Murder On the Mars Terraformer
Murder on the Mars Terraformer
by Lanier Thomas (A.K.A. Doc Thomas)
“Ping!” Her smartphone let her know there was a message from her daughter. With her ship hurtling through space at 58,000 kilometers per hour towards Mars, Mission Specialist Darmika Allison unlocked her phone and read the message from her daughter that she had not seen in over two months.
“Hi mom,” it read, “ can I go to a sleep over at Karen’s house? Dad said I had to ask you.”
Knowing her daughter only too well, Darmika responded, “Uh, huh. What did your dad actually say?”
Damita was just fourteen. She was old enough to have discovered boys were cute, but still young enough to want to do pajama parties and some kid things. With her hormones raging, as they do in all boys and girls her age, she was becoming moody and all sorts of minor problems were suddenly huge, in her view. She had also learned how to manipulate mom and dad and work the system. This was especially effective since Darmika and her husband had divorced years ago.
Damita’s reply read, “He said I couldn’t go because I only made a C on my economics test. Then, he said I should ask you. Can I go?”
Knowing her ex-husband never said anything of the sort because he was a decisive man, Darmika said. “Honey, you do what your dad tells you to do. Get your grades up and then you can go to sleepovers.”
On it went. On Earth she would have been irritated, but out here, in the dark depths of space, she could only laugh. That her daughter was still the same lent some grounding to her being so far from home in such an inhospitable place. Darmika had divorced her husband, David, a few years past because she had felt too tied down. She wanted more, somehow. What that more was, she didn’t know, but something more. She was an activist, campaigning against the damage humans had done to Earth. The god she worshipped, Samudravasane Devi, Mother Earth, was sick. David was simply too laid back for her in that regard and her daughter was a lot like him. Still, she was proud of Damita and hoped she would follow in her footsteps.
***
The selection process for the Mars Terraforming Mission had been many months long. The applicants were narrowed down weekly. Not only did the applicants have to have the qualifications that met the mission directive, but simple things, such as how dry someone’s skin was, or even their natural body odor, were taken into account. People with strong body odor or sour body odor would be an irritant in such a long voyage. Their personalities were tested for compatibility and how tolerant and easy going each one was. While never one hundred percent accurate, especially when dealing with the crafty dark triad of personality disorders, they were tested for these and other issues, such as depression, claustrophobia, anxiety, and other things. There were six men and six women chosen and all were unmarried. The thinking was that if they were unable to return for any reason, a colony might be able to be established sooner than planned. It was three months confined in the ship to Mars, four months on planet, and many more months to return. Earth and Mars would have drastically changed positions relative to each other as they made their orbits around the sun. The return trip would be longer, but this would also give the ship greater time to build up more speed, thus shortening that time, somewhat.
Finally, the crew was chosen. Colonel Calvin “Cal” Anderson was the commander of the mission. He went to the University of Texas, where he graduated with an engineering degree. He was a colonel in the Texas Air National Guard and grew up on a ranch as a real cowboy. Religious by preference and upbringing, he wasn’t ultra-conservative and certainly not the in-your-face kind of religious. Instead, his religion gave him a quiet confidence that was infectious. It made those around him feel safe, somehow. His six feet and one hundred ninety pounds, was crowned by short dark hair and piercing blue eyes. On the crew, only Win Broadax was larger. He had never married and it was a sore subject with him, for some reason. No one knew what had happened, but whatever it was, he no longer had serious relationships with any women. Many predicted it was only a matter of time, however. He, himself, knew he was much too driven to succeed at the moment to stop for marriage, though he knew many successful people were in fact married.
He participated in the Project Restoration, an ongoing effort to reintroduce endangered species to their native habitats. Much of the money came from hunting licenses and fees, plus donations by sportsmen. This was much to the chagrin of anti-hunters, who gave very little in the way of funding and much in the way of rhetoric. They were loud and obnoxious and ignored the facts. This irritated a logical mind like Cal’s to no end.
As he went down the list of his crew and what he knew about them, he walked slowly down the arm of the space station and to the enormous and revolutionary Mars Terraformer. He could see its sleek, graceful white bulk through the view ports as he walked past. Coming aboard the ship he noted that workers were making last minute checks and one was tightening a loose bolt on a chair in the ship’s command center when he entered. He went down the narrow corridor between the sections of the ship and to his cabin in the living section. He stashed his bag, put his spare pastel yellow uniform coveralls into the dresser, and closed the door. The uniform colors were a nod to the old television show Star Trek. The command uniforms had actually been green on that show, but showed up yellow on the cameras of the day. Science and medical personnel wore pastel blue coveralls. Engineering and Payload personnel wore red coveralls. Each uniform had the person’s last name on their right chest, NASA on the left chest, and the Mars Terraforming Mission patch on their left shoulder. As he put his uniforms and other items away, he wondered for the hundredth time whether or not they were all crazy to get into a new type of ship, as yet untried, and do so for many months, and shoot out across the solar system in it. A million things could go wrong and out there, no one was around to help them. He shrugged mentally and went back to the command center.
Regin Cheah passed Cal in the dining area. She was headed to her cabin to stow her gear. It was nearly time for the launch and they all needed to get their gear aboard and go to their stations for last minute checks. She was the pilot and was a first generation American. Her black hair, tanned skin, and almond eyes showed that her family had immigrated from China. They had come through Thailand and she was born in the United States of America two months after their arrival. Her father worked for NASA as a scientist and her mother was a homemaker, though well educated. Regin went to SoCal, the University of Southern California. She had some leftist leanings, but because of her parents, they were not strong, being more moderate. Her parents had fled a regime with those beliefs and worked hard to instill American values into their daughter. She was unmarried, though she had a boyfriend and a dog back home. She was a major in the California Air National Guard. In her everyday life she was a commercial pilot. She was involved in Arbor and each year she helped plant new trees in deforested areas. She liked the trees, but she liked the outdoors and the variety it added to her life even more. She didn’t mind loggers and businesses that cut down trees. She invested in logging and paper manufacture, while advocating that bamboo was a better and more quickly renewable resource that easily could replace trees. Some kinds of bamboo would grow three feet a day, where trees too years to grow. She was vocal about her beliefs in this area and would tell anyone, whether they listened or not. Mostly, they didn’t listen.
Regin had been selected because of her great skill and experience as a pilot. If something happened in deep space, she would be the most likely to get them all home safely. Her ability to coldly set aside her feelings and logically deal with problems at hand so she could solve them was a gift few people possessed. She also was the second in command of the mission. She had skills in all aspects of navigation, ship functions, and was able to think on her feet, so to speak.
She loved beef, especially American beef. She had eaten beef in Southeast Asia, Australia, and England, but to her, the beef did not have much flavor in those locales. She supposed that is why they had so many sauces for the meat. American and Canadian beef, on the other hand, was full of flavor and needed nothing but a little salt. She was thinking of getting a last steak at her favorite steakhouse that night because it would be nearly a year before she got more.
Rhys Blakely was already in the command and control center when Regin arrived. He was the co-pilot and he was a graduate of the University of Tennessee. Everyone hated those yellowish orange T-shirts that he wore. They clashed horribly with his yellow uniform, but he was proud of being a Volunteer. He also wore an orange University of Tennessee ball cap much of the time, much to everyone’s mock horror. He was raised on a farm in Southern Virginia and was an airline pilot for a small airline before joining the Mars mission astronaut program. He liked country music and Southern Rock, especially the Outlaws and Lynyrd Skynyrd. He liked trees, too, especially the American Chestnut. He had planted thousands of these trees to help restore lost habitat and was involved in programs and organizations dedicated to saving the American Chestnut. Once, the American Chestnut had been so plentiful that one in four trees in some areas were chestnut trees. In the middle Twentieth Century blight, a type of fungus, killed around four billion trees. With the loss of these nut bearing trees, wildlife suffered greatly.
He was an avid hunter and each year he stocked his freezer with turkey, deer, wild hog, and other such animals. He went on safari to exotic game ranches in Texas. He was pretty good with card magic and could entertain a crowd when he so desired.
Blakely was also involved with the Rivers Pure Foundation. The Foundation sought to clean rivers and the surrounding ecosystems of man-made pollution. He contributed financially and when he had time, between his job, chestnut tree restoration, and hunting, he would work with other volunteers to clean our trash and pollutants from the waterways.
“The systems check is nearly complete,” he said. “All systems nominal. This is a really amazing ship. I’m more impressed with her every time I get aboard her. If she were a woman I’d marry her,” he quipped.
Regin just rolled her eyes and Cal jokingly said, “Pervert”, which set them all grinning. They felt the same way about the ship.
Cam Nhat Binh was already in the medical laboratory going through her lists. She was the Mission Medical Doctor as indicated by her pastel blue uniform coveralls. She was from Bayou La Batre, Alabama. Alabama had a substantial Vietnamese population and in her hometown they were involved in the shrimping business. Her parents owned a fleet of shrimp boats and had done well. She had a medical degree from the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Before joining the Mars Terraforming Mission, she was a trauma specialist at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, California. Binh was taller than most Vietnamese, but not tall by the standards of other races. Her tan skin, black hair, and brown almond shaped eyes made her attractive to many men and she was rather democratic in the men she had sex with. She didn’t mind more than one at the same time, either. However, she was a top notch physician. There were none better. If anything happened due to injury or unforeseen illness, she was capable of treating it.
Binh was an avid NASCAR supporter and fan. It was a loud, polluting, smokey, raucous event that was loved by millions. The stands were packed at every race. That she was a big fan made sense when one considered her outgoing nature and the State she was from. She loved the tailgate parties and screaming her head off for her favorite driver, which happened to be Chuck Mundie. She brought a Mundie NASCAR bobble head doll and set it up in her treatment room. Everyone got a chuckle out of it.
She had invested in companies that supported NASCAR and had done quite well, because of that. She didn’t see anything at all wrong with the sport and even served as the on track doctor on a few occasions.
She got on the communicator, “Cal, that MEBO ointment still has not arrived. If someone gets burned, what am I to do, lick it? Over.”
“Roger, I’ll light a fire under them. Anything else missing? Over.” he asked.
“As a matter of fact, I do not have the cyanide I ordered, nor do I have the botulinum. How are we going to do experiments? And…they are needed for some medical procedures if other treatments don’t work. We will be a long way from help. Over.”
“Roger. Understood. Out,” said Cal.
Darmika Allison was a Mission Habitat Specialist. Her father owned a flour mill. He made old fashioned stone ground flour so much in demand by certain segments of the population. He had done well. She was just coming down the arm of the station to the concourse and launch bay dressed in her red uniform overalls. She dropped her gear in her cabin and went to the cargo bay to check on the Mars habitations. It was her job to oversee the setup of the various habitations that would be dropped on Mars from orbit. She also oversaw the habitat aboard ship, that of the humans and plants alike. She had a master’s degree from the Texas A&M. Long and very slender, she had married Davis Allison and had a daughter by him and was still slender. However, she decided he was a hinderance to her life and divorced him out of convenience. Her daughter still had problems, as a result. Yet, here she was, fulfilling her dream, on the way to Mars to begin colonization and terraforming. She was deeply devoted to Mother Earth, but was not the in-your-face kind about it. She had helped stop the members of her religion from throwing sarees, food, and other things into the waters in New York and polluting them, as they did in India. She would often take a weekend and, along with her daughter, find a river and clean up the waste humans discarded, the plastic bags, old tires, plastic bottles. Once, they had gone to the Gulf of Mexico between Texas and Louisiana and she and her daughter had freed some dolphins entangled in a fishing net. It had been a deeply spiritual experience for her.
The habitats looked good, so she put on a space suit and joined some of the workers on the outside of the ship to check it over carefully. Everything looked really good. Even the seals between the engine fuel and the ship looked good. There was a small nuclear reactor that would provide power until the main drive could be fully engaged. It powered the systems in the ship, as well, and powered the standard engines for orbiting around Mars. The main engine was for deep space and it was a miracle of technology. She admired the folded golden sails and she felt like an old timey explorer on a wooden sailing ship when she looked at them. What she was about to do was important.
Marsha Grant was the Mission Mechanical Engineer and Mission Specialist. She kept things running and would take care of any mechanical issues on Mars, as well. She had a master’s degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona, Florida. Until she joined the astronaut program she owned her own business, repairing anything from jet fighters to the space station. Her husband had been killed in a car wreck three years previously and they had no children. Joining this mission gave her back her sense of purpose in her dreary life. She could be a little whiny, but not enough to keep her off of the team. The mounds of refuse behind her business, composed of broken beams, parts of aircraft, parts of spacecraft, parts of cars and trucks of the specialty kind, and other things she repaired covered many acres. She would sell off the scrap from time to time, but often enough, a part she needed was as close as the back of her shop. Her employees would keep things going while she was gone.
She was in the crawl spaces checking piping, electronics, CO2 scrubbers, and other things. “Cal? Marsha. We still don’t have all of those plants down here. There should be twenty more feet, by spec. Over.”
“Roger, Marsha. I’ll check. Out.” Cal knew his day was going to be filled with chasing people. It was not his job and it was, too. He was the commander and had to make sure everything was ready. At the same time, someone at NASA was in charge of this and hadn’t done their job. Typical, he thought to himself. He called Ben Wade in Houston. Ben was in charge of logistics and supply. Cal politely informed him that if all of the supplies were not aboard the ship and secured, he would scrub the launch and heads would roll. Ben got on the telephone and started barking and things started happening.
Winston Broadax was the lead Payload Specialist. He was a big, golden bronze colored man, looking like a mythical Thor with his rippling muscles and bronze hair and mustache, all six feet and two hundred pounds of him. He just barely made the size mandate. He’d had a beard but had to shave it off for the mission. He had a handsome, devil-may-care look about him, but when it came to his work, he was all professionalism and competence. He went to the University of Minnesota. He was a huge Twins fan and wore his dark blue Twins hat constantly, instead of the Mission cap. It contrasted nicely with his red uniform and blonde good looks.
He had a small cattle ranch. He raised beef, the best beef possible. He didn’t allow his cattle out to graze much. He kept them penned up so he could fatten them for market. This was something he enjoyed and helped him to relax.
He came striding through the forward cargo bay like he was a hero there to save the day. It was not something he acted or put on. It was as natural to him as breathing. He really was of the sort. Brave beyond measure, he would, and had, run into a burning building to carry out someone overcome with smoke or too terrified to leave.
He took his pad out and began scrolling through the list, and checking them off as he looked things over. He looked into the access hatches and then walked aft to check the space suits, or environmental suits, as they were laughingly called. He ran down the check list. Each one seemed to be in perfect order.
As he puttered around, he saw Darmika going through a checklist. She was rather thin, but she had a nice shape, like some models do. He had to admire her shapely, but slender butt, and kept glancing at it from time to time. If she noticed, she did not let on, but he did sort of think she was bending over quite a bit.
Luke Looi, Jr. was the Mission Geologist and was also in the main cargo bay going over his equipment. Some of this would be jettisoned to make their way to the planet for the new geology lab that would be set up, there. He was the son of an Anglican priest. He graduated from the University of Houston and was working for an oil company before joining the astronaut program and mission to terraform Mars. He had a sometimes wife who owned her own tax accounting business and between them they made out quite well financially. The government did not consider them actually married due to the nature of their arrangement and relationship. He drove up to the training center that first day on an Indian Super Chief Limited motorcycle with everything he needed in the saddlebags and tied in duffle bags on the back. His Chinese ancestry did not allow for a beard, but he had a long, black, braided ponytail flowing out from under his helmet. The nice folks at the training center quickly relieved him of that ponytail. He looked more like a biker than an astronaut, but he was actually a nice, gentle spirited man.
He was an advocate for fracking and oil exploration. He would tell anyone who asked that so-called clean energy was not clean. It was more polluting than standard oil and coal based energy and had to rely upon those things. He was a huge fan of nuclear power. It had been giving pollution free energy since the 1950’s. The news media always showed the clouds coming out of the reactors, but in reality, they were not smoke, they were clean, pure water vapor. The only issue was what to do with the burned out nuclear waste. Yet, even that was being solved with many new uses being found for it. One experimental use was diamond batteries. Nuclear waste was coated in diamond and produced batteries that lasted twenty-eight thousand years. At present, however, they were only powerful enough to run a quartz wrist watch, but that would change.
Like several others, he was concerned about terraforming Mars. He knew this was the right direction. However, he didn’t want to see Mars become a waste dump, either. He had advocated for smart, ethical terraforming and colonization.
Grant Holder came in and dumped his bags on his bunk. He put everything away as fast as he could move. He was very eager to get to work and it showed in the excitement on his face. He was the Mission Minerologist and secondary Payload Specialist. He graduated from the University of Alaska with a degree in minerology and mining and was employed by an oil company before he joined the program. He was actually exited to go to Mars and examine the terrain and minerals. He was younger than the rest of them and had an infectious eagerness about him. He joined Luke and together they went over everything, which then deteriorated into a discussion of which stout beer was best.
“It has to be Guinness Extra Stout,” said Grant.
“I think Sam Adams Extra Stout is better, but I will grant you that Guinness is very good,” said Grant. “It’s just old fashioned.”
“Well, Goose Island Bourbon County Stout is simply awesome. I have some and I can’t take it with me. When we finish, you come over and we’ll have a few,” said Luke. And on it went.
Julie Fox was the Mission Agriculturalist and Biologist. She was Cherokee and her dark good looks set her apart from everyone else. Though Rhonda Filmore and Darmika Allison were darker, Julie was a lot prettier, if the truth be told. Her once, long, beautiful black hair had been cut much shorter to make it more practically manageable for the mission. Still, there was no hiding her stunning looks. She had acted on daytime television and had been a model a couple of times for some well-known magazines. The men called her Foxy Fox behind her back.
She had a master’s degree and PhD from Iowa State University and was working for an oil and gas company when she joined the Mars program. She left her fiancé behind to take part in this historic mission. It was very difficult to do and she still had regrets about leaving him. They were going to get married as soon as she returned and not put it off any longer.
Unlike the others, she was not involved in cleaning up the environment. She was involved in tribal matters and finding funding for the education of the Cherokee children. The Cherokee language, even though a written language, had nearly died out. However, thanks to people like Julie, the language was being spoken, again in homes, and at tribal council meetings. Julie helped raise funding for teaching Cherokee history and culture, as well.
“Cal, this is Julie. Over.”
“Cal here. Over.”
“Cal, unless you want to eat spaghetti all the way to Mars and back, please get those guys to properly stock the food locker. Also, there is not enough water to drink, nor fruit juice. There is beer, but we can’t survive on beer. Well, Luke could, but I don’t want to,” she said with a short laugh.
“On it. I’ll get back to you. Out.” Cal made a call to Ben Wade’s boss, Jim Steiner, this time. He was very blunt and vocal. The ship should have been ready to launch and was being held up by obvious things, such as food, medical supplies, and other things. If he had to scrub the launch, it would be Steiner and Wade’s jobs on the line, he reminded the man.
Julie didn’t know what he did or who he talked to, but within an hour, a red faced supervisor and a team of men and women were hastily stocking the ship with food and water packets. There were packets of coffee, tea, apple juice, orange juice, and Gatorade. The team brought in packets of beef stroganoff, pizza, pears and cottage cheese, steak, ham, buttermilk biscuits, fried chicken, black eyed peas, char kway teow, and many more dishes. There were potato chips, corn chips and salsa, chocolate chip cookies, dehydrated ice cream, and other goodies. When they left, Julie noted that there was enough food for well more than a year on board.
They also brought plants to round out the required number, and a few more Julie had requested for a special project that had never received any attention. Binh got her medicine and testing equipment. She also got the things she was missing for an experiment she planned to do in deep space.
Cal was surprised to find Alister McMillan already on board and working. He didn’t talk much. He was the Mission I.T. Specialist. A weird little man, he was more at home with his computers than with people. He was not hard to get along with, it is just that he was a lot more reticent than the others. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He had no one to leave behind except a cockatiel bird, which he gave to his mother to take care of until he returned.
“Everything’s copacetic, Commander,” Alister said without looking around from what he was doing. He didn’t like to be called Al. He wanted to be called Alister. He thought it sounded more sophisticated. His full name was Michael Alister McMillan, but he didn’t like his first name, either. Alister it was.
Alister had just come from one of his get away from it all passions: trains. He loved the old smokers, wood fired and coal fired trains, with huge clouds of black smoke and cinders. He and some of his enthusiast friends would restore the old locomotives and cars and get them running, again. There was a whole subculture of people devoted to these. They entered their locomotives and cars into competitions. It was so odd because he was so introverted and single, yet, this was a big family event.
“Cal? Has Rhonda come on board, yet? I could use her help,” said Alister.
Rhonda Filmore was the Mission Computer and Electronics Specialist. She was the only one who really “got” Alister. They connected, somehow. Her slender body, dark skin, and close cropped springy hair made her look like a model for Ebony Magazine. She had a degree from New York University. She left three cats behind with her sister when she started with the program. Of all of them, she was the most grateful to be there because she came from a broken family. Her father was a gang member who was stabbed to death in prison. Her mother, who had not been married to her father, worked two jobs to put her through school. Probably because of her background, she was more self-serving than the others. Everything was for her and about her. She wasn’t conscious of it, but when a person had lived a hardscrabble life, scraping and scrambling for food, affection, and security, it made that person see things differently. They either became more giving or they became a lot more grasping. Rhonda was the latter.
“Yes, she’s here. She’s in the crawl space checking the on board electronics connections,” Cal told Alister. “That has to be done and she’s the right size to get in there.”
Cal was satisfied as he thought about the crew. They were a good pick, all of them. He couldn’t see how a better crew could have been selected. Yes, it was going to be a good mission.
Chapter 2
The mission was to travel to Mars on the ship Mars Terraformer and set up a preliminary base for future teams. They were the first of the teams being sent to Mars. One would follow each eight months for six planned missions. They were to set up the beginnings of a base and begin the process of terraforming the planet. After four months on planet they would return to Earth. The entire venture would take them a little more than a full Earth year. While they were on Mars, another team would be launched and would take over the base just after the first team left the planet. There were currently two more ships being constructed and one more planned, to begin this mission of Mars settlement. Each ship would be recrewed and refitted and relaunched until all six missions were completed.
Estimates were that the terraforming would take between one hundred and one hundred fifty years to complete. Already they had located small ice asteroids to be pushed into collision with the planet in order to increase the water supply and build up the atmosphere. The Mars Terraformer carried a cargo of genetically modified plants of various kinds that produced more oxygen than normal. They were specifically engineered to thrive on Mars and required little water. As these plants spread across the planet, stabilizing the soil, more and more breathable air would be produced. Once there was enough water from the asteroids to make lakes and ponds, aquatic plants would be sewn to help with the atmosphere. It was an ambitious project.
There was a grueling selection process and the twelve selected for the first mission, and their backups, were put through physical training to help build muscle and bone. People in space lost bone and muscle mass. They drilled on the tasks they were required to do seemingly endlessly. They moved on to help with the ship itself. The crew gave input on small design tweaks and made sure everything was working and secured. They made sure the buildings and vehicles in their inflatable protective landing casings were tied down and secure.
Launch day was L-minus forty-eight hours. All of their few personal belongings were stowed aboard in their cabins and lockers in the enormous ship. The crew worked frenetically to be ready in time for the launch. Finally, at L-minus twenty-three hours all was ready and the crew could get some much needed rest. Walking down the arm of the huge space station, Darmika and Rhonda looked out of the huge window at the ship that would soon take them to Mars. The four huge golden propulsion sails were folded upon themselves and the gigantic craft snuggled up against the arm of the station like a sleeping giant dragon. They felt again the wonder of beholding it, long and sleek and as big as a large building, the ship’s whiteness standing out sharply against the blackness of space.
***
What is it that makes people want to go into the unknown, into probable danger, to places no one has been before? This mission was so popular that NASA and the Enright Group, a private technological company tied to the space industry, had to turn many people away. The Enright Group was not slow to notice this, nor was NASA. They began to plan new missions and projects and the money kept pouring in. It was exciting. No one could really answer the “why” of it all. There seemed to be something in human beings that made them restless and ever wanting to see what was over the horizon, or on another world. It was like the entire human race had lost its original home and was collectively searching for a new one, somewhere, somehow.
For the first time, humans were going to make a serious attempt at forming a new world and colonizing it. The Moon had a small base, but there was more water than expected, there was not enough water to make a large base feasible. Mars was different. It had possibilities and then, who knew, perhaps Venus? That had been hotly debated. The heat and pressure on Venus finally decided things in favor of Mars, for the time being. For the first hundred years, Mar’s atmosphere would be unbreathable and unstable. Over the course of time, however, it would get better. There were plans to salt the air with nanoparticles to keep the harsh radiation reflected off of the planet and help keep the fragile, newly forming atmosphere from escaping the planet. Over many decades, these nanoparticles would deteriorate and drop out of the atmosphere. Two robotic space craft had already been launched to two different ice asteroids that had been previously tested for viruses and pollutants. They would begin pushing the asteroids towards the planet, where they would melt upon a precisely calculated entry of the Martian atmosphere, releasing their water as vapor to condense and come down as rain.
***
At T-minus 30 minutes everyone was secured aboard and strapped into their seats. No one drank much that morning because no one wanted to have to pee while being strapped in their seats awaiting liftoff, even though they all wore diapers. Long gone were the days of having to poop in a plastic bag and hopefully catch it all, and then mix it and knead it with antibacterial liquid so the bags didn’t explode. With artificial gravity things were a lot easier and a lot less accident prone. The minutes seemed like hours to everyone. They busied themselves with going through prelaunch checklists and final checks of systems.
The engines ignited and the computer droned, “…five, four, three, two, one.” A man on the communicator said, “We have launch. Station cleared.”
The astronauts felt the G-Forces push them back into their seats, but it was not unbearable. This lasted for fifteen minutes and the thrust from the rocket engines stopped. “Open sails,” commanded Cal. The four huge two kilometer sails began to unfold in all of their golden glory. They made quite a spectacle for the millions on Earth watching the launch on television or on their smartphones.
“Sails locked into place,” said Rhys.
“Engage Dipole Drive,” ordered Cal.
“Dipole engaged and operational. All systems nominal,” said Regin.
The ship began to pick up speed slowly under constant acceleration. After ten minutes, Cal said, “Okay, we made it through the hard part. Everyone can unbuckle. Give me a full systems check and then those not on duty can go to your cabins or jobs.”
Humans may have been destined to reach for the stars, but they were not physically meant to live in the vacuum of space. It was an alien, hostile environment, if environment it could be called. Perhaps anti-environment fit better. The loss of pressure meant a gruesome death. Space was dead cold and exposure would freeze them solid quickly. There was no air to breath and gases in lungs exposed to space would expand and tear lungs to shreds. Yes, anti-environment suited it better.
America was using a modified Dipole drive for the ship that allowed a space craft to deploy huge sails for propulsion, instead of carrying heavy rocket fuel. These powered the craft using ambient space plasma and light photons for power. This gave the craft great speed. The energy gathering, gold colored sails were 2 kilometers long and two thirds of a kilometer wide at the widest points near the ends on each of the four sides of the ship. They were thinner than tissue paper, but very strong. They were a special material that was strengthened by silk from graphene fed spiders.
This graphene silk was many times stronger than steel and it was flexible. It tended to flex instead of breaking. It was used in the cables and other structural parts of the ship. It was used in the huge sails. A lot of force was necessary to break even the thinnest thread made from this silk. Darmika sat, remembering having given a piece the thickness of a sewing thread to Damita and asking her to break it. She tried everything, even putting it under her feet and pulling up with her arms, but nothing broke it. The sails could withstand anything except a large meteor or an explosive device, she knew.
The ship was built and launched from the NASA Space Station Astraeus so that gravity was less of a concern. It normally required a huge expenditure in energy to lift a rocket and its payload off of the Earth. The fuel itself was heavy. The old Saturn V that was used to reach the moon carried more than 1.9 million liters of fuel. Just the weight of the fuel for the first stage alone was 4.6 million pounds, or 2,086,524.902 kilograms. It was to overcome these problems that the craft was built mostly in space at the enormous station and launched from there.
Based upon the time that they left the space station, it would take them just about three months to reach Mars in this technological marvel. That included braking time. Once there, they had enough food and water for four months on the planet and then a five month return flight, with a reserve of two months. They would set up portable buildings to be used for future teams. They would set up a greenhouse and hopefully tap into a water source. They planned to land the Martian Lander near the north pole of the planet. It was hoped that the radiation would be less directly intense. Even though water asteroids would soon be impacting the planet there was hope that there would be enough water ice to get the project off to a faster start, as Martian Rovers had previously indicated. At the end of the four months they would lift off of the planet and travel back to the orbiting space ship and leave for Earth. They had a precise launch window for the return. If they were delayed, it would make the return trip that much longer.
The ship itself was huge. The command module alone had 200 square meters of living space. The nice thing was that the large living quarters and other areas had gravity. There were twelve astronauts and the designers had dispensed with the Stanford Torus, a rotating wheel that produced gravity at around 0.376 G, or Mars normal. Instead, antihydrogen, a stable form of neutral antimatter had been isolated. By setting up a ceiling of the newly discovered antimatter and a floor of normal matter, engineers had created an artificial gravity field that always pulled the astronauts down to the floor at near Earth normal 1 G. By building a gravitationally conducting shell for the hull of the spacecraft, everyone inside was protected from the forces of ultra-rapid acceleration, which would otherwise prove lethal. And, as with the command module, astronauts no longer suffered the negative physiological effects. This gravity, combined with appropriate exercise, zero and low gravity health issues like arterial hardening, space blindness, severe muscle atrophy, balance and orientation problems, were solved.
The dining area followed the command module. The living quarters section were next to the dining area and provided each of the twelve astronauts their own tiny room in which to sleep and bathe. This was important. People isolated for so long in somewhat crowded conditions needed personal space. In their private rooms they each had a private toilet and shower. They used liquid soap, very little water, and rinseless shampoo from pouches with which to bathe. The showers sprayed an ultra-fine mist that used very little water. The evaporators quickly collected and purified even the smallest drops of water so that none was wasted. The small amount of water allowed for bathing was then reused for drinking and other things.
The rooms were barely large enough in which to stand. The bed went from one wall to the other. There was a writing table bolted to the wall that could be unfolded over the small clothes locker. The bunk became the chair and a wedge pillow was stood on end for back support. The shower was just large enough to squeeze inside. One of the requirements for being selected for this mission was overall body size. If a person were too large, they would not be able to use the showers or sleep in the beds. Still, these cramped quarters were far better than anything astronauts had access to, heretofore.
In addition to the living quarters, there was a command center that contained the main controls and stations for each of the crew in the front of the ship. There was a small cargo bay in front of that for the Mars Lander. Behind the living quarters there was a greenhouse that was growing vegetables to supplement the food supply. Some of these plants, or their sprouts, would be put into the greenhouse erected on Mars. The rest would be kept for the return flight.
In addition to the oxygen supply and the CO2 scrubbers, there were air scrubbing plants in pots at various locations throughout the craft of a kind that required very little water. These plants were genetically enhanced to more effectively cleanse the air of carbon dioxide and produced oxygen. One section of the huge ship below decks had the walls, floor to low ceiling, and multiple rows of racks, lined with plants that scrubbed the air and produced oxygen, but had little water requirement; and of course there was the greenhouse. The plants also kept down the unpleasant smells of humans living in close confines, scrubbing these odors out and replacing them with fresh smells of living and growing plants.
Darmika had a genetically modified jade plant in her cabin of allotted fifty square feet of space, including the shower. It was something of the Earth, something living, and it helped with the air quality. It also broke up the monotony of the pastel green walls. She had selected the color, as each one had for their cabins from a palate of pastel green, blue, yellow, and pink. All of the men chose blue. Most of the other women chose pink, but Julie chose yellow.
The final section of the huge ship was the huge main cargo bay that carried the portable buildings that would be set up on Mars. These would be dropped from the craft and would plummet through the atmosphere, being slowed down by parachutes. Once low enough, huge reinforced rubber balloons would deploy around them and the buildings would hit the ground and bounce until they came to a stop, being cushioned by the balloons. Once the balloons deflated, the buildings were self-righting. They would orient themselves properly. All terrain carts would likewise be deployed and one would come down with the landing module. At the very end of the cargo bay there was a small storage room with tools and other necessary things. Behind that was the Dipole engine and the small nuclear power plant that gave power to the orbital engine and electricity to the ship.
Below decks there was the food and beverage storage, water tanks, and batteries. The waste capture, that turned human waste into fertilizer for the plants, was there. So too, were the banks and ranks of plants, most of which were meant for Mars.
The ship was unlike anything humans had ever built for space. It was far larger and more comfortable than the ships used for the first manned missions to Mars. Technology had advanced considerably since those missions. Also, they found humans did not fare so well in such tight quarters for so long of duration. Therefore the extra room, eating and recreational room, and private living quarters. The ship even looked good. It was long and sleek in appearance and once the four golden sails were deployed it was truly magnificent and awe inspiring.
***
The first ship’s scheduled night after the launch, the entire crew met in the dining area. It was a bit crowded, but there were enough seats at the two tables that were bolted to the bulkheads. This was a dinner party, of sorts, to celebrate the successful launch of the first of its kind ship and the beginning of an historic space mission. Terraforming Mars had long been the dream of many humans, scientists and science fiction writers, alike. Now, it was finally going to happen.
The crew had smuggled a small cake aboard for the event and the station crew pretended they hadn’t seen anything. Cal stood up in front of the group and began, “As you all know, this is the most momentous event in human history. They said this was impossible, and yet, here we are. They said it couldn’t be done, and yet we are doing it. We are engaged in the great adventure, seeking to make a new home for an overcrowded, overburdened mankind. We will begin to make that new world and make it in a manner of our own choosing. What it will be depends entirely upon what we do, we and those who follow us. We are breaking the trail and setting the example. We are creating the template for those to come. What we do will ring through the years as the single, golden moment in all of the history of our race, where we finally moved beyond the accident of our evolution and took control of our destiny.”
Cal went on for a couple of more minutes and then everyone shouted and applauded. Some beat on the tables. At that, Binh brought the single layer cake out of the cupboard. It had white frosting, but the inside was decadent chocolate. Everyone started talking at once and Binh passed out the slices of cake as fast as she could cut them. It was a fun night for all of them and no one missed the greatness of it. The pride and importance seemed to swell them into something larger than life and more necessary than themselves.
Somebody quipped, “Rhys, take off that puke orange cap! For God’s sake! I’m trying to eat!”
To that, Rhys started singing,
“Wish that I was on ol' Rocky Top
Down in the Tennessee hills
Ain't no smoggy smoke on Rocky Top
Ain't no telephone bills
Once I had a girl on Rocky Top
Half bear, other half cat
Wild as a mink, but sweet as soda pop
I still dream about that.”
Then Regin joined in on the chorus,
“Rocky Top, you'll always be
Home sweet home to me
Good ol' Rocky Top
Rocky Top, Tennessee
Rocky Top, Tennessee.”
Several of them groaned good naturedly and everyone laughed. That started a few people singing songs, however, and soon an impromptu karaoke was started.
***
The next month was spent in running tests and simulations. They checked and rechecked their results and figures. Mostly, they just kept busy. The real work would not begin until they got closer to Mars. Some of the crew made and posted videos of life aboard the ship. Julie took things a bit further and posted near daily videos of what she was doing onboard the ship. She kept a sort of log of her horticulture and experiments that way. People back on Earth followed these videos and each would garner several hundred thousand views.
Winston kept up with all of the baseball news. He made charts of who was being traded, who was likely to be traded, who was going to hit the most homeruns, and every other stat he could think of. He was a walking, talking, baseball fact machine. He predicted that Thak Sturmberger, probably the best pitcher in the major leagues, was going to be traded by the Pirates to the Braves, and it happened just the way he predicted.
The rest of them had their own hobbies. Some liked to surf the net, some liked their forums. Others liked to read and spend time in whatever worlds to which their books took them. Overall, they meshed really well, it seemed. No one got on anyone’s nerves and things went along, day after ship’s day, with boring routine.
Chapter 3
The ship was a little over a month out from the space station, and Darmika was in her tiny room resting and surfing the internet. It was her down time. There was nothing specific that she was looking for and nothing really interesting revealed itself. It was funny how much time a person could waste on the internet, she reflected. Hours could go by and sleep missed because of the hunt for something new and interesting on the net.
Suddenly, Commander Cal Anderson buzzed her. “Darmika, we have had an incident. I need you ASAP.” Heart racing, she rushed out of her tiny compartment and up to the command center.
“Darmika, it appears that a small meteor has gone through the starboard or right side sail. It made a sizeable hole and we have a small power reduction,” Cal informed her. “You and Marsha will need to do a spacewalk out there and fix it. We don’t want it to become worse.”
Marsha Grant was the other mission specialist, a mechanical engineer by education she filled that role on the mission, as well. She was very good at her job.
“Okay, no problem,” said Darmika.
“Well, there is a problem,” Cal responded. “The hole is a kilometer and a half out along the sail. That is farther than any human has ever spacewalked.”
She said, “The Manned Maneuvering Unit will do that easily.” The new MMU, being much smaller and more capable than previous versions, was a small backpack that had directional thrusters on it. Its exhaust would propel an astronaut through the weightlessness of space at a respectable 25 meters per second or 54.54 miles per hour at maximum speed. Of course, that amount of thrust would severely deplete the fuel and very quickly.
“It will, but I want you tethered to the ship at all times,” Cal ordered. “If another meteor hits or some unforeseen event happens, we would have no way of recovering you. It is just too far and too risky at the speed we are going.”
“I’ve been out nearly that far. Even though that was on the space station, I can do it. No problem,” she told him.
The tether the commander was speaking of was a very thin cable, about the thickness of the charging cable to her smartphone. It was very expensive, on the order of a million dollars for every fifty meters. It was made of a similar silk spun by graphene fed spiders as some of the ship’s structural components. It was many times stronger than even a thick steel cable, but was thin and flexible. It would not break unless something extraordinary happened. Even then, the force required would be more than that for a thick steel cable.
It made sense that Cal was taking this precaution. There may have been more micro-meteors flying in the wake of the larger one that hit the sail. It would not do to get hit by one. Decompression was not a death anyone would want to die. It would be an ugly death. Air that was already in the astronaut's lungs would expand. This would tear the lungs to shreds and that meant no more gas exchange with the bloodstream. Water in the body would vaporize, as well. This would cause the astronaut to swell up enormously, like an over-inflated balloon. Water and gas in the blood would form bubbles in the veins, and soon circulation would stop. This would be excruciatingly painful. With oxygen no longer reaching the brain, the astronaut would mercifully die within two horribly long minutes. This had been graphically shown when Eric Cranfield had experienced a catastrophic suit failure on an early preliminary mission spacewalk leading up to this mission.
Because of Cranfield’s gruesome death, Nasa had developed a better self-sealing suit to prevent such catastrophes. It used powdered material and liquid material in different layers in the suit. When punctured, the chemicals would mix and harden into a solid plug when exposed to the oxygen of the suit. It happened in less than a second, faster than a human could react. The suit was made of blended materials, one of which was the graphene spider silk on the outside to prevent tears.
Darmika and Marsha got into their spacesuits and struggled into their MMU’s. They attached the tether to their suits and both buddy checked each other to make certain all was as it should be before breaching space. They had decided to use the smaller cargo bay that was forward as it was closest to the sails. Once the cargo bay was depressurized, the cargo bay door slowly opened with a majestic finality. It was the final fragile barrier between life and space.
They pulled and floated themselves from the ship and ignited their thrusters. They pushed on out into the lonely, empty, Stygian blackness of space and began the long, slow journey to the repair site. Except for the ship’s external lights, all was pitch black to their vision. The stars could barely be seen because of the lights illuminating the golden sails. Why is space so black? There are uncountable numbers of stars and light permeates everything, and yet, space is black, Darmika wondered for the millionth time. She knew all about Olber’s Paradox and she knew the various scientific guesses. They still didn’t adequately address the experience of the blackness in all of that light, though. The ship parts illuminated by the floodlights were brightly lit. The entire back half of the ship could not be seen in the pitch black darkness, except for the light from two small observation windows that seemed to float like swamp gas on a dark night. It was always terrifying to leave behind the safety of the ship and the black emptiness made it worse.
Darmika’s heart pounded inside of her chest as she wrestled with the natural fear every human experiences at launching into the unknown away from safety. Her mind raced along with her heart. All sorts of random thoughts would flash into her mind, and then her mind would freeze up, again. What if my suit leaked? What if my MMU malfunctioned? My God! I’m so far from home I can’t see it! However, after a few minutes, she began to get used to being outside of the ship and as she calmed down, she began to enjoy herself. It was actually quite fun being in this weightless environment and slowly jetting out along the huge golden sail that dwarfed the two of them.
As they got closer to the tear, they began to see small holes peppered into the enormous sail, like someone with a gigantic shotgun had fired a round into it. Most of these were too small to worry about. However, there were a few that were large enough to warrant attention.
“Marsha, would you patch the larger of those small holes while I continue to the large tear?” asked Darmika.
“On it,” replied Marsha.
As she reached the tear, it became clear that it was much larger than originally thought. This was going to take some time. “Well, I have a whole month to do it in as that is how much farther it is to Mars,” she thought to herself. “I might as well get busy, though. I can’t hang out here all day.”
She began to sing. No one would have ever accused her of having a good voice, to say the least. She sort of held a tune while she worked, but it would have been difficult to recognize what she was singing if not for the words.
“Come on, come on, come on
Let's go space truckin'
Come on, come on, come on
Space truckin'”
As she sang, she pulled the tattered edges of the torn sail back together and put a special bonding tape on the tears to hold it together. This tape, once applied, would form a bond with the material of the sail and make a very strong repair that would be unlikely to fail.
Just as she was finishing the repair, a small hole appeared in her suit on the rear beneath the MMU. If it were not for the MMU, this would not have been an issue, but now she could not reach it. “I’m hit”, she called out to the ship calmly. “I have a small hole in the rear of my suit, according to the sensors. It is probably from a small micro-meteor that zipped through my suit.”
She was not too worried at that moment as the suit was designed to patch up leaks on its own. A second passed, and then another, and the suit was still not sealed. “I’m coming in. My suit is not sealing. Somebody meet me and help me put some of this bonding tape over the hole. I can’t reach it,” she said, trying not to let the rising panic creep into her voice.
“I’m on the way to meet you,” said Marsha in a deliberately calm voice. “Start back now, and I will meet you and fix the hole.”
As Darmika made her eternally slow way back to meet Marsha, all she could think about was that she might not live to see her daughter, again. Damita had begged her not to go and the last time she had seen her daughter, she was crying because she was afraid of losing her mother. Well, some things were necessary.
It was just becoming critical in her suit when the sealant finally took effect. For some reason, it did not seal as intended when first combined with the air in her suit. Now, she had a good seal and her oxygen levels were stable.
Marsha was still heading towards her at full thrust when a small detonation erupted on her MMU just at the left thruster. This sent her spiraling out from the gigantic sail instead of heading straight towards Darmika. As she flew away from the sail, she moaned, “Oh, God.” It was more of a prayer.
“Marsha has taken a hit!” Darmika said frantically. “Winston, reel her in quick! There are more of those micro-meteors out here!”
Winston Broadax, the payload specialist, was already working the winches. He said, “Cal, the winch is fouled. I think it was her twisting and tumbling. It will take a bit to get it working. I could use another pair of hands.”
“On my way,” said Win Broadax.
“Marsha, shut that thing down and get out of it if you have to do so!” yelled Darmika into her microphone. “Cal, give me a vector to intercept. My line is unfouled.”
As Marsha, still spinning, got her MMU shut down, she took it off to see if she could fix the problem or determine a means of using what was left to get back to the ship. At the same time, Cal relayed an intercept vector back to Darmika, who pushed off into the inky blackness; terror rising in her throat.
At full thrust she closed on Marsha in what seemed an eternity of slow motion, but was really faster than she perceived it to be. “Marsha, see if you can activate the right thruster just enough to slow your spinning,” she said. As Marsha complied with this, her wild spinning slowed to a gentle roll, but she was still drifting away from the ship. Darmika closed within a couple of meters of Marsha and Marsha hit the end of her tether. The unbreakable line snapped as if it had been rotted string! Darmika made a wild grab for Marsha’s hand, just brushing her finger tips and watched Marsha drifted, still spinning, out into space.
“Marsha! See if you can get that MMU working! Even one nozzle!” yelled Darmika over the comm.
As Marsha rotated, Darmika could catch glimpses of her terror struck face. Marsha wrestled the pack around and managed to close off the damaged nozzle. Slipping back into the MMU as fast as she could, she engaged the remaining thruster. She slowly stopped her spinning, but there was not enough thrust to get back to the ship. Everyone watched in horror as Marsha drifted away from the ship. Soon the lights no longer illuminated her.
Cal and Julie were on the communicator with her. She was hysterical, crying, pleading. “Oh God! Someone help me! Cal, don’t leave me! I don’t want to die out here!”
There was nothing anyone could do. As soon as her air was depleted she would suffocate.
After Darmika got back inside of the ship, a visibly shaken Anderson ran down to meet her and started to dress her down for her carelessness. “What happened out there? What were you two doing…”
Suddenly, Broadax interrupted. “Cal…CAL! Before you go off on her, look at this! This line was already mostly severed with a cutting tool of some kind. You can see where the cut was made and where the remaining line snapped. This line was sabotaged. So was this winch. Look at it! Someone intended that one of or more of us would die!”
“Let me see that!” and Cal’s face went gray.
Darmika looked at the hole in the suit she had just taken off. It was no micro meteor strike. It was a clean cut that had been meticulously superglued back together to hide the cut. The glue is what inhibited the sealant. Showing the suit to Cal, she quietly said, “Either someone here, or on the Space Station did this. Whoever it was planned murder with the evidence to be lost in space. I wonder what other surprises we may find? And think, we still have another month before we reach Mars!”
Chapter 4
Everyone congregated in the meal room that also served for meetings. The smallish room had twelve seats. There were two rectangular tables bolted to the bulkheads with six seats each. The grey metal contrasted with the sunny pastel yellow walls, and their moods clashed with the sunny disposition of the room.
“Someone intended to kill and Marsha was the victim. They nearly got Darmika, too!” exclaimed Cal.
At that moment, Broadax came in wrestling a couple of space suits and two MMU’s. “Cal, you all need to see this! For certain Darmika’s suit was cut and superglued back very carefully. However, look at these! One of these MMU’s belongs to Grant and the other one is the spare. Look closely and you will see there is a small device under the fabric. I carefully excised the one out of the spare. It has a small explosive charge. I don’t think that micrometeor that hit Marsha’s MMU was any such thing. I think it was rigged like these two.”
“Let me see that!” said Rhonda. “There is no doubt about it. Those are charges and what is worse, they have to be set off remotely from fairly close.”
“Wait! Are you saying that one of us did that?” Cal demanded to know.
“Yes, that is just what I am saying. Someone among us would have to trigger these. I think that one of us, based upon this, killed Marsha with one of these things. I would postulate that these could have been responsible for the supposed meteor shower that hit that sail and nowhere else in order to lure Marsha and Darmika to their deaths,” Rhonda said. “Think about it. Those kinds of small meteor showers are random, but nothing was hit except the one sail.”
“I certainly concur with the assessment of this device,” said Luke. “I’ve seen them in use.”
“It’s not possible that one of us did this. There were so many personality tests, someone would have picked up on there being a psychopath amongst us,” Julie pointed out.
“Not necessarily,” said Binh. “Psychopaths are very good liars and those tests can’t uncover the best of them.”
There was stunned silence for a short while and then everyone started talking at once. Some agreed that it was impossible that one of the crew did something like that. Others were wondering how to keep safe with a monster on board the ship.
“I want all systems checked and all vital equipment looked at for more of those things,” ordered Cal. “We can’t afford more of those things to blow.”
All systems, however, were nominal and they found no more explosive charges. They reported Marsha’s death and what they had found. They were met with shock and sadness. There was also disbelief about the charges and the cutting of the tether. The tether had to be an accident and as for the charges, perhaps someone planted them, but not one of the crew. They were too far away for a signal to set them off from the space station. Besides, who would do such and thing, and why?
***
“That’s right, Mission Control. I’m saying someone murdered Marsha and almost murdered Darmika Allison. We also found two other suits that had been tampered with. Over,” said Cal.
“Mars Terraformer, Roger. Perhaps it was faulty manufacture. Over,” said the man at Mission Control. No one could believe that anyone was murdered, much less by someone on the crew.
“Negative, Mission Control. We don’t think so. The devices were short range, over,” said Cal.
When he got off of the comm, he turned to Regin and said, “They don’t believe us. I don’t blame them, in a way. It seems too incredible.”
***
That night, most didn’t sleep. The upset over Marsha’s apparent death hit them all, hard, and was equaled by the fear that someone among them might have committed murder. How was anyone to sleep in such conditions?
“I can’t believe it,” Regin said. “Marsha, of all people! She was such a good soul. The worst of it is that we couldn’t do anything to save her.”
“I can’t get her screams and pleas for help out of my head,” Julie said. “It was so horrible!”
“There was nothing we could have done. We did all that we could do. Still…” said Win.
“Where’s Darmika and Luke?” Regin asked.
“She said she didn’t feel like socializing. Luke, he’s often too logical for such sentiments. You know how he is,” said Cal. “I think it is a good idea if we all at least tried to get some sleep, if only a few hours. What time is it?”
Most went back to their cabins, following Cal. Regin had the night watch, so she stayed, and Julie stayed with her a while longer. It was a horrible night for them all.
***
The next day, they were all at their tasks when a loud, blood curdling scream that was just as quickly cut off by a loud bang suddenly echoed through the ship. Binh, hair standing up on her neck, jerked open the door of her small medical lab. Broadax came running past. “It came from the cargo bay or in that direction!” he yelled as he raced past. She quickly followed him as best she could. They met Julie coming from the greenhouse. Together, they ran aft to the main cargo bay.
Inside, all was quiet. Then, Julie pointed as she said, “Look!”
Between two of the habitat huts there was an arm sticking out at forty-five degrees, about shoulder height above the floor. As they moved closer, they could see it was a man’s arm, the owner of which had been smashed when one of the balloons meant to protect the habitat when it landed had explosively inflated and crushed him between it and the habitat next to it.
Julie began to vomit onto the floor. It was Grant Holder and he had been crushed like someone stepping on a grape. There was not much blood beyond some splashes out on the floor as everything was held in place by the pressure of the balloon against the other habitat.
Darmika came in, followed by Cal. “Oh my God! Poor Grant! Cal, there is no way that balloon fired off on its own. It has never happened, not even in development and testing. There are safety protocols. If one fired, they would all fire. That’s the way it works.”
“Binh, you take care of him when we deflate this balloon. Get whatever you need,” Cal said.
“There will be a lot of blood all of a sudden when you release that pressure. Get ready for it,” Binh said.
Darmika and Broadax got to work and deflated the balloon. Grant’s body was unrecognizable and slid down to the floor where Binh was quickly putting absorbent cloths. Most of them puked on the floor when that happened. It was too horrible to comprehend and too sickening to bear. Binh quickly scooped up the body and put it in a body bag. Two of the crew helped her carry Grant’s body and place it in the unheated storage room aft.
An hour later, Darmika followed Cal up to the command center. “Cal, they have to believe us, now. The firing mechanism was messed with. Anyone walking between those two habitats was a goner. There’s only enough room to turn sideways between them and the firing mechanism was so sensitive that any touch would have set it off. Demand to speak to a homicide detective. I’ll talk to him if no one else will. I mean, I was almost one of his or her victims!”
“I assume you got pictures of everything?” Cal asked, though he knew the answer. He was shaking on the inside, but didn’t want to let on.
“Ad nauseum. I have an abundance of pictures to send back,” she said. “We took pictures not only of the balloon, the firing mechanism, and the habitats, we also took pictures of what was left of poor Grant…from many angles. Binh got samples of blood and gore to test.”
***
This time, after the news about Grant, NASA had a couple of Houston homicide detectives standing by to talk to them. One was Detective Gonzales and the other was named Leach. Each one involved told their stories to the detectives and they sent pictures of all of the evidence collected so far.
Darmika told her stories, arms wrapped tightly about her. First she told about her near fatal spacewalk, the death of Marsha, and their discovery of the charge under the skin of the MMU’s. Then, she told them what she discovered about the habitat’s balloon mechanism. She ended up saying, “What do you want, now? I am ready to help. I want to get this monster for trying to kill me and for killing two of my teammates.”
“Do you think you can check for finger prints? There are several methods and we will walk you through the one that seems best, depending on what you have on board,” Gonzales wanted to know.
“I am willing to try, and so will Dr. Cam,” said Darmika. Binh nodded her assent and Darmika continued, “What do we need?”
“I don’t suppose there is any superglue on board?” asked Leach.
“No, glue doesn’t work in space. That’s why the cut on my suit opened up. What else?” she asked.
“What about talcum powder or even a number 2 pencil?”
“I doubt there is any talc. Powder and a closed environment don’t mix very well. Let me ask and see what we have. I get the idea,” Darmika said. “I’ll get back in touch, say one hour?”
“That’s fine. In the meantime, Commander, I think it best if everyone moved about in groups of three as much as possible and kept to their compartments or work stations, otherwise,” said Gonzales. “While we wait we will interview the rest of the crew.”
***
After an hour, Darmika was able to find some medicinal charcoal in the medical lab that could be crushed. She also found a box of pencils. Pencils could write in space and the Russians had been using them for decades.
Darmika and Binh broke open the wooden pencils and scraped out the carbon inside. This they crushed to a powder. To make up the volume needed they crushed the charcoal to powder and mixed them together.
Detective Leach had Darmika and Binh practice a bit with pressing their fingers on various surfaces and then taking the powder and lightly dusting it to raise the prints. They used an ultra-fine brush meant for mechanical cleaning to sprinkle the charcoal and ground up carbon from the pencils by twirling the brush over, but not usually touching, the prints, and thus dropping the dust onto them.
They practiced for a couple of hours on various types of surfaces as the detectives supervised. They made note of what surfaces could and could not hold finger prints that could be raised by this method. Superglue would have be preferrable as the vapor from heated superglue adhered to the prints on any surface. However, since they were in space and glue didn’t work well, they had none of this type of glue aboard the ship. They were surprised at what types of surfaces would hold prints. Some that seemed impossible held prints very well.
When they were ready, they dusted the various devices, such as the charges, the MMU’s, which were very roughly textured, the habitat’s balloon and its trigger mechanism, and other such places. They got no prints. There should have been some, even from the workers at the space station. They found nothing at all. That was odd. There weren’t even any of the crew’s prints.
Chapter 5
Everyone had another sleepless night and the crew was becoming grumpy from lack of sufficient sleep. Fear was better than caffeine for keeping most of them awake. Despite the detective’s warning, after they had all turned in for the night, except for the one on duty, they drifted individually back to the dining room.
“There is something about this. Why?” asked Win.
“I think there is no “Why,” said Julie. “Perhaps we are dealing with a Psychopath who needs no “why” to do what he or she does.”
“You know, statistically, this is a male doing this,” said Binh. “Sure, there are female psychopaths, but as far as serial killers, most are men.”
“Wait a minute!” said Rhys. “You are saying that it is either Cal, Win, Luke, Alister, or me. That’s crazy! Based on what evidence are you pointing fingers at us? Is this some sort of feminist nonsense? Women are just as capable of this sort of thing as men. They may use different methods, but they still kill.”
“I’m just pointing out a statistical probability,” said Binh. “I’m not pointing fingers.”
Alister and Rhys got up from the table in disgust and headed back to their cabins. The rest stayed a little longer and then all but Cal followed. Cal had the late night watch.
***
“I still say that this is not one of us. It was someone on the space station that rigged everything before we left. I don’t see it being one of us, not with all of the psych evals we’ve been through,” said Regin. “I mean, if it were one of us, that would be…would be…it would be monstrous!”
It was a sleepy, tired morning for all of them. None of them got much sleep. Darmika seemed a little fresher than most, except for Regin and Luke.
“You may well be right. I hope you’re right,” said Darmika.
“Yeah, that’s the way to look at it. It was someone on the space station, not us. All of those things could have been rigged before we left,” said Rhys, visibly relaxing a bit.
“Well then, what about the fact that the charges had to be set remotely at close range?” Julie wanted to know.
“It is possible that there is a transmitter on board. Someone, knowing when we were doing the space walk, could send a signal to the transmitter and it could send the code. It would only take less than four minutes to get here from the space station, based on our current position,” said Rhonda. “I mean, it is possible. Maybe we should search the ship for such a transmitter, assuming it is not on the outside of the ship.”
“That’s a good idea. Rhonda, show us what we should be looking for,” said Cal.
Rhonda gave a description of the sorts of devices to look for. “Bear in mind, it could be one of our cell phones that has been co-opted for that purpose, or even a pad or laptop. I can check those, however.”
“Okay, Win, you and Rhys check the main cargo bay. When anyone finishes they can come help you. Julie, you and Luke check the greenhouse and the other plants. Darmika, you and Rhonda check the living quarters. Don’t forget the gym and game room. Regin, you and I will check the command center. Binh, you and Alister check the medical lab and the forward cargo bay. Everyone report when you are finished and let us know immediately if you find anything,” Cal ordered. “We will all meet in the dining area in two hours.
After two hours they all began to filter back into the dining area. No one found anything. “That still does not mean there is not something here,” said Rhonda. “We might have overlooked it or it might be outside of the ship. I can check all of the smartphones, pads, and laptops if everyone will bring theirs to me.”
“Luke, where’s Julie? She should be here,” said Cal.
“She’s still in the greenhouse. We finished looking and found nothing. She saw something in one of the plants she wanted a closer look at and stayed behind. I went to the toilet and then came here,” said Luke.
“Someone call her, please,” said Cal.
After a couple of minutes, Rhys said, “She’s not responding. I’ll check the camera.” He keyed up the greenhouse camera on his smartphone. “That’s odd. The camera is not working. It’s blank. It was working an hour ago because I looked.”
“Come on! Let’s go get her!” said Luke.
In a near panic, Luke, Darmika, and Win Broadax went aft as fast as they could negotiate the narrow passage. Some of the others followed them. When they got to the green house, they fanned out, each going down a row. On the Starboard side, under a bench laden with small plants being repotted Luke found her.
“Oh my God! Come quick! Get Binh in here, fast!” he screamed.
Darmika called for Binh on the communicator and ran over to see what was the matter. Julie was lying there with a loop of wire that she used for her plants wrapped around her neck, cutting into the skin. She had been strangled by a loop of wire being passed over her head and the noose tightened around her neck.
Cal and Binh raced into the greenhouse, followed by everyone else that was not already present. “She’s dead. She’s been dead probably fifteen minutes to half an hour. Notice this knot. Someone strangled her from behind, but it did not take a lot of force and they did not have to stay long. The knot is such that it will not slip once tightened. It could not be gotten off. Notice the marks her nails made as she tried to get it off of her. She never had a chance,” said Binh.
Darmika took pictures of everything and they dusted for prints, not really expecting to find anything…and they didn’t.
Binh wrapped Julie’s body carefully and reverently. She stored her body in the rearmost storage room along with Grant, where the cold of space would preserve it.
***
By this time, they were all very aware that the killer was among them. There was no doubting it, now. They were all looking at each other, wide eyed with fear and uncertainty. No one wanted to even brush against someone else. The fear was palpable in the air. Cal contacted Mission Control and they began a debate as to what to do. On the one hand, the mission was costly and the ship was two thirds of the way to Mars. On the other hand, the need for survival was paramount. Should the mission continue or should the ship slingshot around Mars and head back to Earth?
Cal reissued his command that everyone go together in threes. No one was to be alone or to go only with one other person. They simply did not know who the murderer was and they did not need to take any chances. People did not want to sit next to each other in the dining area. They spread out as much as possible, not even liking someone brushing against them. Fear stalked the crew of the Mars Terraformer, a dark, dangerous, slavering thing that haunted all of their waking and sleeping hours. Their eyes had haunted looks in them and their faces held a tension that seemed ready to snap.
Cal had just come on duty in the command center when Mission Control called. Darmika came in and handed Cal a packet of coffee. Detective Gonzales was already present, even though it was 0545 in the morning at Mission Control. He appeared on the screen with a cup of coffee in his hand.
He asked, “Commander Anderson, do you or Ms Allison know whether or not vital signs could be used in some fashion to find the killer? Someone with heightened vitals at the times of the murders might indicate someone under the stress of killing someone else.”
“That’s a good idea! We can do that!” Cal stated, finally having something he could do to find the killer.
Cal and Mission Control both ran the vitals. On the day of Marsha’s murder and Darmika’s near murder, the only people with heightened vitals were, of course, Marsha and Darmika, along with Win Broadax and Cal Anderson. The other vitals only showed elevations after they discovered what was happening. Grant’s murder showed everyone’s vitals being within expected parameters. When Julie was killed, Darmika’s vitals were elevated, but she was able to explain that as being due to her lifting heavy mattresses and being witnessed by Rhonda, her partner in the search. Everyone’s vitals had been elevated slightly during the tenseness of the search for anything that could have set off the charges.
The idea was a dead end. They didn’t find anything of value. There were no unexplained elevations of vital signs, no signs of stress, nothing.
“Of course, a psychopath may not exhibit elevated vitals. They are cold. It would depend. My thinking is that someone who kills for some sort of thrill would show such elevations as they got their pleasure. Someone who killed out of hate, or revenge would, as well. However, someone who killed coldly for some imagined reason might not have any elevated vitals in ways that mattered. My opinion, of course,” said Binh.
“Well, you are more qualified than anyone in that area,” said Rhonda and Rhys nodded his agreement.
***
Nothing happened for the next two days. Everyone teamed up to do their tasks when they had to be done in a different part of the huge ship. They kept a close eye on Luke, since he had been with Julie when she was murdered and they grumbled against him a bit. They suspected that he had killed her. Finally, things got so bad with the crew that Cal was forced to confine Luke to his sleeping quarters until they could sort things out.
“Come on, Commander!” Luke protested loudly. “There is no way I would have or could have killed her!”
“Nevertheless, until we figure this out, for your safety, as well as ours, you are confined to your quarters except for meals,” Cal ordered.
***
“Maybe someone else is on board? Maybe we have a stowaway?” Win said to Binh. They had gone to bed together in the tight confines of her bunk. She was not big and she felt safe, snuggled up against his muscular body.
“I think that is a really good idea. We actually could have a stowaway on a ship this large. As soon as Cal is awake, we will float this by him. In the meantime…” she said as she snuggled closer.
At 0600 ship time, Binh and Win came into the dining area where Cal and some of the others were fixing their breakfasts. “Cal, we both think we should search the ship, again, and this time, even look inside the vehicles and habitats. We should look everywhere, even the crawl spaces for a stowaway. The solution might be that simple and we haven’t even looked. We think it likely that we have a stowaway that we haven’t found. It would explain everything,” said Win.
Binh nodded in agreement.
“That’s a good idea, Win. It couldn’t hurt,” said Darmika.
Regin agreed. “I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before. Of course! That must be it. Let’s go do it right now!”
“Alright. After we eat, I’ll take Regin and Binh and search the forward bay and the command center. Rhys, Darmika, and Win, you take the living area and the greenhouse. Win, you, Rhonda, and Alister search the main cargo bay and aft. If you find someone, call out and wait until help arrives. Whoever this is, is dangerous. Afterwards, we will search the crawl spaces more carefully and below deck.”
After two hours of intensive searching, they found no one. The search parties began to break up. Some went to their rooms to sleep. Cal and Binh went to her room to work off some nervous energy in some heated sex.
Alister, however, was extremely nervous. He grabbed a torque wrench. “I’m going to my room. If anyone wants me, they can have some of this!” he said as he showed everyone the wrench.
Darmika said, “I’m going to the dining area and get something to eat and some tea before I rest. Anybody want to go along?”
Rhonda and Regin went with her. The rest filtered out to their rooms and Rhys went to the command center, where someone always had to be on duty.
“Do you think we have a stowaway?” Rhonda asked, her eyes big.
“We didn’t find anyone. We even went through the crawl spaces,” Regin responded.
“Yeah, we searched below decks pretty thoroughly. I don’t see how anyone could be hiding onboard and not be found or heard by someone,” Darmika said. “It has to be one of us? But, why try to kill me?”
“Maybe they are trying to kill all of us. I mean, let’s think. What do you, Marsha, Grant, and Julie all have in common? I’ve wracked my brain trying to see a connection, but I can’t come up with anything. As far as I know, none of you even knew each other until selected for the mission,” said Regin. “I’m going to bed. Are you two ready?”
“Yes, let’s go. This place gives me the creeps with all of the sounds of the ship I can hear in the silence,” said Rhonda.
“You two go ahead. I’m going to get some juice and then I’ll be right behind you in one sec,” said Darmika.
***
There was a knock on Alister’s door. He jerked it open with the wrench in his other hand, already drawn back for a strike. “Oh, it’s you. I hoped you might come. Squeeze in here and let me close the door.”
***
The next rotation was nearly due to take over in the command center. Darmika and Regin were in the dining area when Darmika said, “I think I’ll go see if Cal wants anything to eat.” She picked up a sealed packet of coffee and heated it up and went to the door. Cal had barricaded it from the inside. “Cal. I’ve got coffee. Do you want anything to eat besides this?” Darmika called out.
Inside, they could hear Cal moving something from the door and it slowly opened. “Come on in,” he said. When she was inside, the door was still partially open and he said, “Thanks for the coffee. Yes, I’d like something to eat. I’m waiting on the powers that be to make up their slow minds about what to do about our mission.”
Darmika left and as she did so, she turned at the door and said to Cal, “Okay. I’ll have him come up here, if that’s what you want.
She closed the door and said to Regin, “He wants to see Luke, for some reason.”
They both went down the length of the dining area, game room, and into the sleeping quarters. They stopped and knocked on Luke’s door. “Luke? Cal wants to see you. We are here to walk back with you so that you will be safe.”
“Why does he want to see me? He could just call me,” Luke groused. “You both know I’d never do anything like that. Right?”
“We know, Luke. Everyone’s on edge. It will pass when we figure this out,” said Regin.
Luke came out and they went forward to the command center. He knocked on the door and went in. In a minute, he came out with a puzzled look on his face. “All he said was “Get Binh.”
Darmika went to the door and said, “Cal? Do you want that food now?” She turned, pulling the door shut behind her, and went to the microwave and started heating up some food. Then, she went back to the door with the tray and pushed. The door was blocked.
“Regin. The door is somehow blocked. Come help me push,” she said as she shoved on the door.
Together, they pushed on the door and went inside. Cal sat in the chair, unmoving. “Cal? Cal! Regin, something’s wrong. You’d better get Binh for sure.”
Regin turned and went to the communicator and called, “Binh, come to the command center, quickly.” Everybody heard it. Soon, Binh raced into the command center, followed by everyone else.
Binh looked at Cal. “He’s dead. He’s been stabbed right under his arm. His axillary artery was severed from what I can determine, and he bled to death very quickly. Who was the last person in here with him?”
“Why, it was Luke. He went to find you. Didn’t you see him?” Darmika said.
“No. He never spoke to me,” Binh said. “I think we need to find him. This is twice, now, that he was with a murdered person.”
“Anybody see Alister? He is not with us,” said Rhonda.
“He said he was going to lock himself in his room. We’ll check on him when we go find Luke,” Darmika said. “I have a bad feeling.”
Win, Rhys, Darmika, and Regin went quickly back down the length of the ship to the sleeping quarters. They shoved open Luke’s door. He was sitting on his bunk surfing the internet.
“Okay, Luke. Why did you do it? Why’d you kill Cal?” demanded Win.
“Wha…What? Kill Cal? I did no such thing. I just spoke to him. Ask Darmika and Regin. They saw,” Luke blurted out.
“You were alone with him and when we went to bring him some food, he was dead. How’d you block the door, by the way?” Regin demanded to know.
“Wait, you say the door was blocked?” asked Rhys.
“Yes. It was blocked from the inside,” said Regin.
“Well, how could Luke kill him and block the door?” Rhys wanted to know.
“He must have stabbed him and Cal did not know how serious it was and blocked the door until Binh could get there. Only, she never was summoned. You never called her, did you?” said Darmika.
“I did. She didn’t answer so I thought she was off in another part of the ship. I came back, here,” said Luke. He was getting angry and he was a bit scared, too.
Win went down to Alister’s room. “Alister, old buddy. You in there?” There was no answer, so Win pushed the door open. “My God! Get Binh!”
Alister was dead. His head had been bashed in with the very wrench he had taken for self-defense.
Terror was a tangible thing in the ship. Everyone felt as if someone or something were creeping up on them unseen. They jumped at the slightest touch. Nerves were wearing thin. Over everything was the fear that they might not get home alive.
***
“I’ve seen this type of knife, somewhere before,” said Binh as she examined the knife found under Cal’s body. It was a folding knife of the back lock variety with a 96mm blade. Looking the knife over, the well scarred blade said Spyderco and the orange handle said Endura. It was light, slender, and long.
“I know whose knife that is. It is Luke’s! It goes in his geologist kit,” said Rhys.
“Are you sure?” asked Darmika with a hint of doubt.
“Absolutely. We both like Spyderco. The only one I brought with me was a Ladybug Salt because it is tiny and the H1 steel won’t rust. I’ve seen that knife, before.”
“Okay, where’s his kit?” asked Binh.
They retrieved Luke’s kit from his locker out in the corridor where the rest of the crew had their extra lockers. When it was opened, they found a rock hammer, a vial for HCL, a pencil magnet, a pocket scribe, a compass, a hand held magnifying lens, a vest, a roll-up hat, and some other things. There was no knife. However, there was a place where the imprint of the bi-directional texturing of the knife scales had been left in the soft material of the case lining.
“Why that…! I’ll kill him, myself, and save everyone a lot of trouble,” said Rhys, reaching for the hammer.
“Listen, anybody could have gotten into this locker. It’s not secured and it’s out with the rest of the lockers. This is certainly damning, but it is not proof positive,” said Darmika.
“Even so, I think we need to keep him confined to his quarters from now on,” said Regin.
“Sure thing. You’re boss now that Cal is dead. Tell us what you want to do,” said Darmika.
“I want to contact NASA. Darmika, you and Rhys go with me. No one stays alone. Groups of three at all times, if possible.
***
The hours waiting on Mission Control’s response were agonizing. Regin noticed how odd it was that time seemed not to be constant. When a person was excited and having fun, time went by very quickly. When in such a situation as this, time seemed to be eternally slow. Minutes were like hours and hours were like months. That got her to thinking of whether or not there actually was a present, at all. It seemed to her that they were forever moving into the future and the past streamed out behind them, sort of like a person entering a waterfall, or something. The present, if there were such a thing, was never experienced at all. A person constantly entered the future and the past streamed away from them and what they called “present” was only the immediate past remembered. All she had time to do was think and her mind kept running down such rabbit holes.
Win got to thinking about shaving. It was funny what you missed when it was no longer available. Shaving was something he enjoyed. It was a comforting morning ritual that helped him get his head together. On board ship there were, of course, vacuum razors. They had a single edged changeable blade cartridge attached to a vacuum hose. The vacuum collected all of the whiskers, skin, soap, and water from the shave. The water was collected and recycled. Nothing was wasted. At home he had a nice collection of Theirs Issard straight razors, and one nice Ralf Aust with horn scales. He enjoyed the daily shave. First he had to strop the razor to make sure the edge was straight and keen. Then, he had to lather up his shower softened beard. He used a brush and a bowl. This was as God intended, he often joked. Shaving with a straight razor not only felt manly, but it took a lot of concentration to keep from slicing or cutting one’s face. He did have a couple of nice double edge safety razors for when he was in a hurry, however. Sadly, he had to leave all of those fine implements behind. He wondered if he’s live to use them, again.
Binh was too scared to sleep. She forced her mind to think about anything else than the terror that was stalking them all. She thought about her parents and what they would say about all of this. Her mother would probably scold her and tell her that she had warned her something bad would happen. Binh laughed a little at the thought. It would be nice to see them, right now. She might not be able to do so, ever again. With that thought, she sent off a video message to them.
Darmika, who remained outwardly calm, tried to focus on reading. Some of the others surfed the net, or tried to catch up on their sleep with the doors to their cabins barricaded.
Regin was beginning to go down another rabbit hole in her thinking, this one more terrifying, when something caught her eye. The light on the communication system was blinking indicating a new transmission was incoming.
***
Mission Control directed them to slingshot around Mars and head for Earth at best speed. None of them knew whether to be relieved or upset at the news. Then, the detective spoke to them, and especially to Darmika. “No finger prints, eh? Now that is strange. Have you found any gloves?” asked Gonzales.
“We never thought to look for any,” said Darmika. “We’ll do a search, right away.”
“It is too bad you have no means of testing for DNA,” said Gonzalez. “ You could check to see who had sex with them and who might have been at the murder scene. I’ve gotten all of the pictures that you’ve sent. And the only persons who went into the room with the Commander were Darmika and Looi? We have a witness that he was alive when Darmika went inside because Major Cheah heard them talking, but what about later, after Looi left?”
“I didn’t go back in, but as Regin can tell you, I spoke from the door and he pushed that chair back up against the door as I closed it. It took both of us to shove it out of the way when I tried to get in with food and he didn’t answer,” Darmika said.
“And Major Cheah, did you hear him answer when she went to the door?” Gonzales wanted to know.
“Well, I guess I did. I don’t know. It has been really stressful. She went to the door and asked if he wanted anything to eat and then I heard the chair being scooted against the door. Yes, he must have replied because Darmika was given instructions, though I wasn’t paying much attention, to be honest,” Regin said.
“Okay, well, keep Looi confined and take all precautions. Evidence points his way, but it is all circumstantial. Also, we have no motive for his acting in this fashion. He has always been stable and gotten along with everyone, as far as we can tell. However, he has the skills needed to set the charges and rig the balloon to fire,” said Gonzales.
“Well, so do most of us, if the truth be told,” said Regin.
***
Everyone tensely gathered together in the dining area a few hours later. They were all jumpy. Regin began, “There are several things we need to discuss. First, as you all know by now, Mission Control has ordered us to slingshot around Mars and head for home. They will send the data to the computers onboard as soon as they have everything perfected. There is still a lot of time. I propose, that since we have Luke safely locked in his cabin, that when we slingshot around the planet, we jettison the cargo as planned. At least the mission will not be a total failure and the habitats, plants, and vehicles will be on the surface when the next mission arrives. What do you all say?”
That started a round of discussion, but the general consensus was that it was a good idea. “Do we jettison Luke along with it?” laughed Rhonda. That caused a ripple of laughter through the group and gave some relief to the constant tension they had endured.
“Okay, next, I propose two things. I have spoken to Mission Control and they concur. First, we search for gloves, though I don’t think we will find any. Luke, or whoever it is, has been very clever and I don’t think something so obvious will have been overlooked. Second, when Win begins to get the cargo ready for launching out of the cargo bay, I suggest that first one of us walks the outside of the ship and looks for any transmitters or things that do not belong. We have not searched one of the most obvious places. Since the ship was built in space, it would be easy to attach something to the ship as there was no atmosphere to rip it off on lift off.
“What about glue or tape?” Win asked.
“I don’t get you,” said Regin.
“Glue on the hand or tape on the palmar surface of the hands would just as effectively prevent finger prints. I suggest we at least look at everybody’s hands and look for discarded glue and tape,” said Win.
Two frustrating hours later they turned up no gloves and no used tape. However, they did find a small amount of glue on the table in the workshop in the rear cargo bay. This was where Win and Grant made repairs.
“I can explain the glue. It is on the table, right? Glue doesn’t work in space very well, as Darmika found out,” said Binh. “I was doing some experiments on my own time with glue combined with other ingredients, such as snail slime, to see if they would solve the problem. So far no luck, though.”
They all looked at her a bit suspiciously, but they had no reason to doubt her. There is an inborn trust in doctors. Still…
Chapter 6
“Telemetry is down. We are not sending or receiving data,” Rhys said to Regin.
“What? How? Check the system. Reset if needed. We have got to have it if we are going to get home,” Regin said.
“We have no comms, there is no communication between systems, nothing. I’m not sure how this could even be done!” exclaimed Rhys as he went through systems checks.
Coming out of the command center, Regin sat at the table with Darmika, Rhonda, Win, and Binh. “Telemetry is down. There is no communication between Mars Terraformer and Mission Control. Also, we have no comms and the ship’s systems are no longer communicating with each other. Something has shut down telemetry.”
“Who would even know how to do that? I mean, it would take an expert like Rhonda to make that happ…” Win’s voice trailed away and they all looked at Rhonda.
“Heeyy! Don’t look at me! I didn’t do this. Let me into the command center and see if I can figure this out,” she said.
She joined Rhys in the command center and began working on the systems. Telemetry and communications being down represented a real emergency.
“Win, I think you and Darmika need to step up that space walk and check the outside of the ship. We will be able to see you, but not talk to you. Get on it, please,” Regin said.
***
Win and Darmika stood in the cargo bay in their space suits. Darmika was facing the airlock and Win was behind her, just reaching for his helmet, when suddenly, the huge cargo doors overhead began to open. Instantly, all of the air rushed out into space. To the horror of those watching on the monitors, Darmika was lifted out of the ship and flung into space before she had time to get into her MMU. Win’s face began to swell. They could see him try to scream as the oxygen in his blood began to boil and the water in his body vaporized. He was sucked out of the ship behind Darmika.
“Oh my God! Get those doors closed. Secure the hatches in the rest of the ship! Rhonda! Stop staring! Get those doors closed!” shouted Regin.
“Closing!” shouted Rhonda. “Uh, Regin, now the cameras are down all over the ship, even outside. We are blind. I don’t know what’s wrong. As soon as I shut the doors the cameras went off and I can’t seem to get them back up.”
“Come on Binh! Let’s you and I go back there and see what we can find while they try to fix the system,” ordered Regin.
They ran through the narrow corridor, through living quarters, and into the cargo bay. Anything not tied down was now lost in space, including some space suits and two astronauts.
“Regin, over here,” said Binh.
All of the plants in the greenhouse were dead from the extreme coldness and vacuum of space. Nothing had survived. Someone had left the hatch open.
“What about the plants below? That could affect our air quality,” asked Regin.
Together they climbed down to the plant level. This level had all of the oxygen tanks, air supply, toilet, and water tanks. The hatch had been closed and at first nothing seemed amiss. Then, they noticed that the plants were wilted and dying. They had been touched by the outer worldly cold of space.
“We might be able to save a few, but I’m afraid the rest are dead. We are going to have to be careful about CO2 expulsion. The air supply system should handle it with so few of us left,” said Regin.
“I don’t mind saying that I’m a bit frightened,” said Binh. “Now with these last two deaths…who could it have been? Luke is in his room. Only Rhonda is tech savvy enough to pull some of these things off.”
“Luke! I forgot about him in this emergency! Let’s check on him,” said Regin.
They went to the living quarters and climbed the ladder to the main level. Coming to Luke’s room, which had been locked with the simple method of attaching an eye bolt on the door and to the frame and inserting a screw driver. The screw driver was still in place. Regin knocked and got no answer.
“Luke? It’s Regin. I’m coming in!”
She opened the door and they could see Luke on his bunk, apparently asleep.
“Luke? Are you awake? It’s Binh. Are you okay?”
Luke didn’t move. He didn’t look right, somehow, either. They came into the cramped room, with barely enough room for the two of them to stand, and even then, they were rubbing against each other. Binh shook him and when he did not respond, she checked his pulse.
“He’s dead. Based on the coolness of the body and the fact that rigor mortis has already set in, I’d say he’s been dead at least three hours, and probably longer. I’ll know more once I get him into the med lab,” Binh said.
“Three more lives gone, just like that, and no reason why or who did it,” said Regin, round eyed.
***
Together, they dragged Luke’s body to the med lab by the simple expedient of putting it on a blanket and pulling him down the corridor. Getting the body into the lab and then onto the table was another thing, altogether. Binh tugged while Regin pushed and they finally got Luke’s body around the door and into the room. The body being in rigor made things harder than they would normally have been. Then began the most strenuous part, as if what they had already done wasn’t hard enough.
They wrestled and pushed and lifted the body up, inch by inch. It was like lifting a small log, it was so unyielding and stiff. Exhausted, they finally got him onto the table. They were so worn out they did not even try to cover him, at first. They just collapsed onto the floor, breathing hard and not saying a word. After a while, though, Binh got up and gently began to remove Luke’s uniform in preparation for an autopsy.
It was terrible, having to do this to a friend. It had to be done, of course, but it was extremely difficult at best. Binh cried the entire time.
***
“It’s a virus. I’m sure of it. We rebooted the system and at first telemetry came back up and then it disappeared, again,” said Rhonda. “Let me look at that charge, again.”
In a bit, she said, “Well, this charge was not set off by a virus, but it could have been set off by a device using a virus to control something. Whatever that is, a smartphone, pad, laptop, or small transmitter would send a signal over the comms or other systems. Very ingenious and very simple.”
“Now, the question is, which one of us is a monster?” said Rhys. “I know it’s not me, so you will all understand if I don’t associate with any of you unless it is ship necessary.” With that, he got some food packs, some coffee, milk, and juice packs, and some packs of crackers, and headed for his cabin.
The other three looked at each other with big eyes. Any one of them could have uploaded a virus. Any of them could control things with the help of the virus and a pad or smartphone.
***
“Luke was poisoned. It was apparently botulinum, the same stuff in Botox injections. It caused paralysis, respiratory failure, and death. It works quickly, too, in the amount he was given,” said Binh.
“Who would know about this? Julie, but she’s dead. You, Binh. Who else?” said Regin.
“Hey! Wait a minute! I didn’t do this! Just because I’m a doctor doesn’t mean I am guilty. Anybody can look this up on the internet. It is one of you three!” Binh ejaculated.
“Who are you pointing your fingers at? You probably did it and are trying to blame us for it!” said an angry and frightened Rhonda.
“Okay, okay! Let’s get a grip on ourselves,” said Rhys calmly. “We have no idea who did this, but I think we might figure it out. Binh, how was the poison administered?”
Still angry, Binh said, “I cannot be certain without a more complete autopsy, but it appears to have been put in his food. I tested some of it and the beef stroganoff in his stomach came back positive. In fact, the dose was many times what would be lethal. There was a tiny hole in the meal packet, as if made by a hypodermic needle. It was so small it was only visible with a magnifying glass.”
“Well, who prepared his food and who brought Luke his food?” asked Rhys.
“Let’s see. Rhonda prepared it and Darmika carried it to him since she was going to the cargo bay with Win and was going right by Luke’s cabin,” said Regin.
“Well, Darmika is dead, in case anybody has forgotten. That leaves Rhonda,” Rhys said.
Everyone turned to look at her. “Hold it! Wouldn’t the heat from the microwave kill off any bacteria?” said Rhonda. “I couldn’t have done it.”
“Not really. The toxins would remain in the food completely unaffected by the heat,” said Binh.
“I didn’t do it, I’m telling you!” said Rhonda, loudly.
“How could you! All of those people! Our friends! Okay, now you are going to tell us how you turned off telemetry and the communication system!” said Regin, fear and revulsion evident in her face.
“I told you. It is one of you! I didn’t do this!” Rhonda shouted.
“Okay, then, we will lock you in your cabin where you can’t murder anyone else. Rhys, get the power screw driver. We will lock her in like we did poor Luke,” said Regin.
***
The next ship’s day, Regin came into the dining area. She seemed lighter as did the moods of the other two in the room. They had finally gotten the killer and were feeling safe. She got a packet of apple juice, which she drank, and then took a packet of coffee into the command center.
Binh followed her in, talking about the possibility of getting communication with Mission Control. “We should be able to get something established. Rhys said he thinks he has figured out a means of doing so, at least somewhat. We may not be able to receive instructions computer to computer, but we might be able to get the calculations and input them manually.”
“Well, that sounds promising,” said Regin. “What about it Rhys?”
As Regin sat in the command chair, her body suddenly stiffened and spasmed. Her eyeballs protruded. Her skin turned bright red and she defecated on herself. Her skin began to swell like it was going to rip open, like a ham with the skin still on in the oven. The others could hear the sound of bacon frying and the smell of burning flesh permeated the command center.
“Quick! Shut down the power!” shouted Binh.
Rhys cut the power and everything went dark.
Regin had been electrocuted. Someone had run a cable through the bottom of the command chair and the electrode pads were on the seat. It was a simple job. The base of the chair was hollow and bolted to the floor. The cable was run through one of the openings in the base and attached to the main batteries in the below deck. The below deck was more of a crawl space or access, having barely enough room to squat without hitting one’s head.
Rhys used the light on his smartphone to see to remove the cable and then he powered the command center back up.
Standing over the still smoking corpse of Regin, Binh looked at Rhys and quietly said, “It was you, all along, wasn’t it?” As she said this, she took off running towards the living quarters. She jerked the screwdriver holding Rhonda’s door shut out and shouted, “It was Rhys! He killed Regin!”
Instantly, Rhonda was on her feet, grasping a shaking Binh by the shoulders, “What did you say?”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I thought it was you! But you were locked up in here and Regin was electrocuted when she sat in the command chair. It had to be Rhys. He’s the only one who could have done it!”
Rhys shoved in the door, just then, “Binh! Get ahold of yourself. You certainly can’t believe that I would kill Regin? We were a couple! I would never hurt her!”
“Get out of here,” Binh yelled.
At that moment, Rhonda took the screwdriver out of her hand and buried it into the side of Rhys’ neck, severing his jugular vein. He staggered back into the corridor, his hand trying to stop the blood that was spurting like a fountain from between his fingers. A look of sheer horror was on his face as he slipped to the floor and died. It happened so fast no one had a chance to react.
“He won’t kill anyone else!” said Rhonda, fiercely.
“No, I…I guess not,” said Binh. “Help me get him to the rear storage with the rest of them.
Together, they struggled to carry Rhys’s heavy body down the length of the ship to the rear storage where the other bodies were kept in the cold. They tossed him in and quickly shut the hatch.
“We are safe, now, at last. Would you mind seeing if you can get something working? Telemetry or communications? Something?” asked Binh.
“”I’ll get on it, but first, I need to eat something and get something to drink. My nerves are shot and my blood sugar is tanking as a result,” Rhonda said.
***
Binh went into her cabin to take a shower. Rhonda went into the dining area to fix herself something to eat. After all, there was no more reason to fear with Rhys dead. The fear seemed to melt off of them. Binh could feel it washing off of her along with the sweat as she bathed. Rhonda felt the tension leave as she sipped on a cup of tea. She realized her neck and jaws had been so tense she had been building a headache. Now, everything was relaxing.
Suddenly, the unmistakable sound of someone hammering something in the main cargo bay reached their ears. “No! Oh, no, no, no…It can’t be. Binh…” Rhonda rushed down the corridor to Binh’s cabin and pounded once on the door before Binh jerked it open. She was dressing quickly. There was no sound any longer, but both had obviously heard it.
“What was that? It sounded like someone hammering something! That can’t be!” said Rhonda.
“Maybe it was something loose. It sure sounded like hammering, though. Come on!” said Binh.
They made their way aft to the rear cargo bay. The hatch was closed. Binh jerked it open and a loud explosion went off and Binh was blasted with hundreds of nuts and bolts! An air compressor had been rigged with a PVC pipe filled with nuts and bolts and set with a trip so when the hatch was opened, it set off the improvised air canon. The force of the blast staggered her back as she instinctively reacted to being shot. She fell at Rhonda’s feet, a bloody, ragged mess and very obviously dead. Her dead eyes stared, caught in the surprise of death.
Rhonda turned and ran screaming back to the living quarters. She couldn’t stop screaming. She reached her cabin and slammed the door, whimpering all the while. She was terrified and could not control her shaking. She opened her bag and got out a Victorinox Swiss Army Knife, a multi-tool model called the Evolution. She fumbled around, and then dropped it. She picked it back up, her hands shaking as she looked for the knife blade among the scissors, pliers, screwdrivers, and other tools. Finding it, she opened it and sat facing the door.
Suddenly, she heard the sound of something scraping the wall and cabin doors outside of her room. Someone was dragging something metal against the bulkhead. It was coming nearer and nearer. The tension got to be too much. As the sound got to her door, no longer able to take the strain, she opened the femoral artery on her inner thigh. As she bled out, the door silently opened and at what was visible there, she said, “No! Imposs…” and she died.
Chapter 7
The ship silently passed Mars. The view of the planet out of the view port was stunning. Telemetry came back up. Communications started working. The ship kept increasing in speed, headed, who knew where, into the vast black coldness of space.
The communicator in the command center was blaring. Mission Control was demanding to know what had been wrong with the ship and communications. They got no answer. Suddenly, the voice of Detective Gonzales came over the comm. “Hello! Are you there?”
Darmika reached over and hit the switch. “I’m here. So, you figured it out, huh?”
“Yes, but not soon enough, it seems. I assume they are all dead,” he said calmly.
“Yes, and I soon will be, too,” she said.
“Why? I think I know, but I want to hear it from you,” he said.
“Why not? Okay. Because we humans are murdering Mother Earth. Humans destroy everything and are killing our own planet. Now, we want to kill another one. We are like a disease that must be excised out, somehow. I know what I did won’t stop it, but at least I can slow down the progression and give an example for others to follow.”
“I see. And you think that because you are in space you are beyond the reach of retribution. What happened to the crew, exactly?” asked Gonzalez. The people in Mission Control sat quietly horrified, but they were about to become more so.
“It was too easy, really…a lot easier than I thought it would be. I was easily able to fool those silly assessment tests. As for the crew, they did much of the work for me. I installed a virus in the computer that allowed me to control some things, like the cargo bay doors, telemetry, cameras, and communications. It lay dormant until I was ready to activate it, which I did when I killed Marsha. I rigged small explosive charges in the sail while we were docked at the station before we left during one of my outings. I also put one in Marsha’s MMU and I depleted the propellant. I pegged the indicator to full. I cut through the tether cable and fouled the winch. I cut a hole in my suit and glued it back with superglue, which I knew wouldn’t hold in space. This was the most dangerous time for me and the glue nearly prevented the suit sealant from sealing. I was close to being out of air when it finally did seal. Setting off the charges tore holes in the sail simulating a meteor strike, which mandated that Marsha and I go out and fix them. I had the timer set and at the right time Marsha’s MMU blew and she spun out into space. Simple. From then on, as one of the victims, I was completely free from suspicion. Odd what a little misdirection and sympathy will do for you.”
“Why Marsha?” asked Gonzalez.
“She was a major polluter. Her business polluted the ground water and streams on the forty-five acres of rubbish that she owned. She had to go,” Darmika said without emotion.
“And Grant Holder?” Gonzalez asked quietly.
“That was easy. I simply set the sensitivity of the explosive inflation device so that the slightest touch would set it off. Grant pushed through checking everything post launch as per SOP and set it off. When I insinuated myself into the investigation it made things easier for me to move about and accomplish my goals.”
“And to conceal evidence,” Gonzalez noted.
“And to conceal evidence, not that there was much to be found,” she said. “Julie was another oil company polluter. When she was searching the ship with Rhonda, she went forward without me as we finished our search. Julie stayed back in the greenhouse when she finished her search with Luke Looi to look at something on her plants. I used a sledge knot that I learned from my father on some of the wire Julie used to hold up her young plants. A sledge knot cannot be unloosened, it must be cut off. I simply put the noose around her neck as she bent over and walked away. I was back with the others and safe from exposure and Luke was the prime suspect.”
“Alister and I had been having casual sex off and on, so when I went back to my cabin, I went to his, instead. He was glad to see me, poor fool. He never suspected a thing. His passion for old trains put enough coal smoke in the air to pollute everything for miles.”
“Cal was destroying Mother Earth by his support of the murder of innocent animals. A simple suggestion and illusion helped me with his death. I had gotten Luke’s knife. I went to see Cal in the Command Center, where he had unbolted a chair and pushed it against the hatch. I put some GBH in Cal’s coffee when I gave it to him. He knew something was wrong just before he went blank and asked for Binh. Luke went in and Cal asked for her. Luke did not look very hard for her and in his mood, who could blame him? I went in and asked him about food and stabbed him under the arm as he raised it to ask for help. Coming out, I pretended to be talking to him and Regin believed it, her mind on something else. I simply pulled the chair together with the closing hatch. I am so skinny it was easy to do. Of course, I couldn’t block the door completely, so when I needed to have him discovered, I carried the food and pretended to push on a totally blocked door. Regin believed it and when she helped me, she found it blocked with a chair. Though it was only partial, it was there and she supposed I had pushed it open that little bit. Easy.”
“Your father ran a business where flour sacks had to be tied securely. I assume that is where you learned the knot and is what first put me on to you. You seem to know a lot about misdirection. How did you come about that knowledge?” asked Gonzalez.
“Surfing the internet,” she smirked. “And, yes. That knot is normally used to tie the bags of flour and meal shut so they will not spill. As for Win, he was polluting the earth with his cattle and he was killing them for food. I knew he felt safe with me because I was one of the victims and we had been having sex occasionally. I convinced him that we should appear to go outside in our suits but remain within to catch the killer. Win agreed and we set my suit to stand up by the air lock. Win pretended to get into his suit, but it was not secured. I simply opened the cargo bay doors with my smartphone and now he was dead and I was too, seemingly. I was free from any suspicion and free to move about.”
“With Luke Looi, he was working for an oil company. I merely gave him some of the botulinum I found in a culture Julie had when I carried him his food. Binh also had some and suspicion fell on her, as well. I was safe because I was supposedly dead. However, Rhonda got the blame. It was perfect.”
Regin was destroying the planet through deforestation. She actually made money from cutting down trees and ruining the ecosystem. Going through the access spaces below deck I carried a cable and hooked it to the batteries and ran it through the floor and beneath the command chair. I knew Regin would sit in it. It was in her nature to want to do so. After all, she was in command. She cooked like a cheap ham. Cam Binh blamed Rhys, who was bringing back a species Mother Earth had decided to eliminate, and Rhonda stabbed him to death. I didn’t foresee that, but couldn’t have planned it better. That only left two. Rhonda was already gone in her mind. I fixed a cannon from an air compressor and a length of PVC pipe and rigged a pressure pad on the hatch. When it was opened the cannon fired and killed Cam Binh, as I figured it would. Rhonda ran away screaming and all I had to do was drag a wrench down the bulkhead coming towards her cabin and she killed herself in her terror.”
“To what end? You know that when you get back you will be arrested,” said Gonzales.
“Samudravasane Devi will be pleased with me. I have defended her,” said Darmika.
“Don’t you see that none of those poor people harmed you in any way?” asked the detective, who, as hard-bitten as he was, still was sickened by the calm, cold manner of the monster before him on the communicator.
“They were all harming Mother Earth and that’s why they were to die. I couldn’t have them doing those things to another world. Anyway, I won’t be coming back. You can forget about ever arresting me. I’ve killed the remaining plants below deck and I’ve destroyed the air scrubbers. Soon the living quarters of the ship will fill with CO2 and I’ll lie down and never wake up. Goodbye, Detective. It’s been fun.”
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