Murder in Orbit (10 page)

Cassie looked puzzled. So did I, for that matter.

“Well, it should be obvious,” said Dr. Puckett, rolling his eyes. “Even if the thought of killing off an innocent bystander doesn't slow our villain down, the thought of the attention that
two
deaths would bring to the BS Factory surely will. Which, to go back to your original question, is why we not only have to report the scooter incident, but to report it in the right way.”

“I've got it,” I said. “Once we've reported it, whoever rigged the thing won't dare try it again. One failure like that could be an accident. If it happens twice, everyone will
know
something is going on.”

Dr. Puckett nodded serenely. “We might make a thinker out of you yet. What you didn't mention is that we have to make the report read as though
we
think it was an accident. That will both keep the officials out of this and simultaneously confuse our opponents a little, which is generally a useful tactic.”

“I don't like it, Elmo,” said Helen. “You're asking the kids to take too many risks. We should just turn this thing over to the authorities.”

Dr. Puckett actually managed to look stern. “What authorities? The colonial management? This job calls for intellect, Helen. Intellect, logic, and deductive reasoning. Even two out of three wouldn't be bad on most days. But you know as well as I do that if you combine the best three bureaucrats in this place you'll be lucky to end up with more than one and a half of those traits.”

I glanced at Cassie to see how she was taking this attack on her father's profession. Not well. Her eyes were smoldering, and I had a feeling she was about to launch some angry response.

Dr. Chang beat her to the punch. “Elmo, I can put up with your oversize ego when it's only feelings that are getting hurt. But this time you're playing with people's lives.”

“Not me,” said Dr. Puckett. “But someone is. And that's exactly why we're keeping this to ourselves. We don't know what kind of person we're dealing with yet. About all we do know is that this person has a very small regard for human life. How small? That's the question, Helen.
How small
? One person, we don't even know who, is dead already. But for a combination of luck and intellect, Rusty would be in the same deplorable condition. Where does a person who would commit two murders stop? How desperate is he? Desperate enough to kill again? To kill a dozen people? To kill a hundred? This colony is very well designed. But it is not sabotage proof. And it certainly isn't maniac proof. Until I know what we're dealing with, I'm not going to pass the situation on to some fuzzy-brained, fumble-fingered administrative assistant who might just push our mysterious friend into doing something we'll all regret, should we live long enough to see it.”

Well, as you know, I already took this thing pretty seriously. But by the time Dr. Puckett finished that little speech, I was wondering if maybe I should just bow out. I get pretty fuzzy-brained and fumble-fingered myself sometimes. I didn't want to be the one to make a mistake that would push our murderer over the deep end.

I said so.

“Too late, Rusty,” said Dr. Puckett. “You're already in this up to your eyebrows. Besides, if
you
do something stupid, you'll at least have the brains to let me try to fix it—a situation that does not, I assure you, apply when we are dealing with the bureaucracy of this place.”

Helen Chang's dark eyes were flashing. “If what you just said has any validity, I may see it after I finish sorting through all the nonsense you wrapped it in, Elmo. But that's going to take a long time. So unless you need me for anything else right now, I've got some work of my own to finish.”

Dr. Puckett nodded, like a statue of the Buddha coming momentarily to life, and Helen left the room. He rolled his eyes as she went, then twitched his head toward Cassie. Without a word, she moved to follow Helen.

“She'll calm down in a little while,” he said when we were alone. “This sometimes happens when I overestimate her tolerance for my ego. None of which changes the reality of the problems I just enumerated.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Two things. First we file a report on the scooter incident. Then I'm going to show you something that should give you a clue about what's going on over there.”

“You mean you know?” I asked in surprise.

“I don't know exactly who did what to whom. But I have a pretty good idea of what's underneath it all.” He sighed. “I suppose Helen will be angry with me over that, too. You see, I
was
being a little overdramatic when I made my big speech just now. Not that the danger isn't real, mind you. It is. But I do doubt that anyone has actually been killed yet.”

He paused, then looked me in the eye. “The trick is going to be to see if we can keep it that way.”

Chapter 15

Bootleg Research

“You're going to like this,” said Dr. Puckett, pushing a button and settling back into a chair.

It was the first time I had actually seen him sit in a chair. But then, it was the first time I had ever seen an easy chair inside an elevator—if, indeed, that's what the thing we were in actually was. It had the general feel of an elevator. But it was far more luxurious than any elevator I had ever seen—or imagined.

The door closed and we started to move. At least I had been right about that much. It
was
an elevator.

We had reached the elevator by way of Dr. Puckett's luxurious living quarters, which were by far the largest I had seen in the colony.

The elevator stopped. The door slid open, and we stepped into a small room. The place had gravity, but it was very low, maybe a tenth of normal. Since that left his functional weight at only 15 kilograms or so, Dr. Puckett was able to bound across the floor like a ballet dancer. When he reached the other side of the room, he pushed a button, then watched, smiling, while part of one wall peeled away to provide a clear view of the stars beyond.

It was breathtaking.

Unfortunately, it was a little too reminiscent of my recent adventure for me to appreciate it properly.

“What is this place?” I asked, fighting down a bubble of panic.

“One of my hobbies,” said Dr. Puckett jovially. “A private observation port I worked into the plans when the colony was still in the dreaming stages.”

I looked at him. “How do you get away with things like that?”

He chuckled. “Power generally comes from a combination of sources, Rusty. To begin with, I have a great deal of money. However, contrary to popular opinion, money is often not enough. Fortunately for me, I also control the patents on several technologies without which these colonies can't be built. That gives me quite a bit of clout when I want to negotiate for something special. But what really puts me over the edge when I want something like this is the fact that, when I choose to be, I am a genuinely likable person.” He smiled. “You may find that hard to believe. But it's true. I'm not talking about being a bootlicker; everyone despises that kind of person, no matter how much they might enjoy the flattery. It's just that underneath all the prickles, I'm a nice guy.”

I thought about it for a moment. If someone had asked me to describe Dr. Puckett, I would have started out by saying he was the crankiest, most obnoxious human being I had ever met.

Yet why was I here now? Because my grandfather had asked Dr. Puckett to help me. At first I had thought Gramps was calling in a favor. But that wasn't the case. In fact, the reverse was true. My grandfather knew Dr. Puckett because the scientist had helped him out with some stories. And now the man was helping me, too. Not because he owed Gramps a favor. Simply because he felt like it.

I realized something else about him. Because he had chosen to be larger than life himself, Elmo Puckett made life exciting for others. Being with him gave even the most routine moments a feeling that you were hovering at the edge of something special. I had met Elmo only two days earlier. But I knew already that if I survived this investigation, I would very much want to remain part of his inner circle. In fact, I would probably do just about anything he asked of me.

It was then that I began to understand how Elmo Puckett got away with so much.

It wasn't his scorn people feared.

It was the possibility of losing his presence in your life.

Dr. Puckett took his place at a console filled with dials, switches, and a variety of video monitors that stretched across one side of the room.

“Sit here,” he said, motioning beside him.

I sat.

“This is what I really wanted to show you,” he said. The excitement in his voice was contagious. “Take a look out there.”

He pointed toward the lower right corner of the window. I stared, wondering what I was supposed to be looking for.

“See that bright spot—about half a meter up and maybe ten centimeters in?”

I nodded.

“Okay, watch the monitor in front of you. I'll give you a close-up view.”

He fiddled with the console a bit. Suddenly a familiar-looking object appeared on the screen. It was one of the colony's radio telescopes, a complicated construction of tubes and flat surfaces larger than the colony itself. There were a dozen of these telescopes in all, stationed in an enormous ring around the colony.

“Let's see what it's focused on,” said Dr. Puckett. He tapped away at the console. The wall slid back into place. I heard a clicking noise, and then a picture of a reddish disk appeared on the blank surface.

“Mars,” said Dr. Puckett. “Dr. Yolen is monitoring the weather conditions for the Morigi/Russell exploration party.”

I stared at the wall in fascination. Good pictures of Mars aren't that unusual, of course. But it was something else to see the planet as it was
at that very moment
. I heard the keys clicking; the picture zoomed in to show more details—first a red desert scattered with enormous boulders, then Olympus Mons, the famous giant volcano that stands more than two and a half times as tall as Mount Everest.

Before I had begun to have nearly enough of looking at the ancient planet, Dr. Puckett changed the picture again.

“Io,” he said, as a slightly egg-shaped object appeared on the wall. The Jovian moon was mottled with shades of yellow, orange, red, and brown. As Dr. Puckett continued to enlarge the image, I saw a huge gaseous plume billowing up from the surface. One of the volatile satellite's volcanoes was in full eruption.

More clicking keys, and the picture changed yet again. This time the screen showed a luminous globe floating in a sea of darkness, its surface a shifting mixture of blues and whites.

“Home,” said Dr. Puckett. The tone in his voice was unmistakably, if somewhat surprisingly, wistful. Not that it wasn't easy to be wistful for a place that, from this viewpoint at least, was really remarkably beautiful.

All this impressed me. But I couldn't figure out what it had to do with whatever was going on at the BS Factory.

“It's very pretty,” I said cautiously.

“Pretty?” cried Dr. Puckett. “Calling
that
‘pretty' is like saying the universe is ‘big.' You ain't lying, but you certainly ain't doing it justice.” He snorted, though whether it was directed at me, or at himself for being caught in a moment of sentiment, I wasn't sure. “Anyway, I have something else I want to show you.”

He tapped a few more keys. A chart appeared on the screen in front of me. As near as I could make out, it was a list of the twelve radio telescopes, along with information on what they were currently monitoring, who was using them, and what priority level was given to both the user and the project.

“We'll use number nine,” said Dr. Puckett. “Farns-worth isn't doing anything important with it right now, and that's where I have the biggest block of data built up.”

“What are you doing?” I asked at last.

“Painting a picture of the universe.”

“Well,” I said somewhat sharply, “that explains everything.”

Dr. Puckett laughed. “Hoisted on my own petard! You'd better watch out, Rusty. I may be catching. Spend too much time around me and you, too, may develop a reputation for cranky superciliousness.”

“Whatever that means,” I said.

“Look it up,” replied Dr. Puckett. (I did; it's a twenty-dollar way of saying “snotty.”)

“Can we get back to the universe?” I asked, trying to take the conversation someplace that would do me some good.

“Certainly,” said Dr. Puckett jovially. “For the last year I've been using this radio telescope to examine the ultraviolet radiation from a sector of space twenty billion light-years away from here. Think about that for a minute, Rusty. The light I'm looking at is twenty billion years old. When I examine it—for example, when I analyze a quasar in that area—I'm not seeing what that quasar looks like today. I don't have the slightest idea what it looks like today. For all I know it may not even exist anymore. What I'm seeing is what it looked like
twenty billion years ago
. It's almost like having a time machine; I'm looking right into the past—in this case back to the time when we think the universe was created.”

He leaned back in his chair and stretched. “It's deliciously frustrating. Every time we think we've made it back to the beginning, we find another layer to peel away. The well of the past is very deep indeed.”

I still wasn't sure what this had to do with the BS Factory. But I was beginning to understand that when Dr. Puckett wanted to tell you something, he did it on his own schedule.

“That little project is pretty much smiled upon,” he said, sitting up to the keyboard again. “I feed the data to a couple of scientists who are officially working on the topic, and nobody much minds.

“But I've got another little thing going here that really isn't approved.” He wiggled his eyebrows and flashed me a wicked grin. “I'm searching for extraterrestrial intelligence.”