.”

“You made a lucky guess, then,” he said hoarsely, having found his voice. “But if you aren’t accusing me of cheating on Grant, why this demonstration? Some people might call it unusual, maybe even cruel.”

“Oh, but you,” she said fiercely. “You wouldn’t have needed electromagnetic patterns to cheat, would you, Mr. McNeil?” She glanced at his forearms, which rested on his thighs, his hands clasped between his knees. “Even with your sleeves rolled up.”

He shook his head no. “I could have cheated him easily enough, Inspector Troy. But I swear I didn’t.”

“Thank you for saying so. Although I was confident that you would admit the truth.” Sparta got to her feet. “ ‘Life and honour seemed in different categories. . . . the more that was lost the more precious the little left.’ ”

“What’s that mean?” McNeil growled.

“From an old book I glanced at recently–a passage that made me want to read the whole thing someday.

It gave me considerable insight into your situation. You’re quite good at concealing truths, Mr. McNeil, but your particular sense of honor makes it very difficult for you to lie outright.” She smiled. “No wonder you almost choked on that coffee.”

McNeil’s expression was puzzled now, almost humble. How could this pale, slim child have peered so deeply into his soul? “I still don’t understand what you mean to do.”

Sparta reached into her jacket again and brought out a small plastic book. “Star Queen will be inspected by other people after me, and they will be at least as thorough as I’ve been. Since you and I know you didn’t cheat Grant out of his life, it’s probably a good thing you thought to bring this book out with you, and that I never found it, and that I never had any suspicion of what a gifted amateur magician you are.” She tossed the book on the bed, beside the cards. It landed face up: Harry Blackstone on Magic.

“Keep the cards, too. Little gift to help you get well soon. I bought them ten minutes ago at a kiosk in the station.”

McNeil said, “I’m having the feelin’ that nothing I said came as much of a surprise to you, Inspector.” Sparta had her hand on the door panel, poised to leave. “Don’t think I admire you, Mr. McNeil. Your life and the way you choose to live it is your business. But it so happens I agree that there’s no justification for destroying the late, unfortunate Peter Grant’s reputation.” She wasn’t smiling now.

“That’s me speaking privately, not the law. If you’ve kept anything else from me, I’ll find it out–and if it’s criminal, I’ll have you for it.”

 

 

PART FIVE

BLOWOUT

 

 

 

 

XVII

Sparta reached Viktor Proboda on the commlink: he could stop playing games now. The passengers from Helios could come aboard.

Spaceports in space–unlike planetside shuttleports, which resemble ordinary airports–have a flavor all their own, part harbor, part trainyard, part truckstop. Small craft abound, tugs and tenders and taxis and cutters and self-propelled satellites, perpetually sliding and gliding around the big stations. There are very few pleasure craft in space (the eccentric billionaire’s hobby of solar yachting provides a rare exception) and unlike a busy harbor, there is no swashing about, no bounding over wakes or insolent cutting across bows. The daily routine is orbit-matching–exquisitely precise, with attendant constant recalculation of velocity differentials and mass/fuel ratios–so that in space even the small craft are as rigidly constrained to preset paths as freight cars in a switching yard. Except that in space, gangs of

computers are continually rearranging the tracks.

And aside from local traffic, spaceports are not very busy. Shuttles from the planet’s surface may call a few times a mouth, interplanetary liners and freighters a few times a year. Favorable planetary alignments tend to concentrate the busy times; then local chambers of commerce turn out costumed volunteers in force, greeting arriving liners the way Honolulu once greeted the Lurline and the Matsonia.

Lacking indigenous grass skirts or flower leis, space station boosters have invented novel “traditions” to reflect a station’s ethnic and political mix, its economic base, its borrowed mythologies: thus, arriving at Mars Station, a passenger might encounter men and women wearing Roman breastplates, showing their bare knees, and carrying red flags emblazoned with hammers and sickles.

At Port Hesperus the passengers from Helios, disembarking after a long delay, traversed a winding stainless steel corridor rippling with colored lights, garish signs boasting of the station’s mineral products in English and Arabic and Russian; kanji-splashed paper banners, fluttering in the breeze from the exhaust fans, added an additional touch of festivity.

When the passengers reached a glass-roofed section of the corridor they were distracted by a silent commotion overhead; looking up, they were startled to see a chitoned Aphrodite riding a plastic seashell, smiling and waving at them, and near her a Shinto sun goddess wafting prettily in her silk kimono. Both women floated freely in zero-gee, at odd angles to each other and everyone else. These apparitions of the station’s goddess (the Japanese were stretching the identity some) were haloed by a dozen grinning men, women, and children gesturing with fruit-and-flower baskets, products of the station’s hydroponic farms and gardens.

The passengers, before being allowed to ascend to the level of these heavenly creatures, faced one last obstacle. At the terminus of the corridor Inspector Viktor Proboda, flanked by respectful guards with stunguns at their sides, ushered them into a small cubical room upholstered on all six sides with dark blue carpet. Some were admitted individually, some in groups. On one wall of the carpeted cube a videoplate displayed the stern visage of Inspector Ellen Troy, bigger than life-size. She was ostentatiously studying a filescreen in front of her, its surface invisible to the videoplate watcher.

Sparta was actually in a hidden room not far from the disembarkation tube, and in fact she was paying no attention to the filescreen, which was a prop. She had arranged with Proboda to bring the passengers into the room in a specific order, and she had already disposed of most of them, including the Japanese professor and the Arabs with their families, and various engineers and travelling salesmen.

At the moment she was trying to hustle the Dutch schoolgirls on their way. “We won’t have to detain you any longer,” she said with a friendly smile.

“Hope the rest of your trip is more fun.”

“This has been the best part,” one of them said, and another added, with much batting of lashes at

Proboda, “We really are liking your comrade.” The third girl, however, looked as prim as Proboda himself.

“Through here, please,” he said, “all of you. To your right. Let’s move it along.”

“Bye, Vikee . . .”

“Vikee” felt Sparta’s amused gaze from the videoplate, but he managed to hurry the girls out and get Percy Farnsworth into the room without having to look her image in the eye. “Mr. Percy Farnsworth, London, representing Lloyd’s.” Farnsworth came into the interrogation cube with mustache twitching.

“Mr. Farnsworth, Inspector Troy,” Proboda said, indicating the videoplate.

Farnsworth managed to be brisk and breathless at the same time. “Eager to be of assistance in your investigation, Inspector. Say the word. This sort of thing my specialty, you know.” Sparta watched him, expressionless, for two seconds: a veteran confidence man who’d done his time, now working for the other side. That was the story, at any rate. “You’ve already been helpful, sir. Given us a great many leads.” She pretended to peruse his file on her dummy filescreen. “Mm. Your Lloyd’s syndicate seems to have been quite enthusiastic about Star Queen. Insured the ship, most of the cargo, the lives of the crew.”

“Quite. And naturally I’d like to contact Lloyd’s as soon as possible, file a preliminary . . .” She interrupted. “Well, off the record, I’d say the underwriters have gotten off lightly.” Farnsworth mulled this bit of information–what exactly did she mean?–and apparently decided the inspector was willing to play cozy with him. “Encouraging, that,” he said, and dropped his voice to a confidential murmur. “But would you mind terribly . . . this business with Grant . . .”

“I suppose you’d like to know if it was legally an accident or a suicide. That’s the big question here.

Unfortunately the solicitors will just have to fight it out, Mr. Farnsworth. I have nothing to add to the public record.” Her tone conveyed no coziness. “I’ll accept your kind offer of further assistance. Please move through that door on the left and wait for me inside.”

“There?” A door into a grim steel tube had suddenly opened in the carpetry. He peered through it hesitantly, as if expecting to meet a wild animal.

Sparta prodded him. “I won’t keep you more than ten minutes, sir. Carry on. Eh?” With a mumbled “Quite,” Farnsworth moved through the door. The moment he was clear it popped shut behind him. Proboda quickly opened the door to the disembarkation tube. “Mr. Nikos Pavlakis, Athens, representing Pavlakis Lines,” Proboda said. “This is Inspector Troy.”

Pavlakis bobbed his big head and said, “Good day, Inspector.” Sparta did not acknowledge him until she had finished reading something from her filescreen. Meanwhile he tugged nervously at the cuffs of his tight jacket.

“I see this is your first visit to Venus, Mr. Pavlakis,” she said, looking up. “Regrettable circumstances.”

“How is Mr. McNeil, Inspector?” Pavlakis asked. “Is he well? May I talk to him?”

“The clinic has already released him. You’ll be able to talk to him soon.” His concern struck her as sincere, but it did not deflect her from her line. “Mr. Pavlakis, I note that Star Queen is a new registry, yet the ship is actually thirty years old. What was her former registry?” The heavyset man flinched. “She has been completely refurbished, Inspector. Everything but the basic frame is new, or reconditioned, with a few minor . . .”

Viktor Proboda cut into Pavlakis’s nervous improvisation. “She asked for the former registry.”

“I . . . I believe the registry was NSS 69376, Inspector.”

“Kronos,” Sparta said. The word was an accusation. “Ceres in ’67, two members of the crew dead, a third woman injured, all cargo lost. Mars Station ’73, docking collision killed four workers on the station, cargo in one hold destroyed. Numerous accidents since involving loss of cargo. Several people have been injured and at least one other death has been attributed to below-standard maintenance. You had good reason to rechristen the ship, Mr. Pavlakis.”

“Kronos was not a good name for a spaceship,” Pavlakis said.

She nodded solemnly. “A titan who ate his own children. It must have been difficult to line up qualified crews.”

Pavlakis’s amber beads were working their way over and through his strong fingers. “When will I be allowed to examine my ship and its cargo, Inspector?”

“I’ll answer your questions as best I can, Mr. Pavlakis. As soon as I finish this procedure. Please wait for me–through that door to your left.”

Again the invisible door yawned unexpectedly on the cold steel tube. Grimly, staring down over his mustache, Pavlakis moved through it without another word.

When the door closed Proboda admitted the next passenger from the disembarkation tube. “Ms.

 

 

Nancybeth Mokoroa, Port Hesperus, unemployed.” She came in mad, glared at Proboda wordlessly, sneered at the videoplate. As the corridor door closed, sealing her inside, Proboda said, “This is Inspector Troy.”

“Ms. Mokoroa, a year ago you sued to break a three-year companionship contract with Mr. Vincent Darlington, shortly after you both had arrived here. The grounds were sexual incompatibility. Was Mr.

Darlington aware at the time that you had already become the de facto companion of Mrs. Sondra Sylvester?”

Nancybeth stared silently at the image on the videoplate, her face set in a mask of contempt that was the product of long practice–

–and which Sparta easily recognized as cover for her desperate confusion. Sparta waited.

“We’re friends,” Nancybeth said huskily.

Sparta said, “That’s nice. Was Mr. Darlington aware at the time that you were also lovers?”

“Just friends, that’s all!” The young woman stared wildly around at the claustrophobic carpeted room, at the hulking policeman beside her. “What the hell do you think you’re trying to prove? What is this . . . ?”

“All right, we’ll drop the subject. Now if you would . . .”

“I want a lawyer,” Nancybeth shrieked, deciding that offense was better than defense. “In here, right now. I know my rights.”

“. . . answer just one more question,” Sparta finished quietly.

“Not another damned word! Not one more word, blue-suit. This is unlawful detainment. Unreasonable search. . . .”

Sparta and Proboda traded glances. Search?

“Impugnment of dignity,” Nancybeth continued. “Slanderous implication. Malicious aforethought . . .” Sparta almost grinned. “Don’t sue us until you hear the question, okay?”

“So we don’t have to arrest you first,” Proboda added.

Nancybeth choked on her anger, realizing she’d jumped the gun. They hadn’t arrested her yet. Possibly

they wouldn’t. “What d’you wanna know?” She sounded suddenly exhausted.

“Nancybeth, do you think either of them–Sylvester or Darlington–would be capable of committing murder . . . for your sake?”

Nancybeth was startled into laughter. “The way they talk about each other? They both would.” Proboda leaned toward her. “The Inspector didn’t ask you what they . . .” But Sparta silenced him with a glance from the videoplate. “Okay, thanks, you can go. Through that door to your right.”

“Right?” Proboda asked, and Sparta nodded sharply. He opened the doorway.

Nancybeth was suspicious. “Where’s that go?”

“Out,” Proboda said. “Fruits and costumes. You’re free.”

The young woman stared wide-eyed around the room again, her flaring nostrils seeming almost to quiver. Then she darted through the door like a wildcat freed from a trap. Proboda looked at the videoplate, exasperated. “Why not her? It looked to me like she had a lot to hide.”

“What she’s hiding has nothing to do with Star Queen, Viktor. It’s from her own past, I’d guess. Who’s next?”

“Mrs. Sylvester. Look, I have to say I hope you’ll handle this with more tact than . . .”

“Let’s play the game the way we agreed.”

Proboda grunted and opened the door to the tube. “Mrs. Sondra Sylvester, Port Hesperus, chief executive of the Ishtar Mining Corporation.” His voice was as formal, as heavy with respect as a majordomo’s.

Sondra Sylvester floated smoothly into the small carpeted room, her heavy silks clinging about her.

“Viktor? Must we go through this yet again?”

“Mrs. Sylvester, I’d like to present Inspector Troy,” he said apologetically.

“I’m sure you’re eager to get to your office, Mrs. Sylvester,” Sparta said, “so I’ll be brief.”

“My office can wait,” Sylvester said firmly. “I’d like to unload my robots from that freighter.”

Sparta dipped her gaze to the phony filescreen, then up to Sylvester’s eyes. The women stared at each other through the electronics. “You’ve never dealt with Pavlakis Lines before,” Sparta said, “yet you helped persuade both the Board of Space Control and the ship’s insurers to waive the crew-of-three rule.”

“I believe I’ve just told Inspector Proboda why. I have sixmining robots in the cargo, Inspector. I need to put them to work soon.”

“You were very lucky, then.” Sparta’s relaxed voice conceded no sign that she was being pressured.