Bones Burnt Black: Serial Killer in Space (11 page)

“Officially, only four hours, but the engines are
guaranteed to 110% of their standard thrust. That would let us arrive on time
even after a delay of 7.2 hours, which— Wait a minute! Wait just a damn minute!
Are you two arm-wrestling again?”

“Arm-wrestling?” grunted Kim. “What makes you think—”

“What the hell is wrong with you two? If you’re not
racing in the hallways you’re playing soccer in the hangar deck. I’ve a good
mind to separate you for your own safety.”

“Save the lecture,” grunted Mike. “We’re immune,
remember? Besides, it’s your fault. You introduced us.”

“Don’t remind me. I just wish you two would learn to
make-out like everybody else. Love isn’t supposed to be a competition or a
tournament. It’s supposed to be tender and supportive and— and—”

“Captain,” Kim said in a voice of exaggerated surprise,
“I had no idea you were such a romantic.”

“Oh, shut-up. Just get out there and check that engine.
That is, if you can tear yourself away from the latest grudge-match.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” she grunted. “I’m on my way.”

“Good. Captain: out and clear.”

In the seconds following the captain’s call, however,
neither competitor relaxed their right arm. Neither wanted to be the first to
give-up. Their arms quivered with growing fatigue, but the match stretched on.

A layer of sweat an eighth of an inch deep coated Kim’s
forehead. In zero-g it could not drip or flow or run down her face. It just
accumulated: clinging to her skin in the exact location it had been secreted.
“I really should go now,” she grunted. And as if to emphasize her words, shook
her head and slung huge drops of sweat at her opponent. Drops so large they
undulated as they traveled slowly through the air.

Mike felt the drops strike his equally sweat covered
face. Their impacts produced tiny splashes on his cheek, forehead and chin. One
drop touched his lips. It seeped slowly into the gap between them and spread
over his teeth and tongue. He tasted its saltiness. He liked it. It tasted like
her.

“Yes, you really should go.”

But neither eased their grip.

“The captain will be expecting me.”

“Yes, I imagine he will.” Mike wiped his forehead with
his free hand. “Maybe you should just go ahead and give-up.”

“Me give-up? Why don’t you give-up?”

“Because you won the arm-wrestling match before
breakfast this morning,” he said. “That way we’ll be even for the day.”

“Yeah, but you won both matches yesterday. That would
put you ahead by—”

The captain’s voice barked from Kim’s shirt pocket.
“Let go of his hand and go check-out that engine!”

Kim yanked her hand away from Mike’s and jumped for the
door. “Aye aye!”

Mike watched her coast through the room, traveling a
perfectly straight line over sofas and easy chairs and various low tables until
she grabbed the door frame with one hand and used it to swing through a ninety
degree turn like an ape. This maneuver changed her path enough to allow her to coast
the length of the hallway without slowing. It also removed her from Mike’s
view.

Alone in the passenger’s lounge, Mike sat at the little
round table with its smears of fresh sweat and thought about how much he liked
her and how much he didn’t want this flight to end and how much he wanted to
spend more time with her. Again, he thought of asking her. But suddenly he
found himself yanked back into the Kim-less reality of deck ten by a high
pitched squeal of disgust.

Tina bore the expression of someone who had been
chewing on lemons. Sitting on her ventilation duct, she had ripped open a
plastic envelope of cold chicken soup and—since no one had possessed the
foresight to gather spoons or bowls—had lifted it to her mouth and drank.

Apparently, it had not been to her liking, for she now
attempted to brush her teeth with her fingers. When she noticed everyone
staring at her she exclaimed, fingers still in her mouth, “Globs of grease are
sticking to my teeth!”

Paying too little attention to her food envelope, she
spilled half of it across her bare thighs. “Aaaaa!” She jumped up and wiped the
cold liquid and gelatin-like lumps of congealed fat from her legs, dropping the
food envelope in the process. When it hit the ceiling near her feet it splashed
large greasy droplets onto her pure white zero-g shoes.

She stomped her feet. “Damn!” Then stomped them in time
with her curses. “Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn!” She turned and pointed at
Mike. “If you hadn’t dropped that last load I’d be eating
hot
food right
now!”

“It wasn’t his fault,” said Nikita “It was the idiot
Zahid who stumbled.”

“Now, now,” Gideon said. “I’m sure it was an honest
mistake. We should all forgive and forget.”

Mike stood and walked past the rows of stainless steel
I-beams hung with coils of yellow rope to a far section of deck ten’s curved
wall. He wanted to put some distance between himself and the others. He also
felt a need to look out one of the cargo deck’s small round windows.

The stars outside were running around in a big circle
as though the entire sky had been mounted on some kind of huge antique record
player. Mike searched for several seconds before giving up. “Pocketsize,” he
whispered. “Where is Earth?”

The tiny computer’s softly feminine voice whispered
back, “It should appear about twenty degrees from the sun. It was silhouetted
against the sun’s surface until about an hour ago.”

Risking the sun’s glare—since it too was running around
in the big circle—he looked through the window and off to his right. He found
it: a bright blue dot no larger than a pinhead when viewed from across a room.
It imitated the stars: tracing out a circle in the sky once every five seconds
or so. He followed its motion with his eyes and tried to spot the Moon. There
were several dim stars near the blue dot, the Moon would be one of those,
though exactly which one was unclear.

Earth, it occurred to him, was growing progressively
closer. At this distance, however, the change would be too gradual to observe
with the unaided eye: like trying to perceive the movement of a clock’s hour
hand.

“Pocketsize,” he whispered again. “How far are we from
Earth?”

“Approximately five million miles.”

“How close will we come to it as we pass?”

“Within two million.”

“When?”

“About six hours from now.”

It felt strange watching the Earth and Moon go by;
knowing you can’t stop; knowing you may never see them again; knowing many of
the people there are watching you, or talking about you, or thinking about you;
and knowing that no one there—or anywhere else—can do anything to save you.

How many news programs will we be on tonight? How
many strangers will learn my name and my face but have no idea what kind of
person I am? How many experts will give interviews explaining the details of
why it’s impossible for me to survive?

And what if they’re right? What if this is it? What
if we all burn up? Is this all my life has been leading up to? Is this all I
was ever going to do? It makes my life seem such a waste. All the things I’ve
learned; all the experiences I’ve accumulated; is all that just going to be
thrown away? Tossed out like old garbage? I don’t think I’m ready to die.

This last thought struck him as singularly odd.

How can anyone be ready to die? Wouldn’t that be the
same as being ready to give-up? As being ready to quit; to surrender; to fail?
How can you be ready to fail?

He stood a little taller.

Well, I am not ready to fail!
He looked at the
blue dot.
I’ll make a fool out of every expert on Earth if I have to. I’m
gonna survive this. I’m coming back. I’m gonna walk on the Earth and dance on
the Moon.

His pocketsize interrupted this reverie. “The ship is
calling.”

“Put it through. Mike here. What’s up?”

“Michael McCormack, it is my unfortunate duty to inform
you that the captain has succumbed to his internal injuries.”

“What?”

“Your stint as commander of the spaceship Corvus will
apparently be extended until the conclusion of this flight.”

Mike’s voice shook. “Larry’s dead?”

“I’m afraid so. I understand you knew him.”

Mike responded with, “Yeah,” but the word was weak and
its ending seemed to fade off into silence. Even to himself he sounded lost, or
dazed, or both. He noticed a growing tightness in his chest and throat.

The ship said, “Please accept my condolences.”

Mike stared at the distant blue speck and said very
slowly. “Um. Yeah. Thanks.”

Chapter Seven

When they were finished eating and all sitting in one
large, almost relaxed, conversational group, some on ventilation ducts, some on
the ceiling, Mike informed everyone that the captain was dead. They took the
news better than he had, which was hardly surprising, they hadn’t known Larry
as long or as well. Only Akio showed fear at the loss of the captain.
Presumably the young engineer had not written the old man off as already dead
while simply unconscious, bleeding internally and trapped—beyond reach of
help—under five crushing gees of centrifugal force. The announcement was
followed by questions, all of which seemed directed at Mike. Apparently, he
really was the leader. Now all he had to do was figure out all the answers.

Nikita asked calmly, as though lives did not depend on
it, “Just how bad will solar passage be?”

“Well, the only human-made objects that have ever
passed closer to the sun than we will,” Mike said, “were the unmanned Star-Fire
probes. And the only reason they survived the experience was because they were
completely mirrored against sunlight and heavily shielded against radiation.”

“But this ship is covered with mirrors,” Tina said, her
eyes suddenly wide with hope. “Won’t that protect us?”

Mike shook his head. “The mirrors on Corvus only
reflect 94% of the light that strikes them. That means they absorb 6%. At
closest approach, 6% will be enough to heat them above their melting point.”

Tina’s face turned angry. “Who’s stupid idea was it to
let the extension of our trajectory pass so close to the sun?”

“I imagine the trajectory was only supposed to be aimed
near the sun for a minute, at the very most, during the deceleration burn. We
were in the J-maneuver for docking at Von Braun when the engines shut down.”

“What?”

“A J-maneuver is the standard path used by all ships
large and small when approaching or leaving any zero-g docking facility. When
done properly none of the craft’s exhaust strikes the facility and the docking
is done on the facility’s backside compared to the direction the craft had come
in from. It’s—”

“I know what a stupid J-maneuver is,” Tina said, and to
prove it quoted some old textbook on the subject, “Mathematically, the path of
a J-maneuver is one half of a parabolic curve. It’s performed by running a
ship’s engines while executing a gradual 180 degree turn. The rotation rate is
not constant, but conforms to the… hyperbolic sine?… of the total burn time. Or
is it the cosine?” She frowned slightly and shook her head. “I forget.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mike said. “We’re not going to be
doing another one anytime soon.”

Gideon, sitting on the ceiling and leaning back against
a ventilation duct, cleared his throat. “I just remembered an old joke my
father told me.” He stared off at nothing in particular and was not smiling.

“I could use a joke right about now,” Mike said, and he
meant it.

But Gideon quoted the lines coldly, without joy, and
all the while staring off at nothing. “NASA has decided to land a man on the
sun.”

“Land on the sun?” Tina said, taking the bait. “That’s
impossible!”

“No,” Gideon said, “they’ve got it all figured out.
They’re going to land at night.”

No one in the group laughed.

Tina said, “I don’t get it.”

Gideon turned and looked her in the eye. “I’m not
surprised. Not surprised at all.”

Tina stood and stormed off—perhaps interpreting
Gideon’s statement as one of condescending rudeness. Mike didn’t care. He cared
even less when Akio jumped to his feet and chased after her. To console her? To
explain that Gideon couldn’t possibly have meant anything rude? That it was
probably just an allusion to the difference in viewpoint of today’s space
faring society versus the old ground-based perspective of his father’s time?
Mike had no idea.

“The ship is calling again,” Mike’s pocketsize said.

“Put it through.” He braced himself for the next bit of
bad news. “Now what’s wrong?”

“I just wanted to let you know that the fuel leak has
stopped. This is good in that it means the ship’s tumbling rate, and therefore
its centrifugal gee force, will no longer increase. But of course it’s also bad
since the only reason it stopped is because the fuel tanks are now completely
empty.”

“What are the gees at the far ends of the ship?”

“The bridge and engines are under a centrifugal
equivalent of six gees.”

Mike squinted. “That’s got to be a strain on the hull.”

“It’s foamed stainless steel. It can take it. Although
I estimate this craft is now approximately two feet longer than normal.”

That was a mental picture Mike did not enjoy pondering.
From the mixture of worried and startled faces on those around him, he could
tell they enjoyed it even less.

The ship continued, “It was my original hope that the
hair would clog the leak and allow some of the fuel to be retained.”

“About that hair in the fuel tanks—” Mike started.

“What hair?” asked Nikita. “What are you talking
about?”

“There was human hair in the fuel tanks,” Mike said.
“That’s what put the engines into auto-shutdown.”

Nikita looked incredulous. “Human hair?”

“Yes, it appeared so,” said the ship. “In my summary
earlier I didn’t have time to include all the details of how the engines were
sabotaged. When Kim Kirkland went out to work on them she discovered that
engine one’s fuel filter was clogged with what appeared to be—and in fact may
have been—human hair.” The ship’s voice changed tone slightly to indicate it
was now addressing a different person. “Mister McCormack, do you believe the
fact that hair was used has some significance?”

Mike looked down at his feet and rubbed the back of his
neck as he searched through a complicated tangle of many interlocking memories
for a place to begin. He picked one and started. “Seventeen years ago, while
prospecting on the Moon, my partner Richard Tyer died because his engines
failed three miles above the lunar south pole. The investigators searched his
craft’s wreckage and traced the cause to a fuel filter clogged with human hair.
They also discovered human hair in his fuel tanks. The investigators decided it
was some kind of freak fueling accident. I’ve always been uncertain—until now.”

“I see,” the ship said. “Yes, it would seem that both
sabotages might well be related, but if so, does that mean you know the
identity of our saboteur?”

“No, but it sure ought to help narrow the field. Tell
me, does Corvus’s library computer include old newswire reports? Well, it
wouldn’t have to be newswire stuff. How much information do you have on the
Lunar Rover Smuggling incident back in 2022?”

“The trial was in 2022,” the ship corrected. “The
incident itself occurred in late October of 2021. On this subject the library
contains four one-hour video documentaries; 14 books; 37 encyclopedia
references; 62 magazine articles; 736 newswire reports; and 317 video clips,
mostly of the trial proceedings and post trial interviews.”

Mike nodded. “I want you to go through all of it. Are
you familiar with mine and Richard Tyer’s involvement?”

“Hold please.” Five seconds passed. “I am now.”

“Good. Cross correlate all that information and you
should discover who has the motivation, opportunity and peculiar mind-set
needed to be our saboteur.”

“I understand,” the ship said. “I will begin at once.”

“Can you give me an estimated time of completion?”

“Yes. Minimum: twenty minutes. Maximum: four hours.
Most probable: seventy seven minutes.”

Mike turned and gave Gideon a big smile. “Finally,
we’re getting somewhere!”

Gideon only managed a half-smile in return. He glanced
at Nikita and Zahid and then glanced in the direction Akio and Tina had gone.
Leaning closer to Mike, he whispered very softly but with a degree of urgency,
“I don’t want to pee on your cake, but if the saboteur thinks you are about to
unmask him or her might not he or she become a lot more dangerous?”

Mike glanced around too. “Yeah, I guess that’s a
possibility.”

Nikita and Zahid leaned apart and squinted at each
other.

The ship announced, “I am detecting a coded radio
transmission.”

A cold sweat spread over Mike’s skin. “Where’s—” The
muffled thud of a distant explosion caused all the muscles in his body to
tightened and lock in position. He managed to blurt, “Ship, what was that?”

“I do not know. I am searching all subsystems for any—I
found it. There is a small leak in the liquid oxygen delivery system which
supplies Corvus’s fuel cells. If not repaired there will be a ship-wide power
failure in approximately… twenty-three minutes.”

“Where’s the leak?”

“In a one-quarter inch diameter section of stainless
steel tubing that runs between decks eighteen and nineteen in the very heart of
engineering.”

“Do I have to ask?”

“No. That area is experiencing five point seven gees.
If you were there you would weigh almost eleven hundred pounds.”

_____

It’s a ship all right, but look at the size of it!
Kim’s target had grown from a shapeless star into an object as large as a
finger held at arm’s length. It might have appeared less imposing, perhaps even
smaller, if it had not been tumbling end-over-end.

Does it tumble to simulate gravity? Is that part of
its design?
She wasn’t sure; nor was she sure if this was the ship she had
been aboard before her mysterious EVA.

A distorted reflection of the sun’s glaring yellow disk
danced and skipped across the cylindrical craft’s silvery skin. It did this
twice for each rotation—once as the bridge dome swung into view from under the
bottom and then again as the twin engines did the same.

Glancing at her watch, she timed the craft’s rotation
rate by counting out one rotation each time the engines rounded the top. After
ten rotations, she stopped.
Forty-seven seconds divided by ten. That’s 4.7
seconds per rotation.
She frowned slightly.
Wouldn’t that make the
artificial gravity a bit strong?
She shrugged the thought away.
The
engineers must have known what they were doing.

Though still traveling toward the ship, she could now
see the natural imperfection of her aim: her trajectory would not intersect it.
She would miss by several hundred feet.

Pulling out the patch-kit knife again, she waited until
closest approach looked to be about three minutes away, then carefully stabbed
a new hole in the belly of her suit. This time she aimed the jet of escaping
gas in the direction she was traveling so as to slow herself.

Again, she worried:
Am I using too much oxygen? All
this maneuvering isn’t going to do much good if I suffocate five seconds before
I get inside.

The hypodermic was now only half filled with its thick
white fluid. She held it at the ready. When she estimated she’d come to a stop
relative to the ship, she poked its tapering tip into the hole and squeezed the
trigger. The jet vanished and a new white bulge grew on her suit’s stomach
alongside the first. Before solidifying, the new one touched and then partially
overlapped the old.

Her timing had been good: she floated nearly motionless
relative to her goal. Five hundred feet away, it completely dominated her view
of the star strewn black sky. The tumbling ship appeared as large as a fresh
roll of paper towels held at arm’s length—which would not have been so
impressive had this roll of paper towels not been over two hundred feet long
and the size and shape of a twenty story building.

She tried to spot an airlock near the center of its
rotation: one in a place where the tumbling would not sling her off.
Scrutinizing the ship’s midsection proved fruitless. There wasn’t one.

Damn. This is not going to be easy.

Her attention became drawn, involuntarily, to the
extreme ends of the giant spinning ship. A traffic cop’s radar gun was not
needed to see they were moving faster than a hundred miles per hour. It was
difficult to stop imagining herself getting in their way, and easy to imagine
one of the ends swatting her like a big fat bug, knocking the blood-red
bug-juice out of her in a single splat.

Approaching the craft would have to be done with great
care: the same care with which an unnaturally intelligent fly might approach
the hub of a spinning house fan, ever wary of the merciless whirling blades.

By swinging her arms in large circles Kim rotated her
body until she’d turned her back to the center of the spinning ship. She then
selected the two largest wrenches from her suit’s tool pack and, to make sure
they massed about the same, shook each to feel their inertia. Placing one in
each hand, she drew her arms back and, like some kind of ambidextrous underhand
softball pitcher, threw them both simultaneously.

Tumbling swiftly away, the wrenches crossed paths and
bumped in the vacuum without so much as the barest hint of a clang. Bright
sunlight flashed and sparkled from their polished surfaces as they shrank into
the distance. Soon they were invisible except for the occasional, and ever
weakening, flare of reflected sun.

Swinging her arms in large circles once more, she
turned and faced the ship. She couldn’t tell if she was approaching or not—it
didn’t seem to be growing. She’d known the thrust produced by throwing wrenches
would be small, that’s why she’d done it. She tried to remain patient.

Sixty seconds later the change was obvious. Her
approach speed, she estimated, was less than one foot per second, and the time
until she would touch the ship was at least six minutes. Exactly where she
would touch, however, was still not clear. More patience was called for.

Ten minutes later she was much closer, but still had
about two minutes yet to go. She spotted her own wildly distorted reflection
dancing across the silvery surface as it rotated before her.