Pegasus in Space (45 page)

“Nothing illegal or the guard would’ve spread the contents out,” Ranjit said.

“Guard knows him,” Shandin remarked, for the tape now showed Spaz’s mouth moving. There was a pause during which the guard made some remark before waving Spaz through.

“Who was on duty that day?” asked Ranjit, as the guard’s face was not visible. The surveillance unit was trained on the full face of arrivals.

Shandin went back to his station and typed in a query. “Corporal Ito Kuwahari.” Shandin entered another command. “He’s on leave.”

Ranjit pinched his lower lip between two fingers. “Let me check.” He spoke a low command. “Spaz stayed overnight, and whaddaya know! Look at his pack as he leaves: it’s much flatter now.”

The two men exchanged smug glances.

“Good thinking, Ranjit. Let’s just check Uncle Riz and Zehra and see if they brought anything with them, and maybe left some of it behind. Can we get prints of all three? Just in case they turn up where they oughtn’t to have been?”

They smiled again at each other. The painstaking investigation had borne enough fruit to encourage them to look for more.

“Let’s also go over the surveillance records at Barchenka’s. Be very interesting to see if any of these mugs,” and Shandin waved his hand at the glossies of the three suspects, “have ever been to tea with Barchenka.”

“Now, is it my office that checks with Corporal Kuwahari on leave, or yours?”

“I don’t think we can. Where’s Kuwahari’s home? Osaka? On the off chance he happens to recall Spaz?” Ranjit asked.

Shandin twitched one shoulder. “Be our guest. Osaka’s out of my ballpark. Kuwahari might recall the incident, though I can’t fault him if he doesn’t. Hundreds have come through since then.”

A
s soon as the rockets of
Limo-28
shut down and they were in free fall, Johnny’ pathed to Peter details about the most recent developments at Padrugoi.

Flimflam?
Peter was surprised. Anger flared in him as he remembered that Flimflam had beaten Tirla.

Ol’ scuzball himself, doing his usual thing. Caught him with his fingerprints all over some MPU components; probably the originals he so kindly replaced for us. And more prints in the epoxy he left behind. Whether or not it’ll all be sorted out before we get back is doubtful. Meanwhile, connections are being made and evidence collected. Enjoy the next coupla days. They’ll be the last peaceful ones either of us will have for a while
.

Peter digested that information.
Is Flimflam
, he asked a moment later,
why we made such a precipitous dawn getaway?
He hadn’t really had enough sleep last night—this morning.

Bingo! You are beginning to appreciate my devious mind. I’d planned this sort of getaway the moment you landed us. Even before Dirk told me about Flimflam’s complicity
.

But! But!

Never mind Watari. He is basically a good commander
, Johnny admitted.
Just doesn’t like things that ain’t according to the book, his book, and we sure as hell ain’t according to
any
book yet written. Xiang went over this bird with every sensor known to man, with a maintenance crew
I
personally checked
. He weighted that word to imply that he had done some not totally “legal” scanning.

Aren’t we going from the frying pan into the fire?

There’re a lot more ’paths available on Padrugoi than there were on First Base. Lance is getting some well-deserved sleep at last
.

WHAT? Look, I don’t NEED to be wrapped in cotton wool for the rest of my life
, Peter began angrily.

Cool it, Pete. You’ll be working your butt off soon enough to pay for this luxury cruise. You’ll bitch then, I suppose, about being out in the cold cruel world
.

Wanna bet?

Johnny imagined a huge grin on his face.

Then Peter asked,
Was Flimflam the only one involved in this sabotage?

Scarcely
, Johnny replied with a snort.
Although
, he added quickly with a puzzled sigh,
I’m still trying to figure out who had the most to gain by offing us. Flimflam was just waiting for a chance but he’d’ve had to have had help. Fraga and Leitao?

Them?
Peter was dumbfounded.
I thought they were both Space Authority
.

I’d never heard of Fraga before. Though I have heard Leitao’s name
, Johnny mused.
He was sure baby-sitting her. Stayed with her in sick bay until I was ready to ’port them down. And that collapse of hers—I’d like to know more about those two
.

She was scared stiff. Of me!
Peter couldn’t quite suppress the note of injured surprise in his voice.

Exactly. She was scared stiff of you, the psychic, although she must have known that you—and I—are teleports when she was drafted to come up to that meeting. ‘Pressure of work’? ‘Overwork’? I don’t think so. What about scared of what she had on her mind? I want some answers from those two. Later. Now you finish the night’s sleep I so ruthlessly interrupted, Pete
.

I
t took Peter a while, using limbics, to erase the angry indignation and get to sleep, secured in the netting. He woke to the sound of low voices in the corridor outside the privacy cubicles. He had slept himself out and was much revived by the rest. With a touch of chagrin he thought of his outburst. He shook his head and felt the reaction—reminding himself sternly that he was in free fall and to move accordingly. He was also hungry and needed to empty his appliance.

He gave himself a gentle shove out of his cubicle, using the head to
empty his appliance before drifting toward the forward cabin. Xiang was on duty, talking to a man in a smart civilian coverall sitting in the other position. Xiang let one arm drift up as he saw Peter. Peter mimed eating and glided into the galley that was unoccupied, save for the lingering aroma of a savory. Peter twisted the selection dial, stopping at fried chicken with rice and peas, and remembered the lunch he’d eaten with Ceara Scott. He chose that, not really caring if it was time for “lunch” or not. Once again he could sense an odd cramp in his belly. Free fall was affecting him?

Thinking of Ceara made him wonder: had there been any investigation of Mai Leitao or Georg Fraga while they’d been here? He tried not to resent the woman’s reaction to him. Had he remembered to tell Johnny about Fraga’s unexpectedly opaque mind? How had Flimflam been involved? With Fraga or Leitao? Or Barchenka? She would surely have a crow to pluck with him and Johnny. But how could she be connected to Shimaz, who was very much incommunicado on First Base?

And, if Flimflam could finagle trouble on Padrugoi, was it safe to send such unreformable personalities to the Station to serve their sentences? Or cause the trouble Shimaz did at First Base? Not that it did him any good since Hiroga Watari had a Japanese attitude toward criminals: that they were not to be cosseted.

A
s standard procedure required all persons eating at any of the mess halls on Padrugoi to run their hands through the ID box at the entrance, a secondary investigation by Commander Bindra was efficiently and expeditiously conducted. Five persons—three were offenders and the other two confessed that they were badly in debt to Flimflam (facts that Kibon corroborated)—were detained in the brig’s isolation cells. Their fingerprints and traces of an epoxy on their skin and clothing verified their presence on a prohibited level of Padrugoi. A sixth man also had traces of the damning substance but he was not detained at that point. Commander Bindra had specially chosen crews installing security devices in any ventilation shaft or conduit wider than fifty centimeters. Additional measures were being contemplated anent a closer supervision of all offenders.

———

P
eter did a lot of thinking on that return voyage, reviewing in his mind what he had seen on the telescopes and the ideas that the sights had generated. He itched to get time at Padrugoi’s astronomy workstation. Then he sighed. Undoubtedly he’d have little free time when they got back. Vin Cyberal had passed the remark that Watari was hourly adding to his long list of urgently required items. At least Peter’s contract with Space Authority limited the number and mass of ’portations per day. He’d
make
time for use of the FST and access the updates of astronomy texts from data files. There was so much he had to corroborate before he’d dare mention his notion to anyone, even Johnny. Maybe, especially Johnny.

First he needed more visuals of the existing Mars facility before he’d attempt to ’port something that far. Would it be better to use Padrugoi as his base for such a heave? Or would he have to go back to First Base—when it was in a better conjunction with Mars, of course. Padrugoi constantly upgraded its own astronomy facility and, if he could arrange time on the FSTs—he didn’t really need the range and power of a SPOT—he doubted anyone would much question his request. He could just imagine Watari’s outburst if Peter had asked for ’scope time on First Base.

Hearing what was officially being done with asteroids had given him another idea, bizarre to be sure—but was it any more bizarre than what he was able to do in a paralyzed body? One did have to consider that Callisto’s surface was icy, had no magnetic field, only wisps of atmosphere, and the crust covered a salty ocean. He regretted now that, once the Galileo program had finished early in this century, priorities had focused on firmly establishing a Lunar base and preparatory work for a manned Mars station. But you wouldn’t want to site a facility on an unstable, icy envelope like Callisto’s. You’d pick an asteroid that could be terraformed. An M-type asteroid, one about twenty to thirty kilometers in diameter—might as well dream big, Peter—enough iron to mine in situ and sufficient magnetic force to secure the atmosphere dome to the surface.

Would Ganymede or would Io be better for his needs? Those two satellites were “inner” and he wanted as broad a window for telekinetic thrusts as possible. Somehow Callisto appealed to him more. Named after a nymph beloved by Jupiter, if his memory served him. And changed into a bear by Juno. Suddenly the laughing face of Nina Hinojosa crossed his mind. Would she be what the ancients had called a “nymph,” small, supple, pretty, dark-eyed? And no Juno would have been able to turn
her
into a
bear! He chuckled at such whimsy. Furthermore Callisto’s orbit was farther out from her primary than Ganymede’s.

Had he finally found the right place to stand?

Yes! And he must spend ’scope time on Callisto, learning all he could about that satellite. Some stray thought pinged in his head and he tried to hang on to it. He relaxed, trying hard
not
to think about the fleeting thought he wanted to grasp. He wished he’d been on those dratted sensors when he’d used gestalt on the First Base generators. They had had an entirely different feel. That was it! He froze. The generators! That’s what had been nagging at him since
Limo-34
had landed. Suddenly he realized that every single generator he had ever used in gestalt had its own special sort of “noise,” or perhaps “feel” would be the better term. Over the past days, he’d gestalted with Padrugoi’s solar-powered generators, the ship’s fuel-powered one, the exceedingly easy-to-tap CERN generators, the Farside Telescope’s solar array, and, most recently, had had just a nibble at the nuclear/solar-power-augmented generators on the Moon. All were different, some subtly so. The generators at Jerhattan Space Port differed from the battery-powered ones he’d had to use in emergencies. How did he do it? He swore silently. He’d always known he “felt” what he ’ported, but unconsciously, when he touched any new generator, he “felt” it, too. And tuned his mind to it. Maybe that’s why other people couldn’t gestalt; they weren’t tuned—or couldn’t tune—into the generator. Or maybe just not the generator they were trying to use in gestalt!

How would he be able to express the subtlety he had only just realized existed? Ah! All those damned sensor readings, made to show generator use and burned calories! They were good for something after all. He exhaled and realized how tense he had become. Would such readings prove what he wanted them to prove over and above usage and physical effort? First he had to have them to examine with this new interpretation of the data. Data! Data was everything! And he’d need a lot to do what he wanted to do now!

Peter was so excited by these reflections. He could feel his fingers twitching for all those damned printouts. And chagrin that he had ever protested about the nuisance of being wired up to make them. Unable to sleep now, he examined the new premise, wondering exactly which sort of generators he should have on Callisto. What a prospect! His speculations
wove between Callisto and the various types of generators as intricately as asteroids tumbled in their orbits.

If Peter was too excited to sleep, Johnny slept a good deal. Whenever Peter heard him snoring, he’d ’port him to his side so his thoughts were not interrupted by that noise.

“To make up for when he didn’t sleep on First Base,” Xiang commented to Peter when he noticed Johnny’s continued absence. “Cameron’s my official copilot.” Xiang cast a sly sideways look at Peter. “The general said he’d done all the work on the way up.” The copilot grinned. “I don’t think so.” He went back to squeezing his dinner from the food pouch in his hand without waiting for Peter’s denial or agreement.

T
heir unanticipated arrival at Padrugoi was the only problem they had on the trip. Going “down” to Padrugoi struck Peter as an odd if accurate way of describing it: the Moon was sort of “up” from the Station, in an orbit above it. However, getting permission to land at Padrugoi made up for the quiet of the journey.

“Goddamn it, you’re early here, too, Liu, and where am I going to put you all of a sudden?” demanded the portmaster, who immediately came on-line when Xiang made contact. Desmond Honeybald was a civilian, formerly the supervisor of Jerhattan International Airport. He’d been taken on to control Padrugoi’s airspace when the project first got under way; a flamboyant but exceptionally capable personality.