Return to Mars (61 page)

“What do you mean?”

“On polar expeditions,” she explained. “On nuclear submarines that stayed submerged for months at a time. Someone goes berserk, or—worse—quietly and stealthily cracks up.”

“What happens?” Dex asked. He was sitting beside Jamie, with Fuchida on his other side.

Vijay answered, “Most often the individual starts by hurting himself, self-inflicted wounds. Then it escalates into damaging equipment, wrecking things. If it’s not stopped in time it can lead to violence, even murder.”

“You’re the doctor, Vijay,” said Jamie. “Has anyone come to you with an injury that could have been self-inflicted?”

She thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. “Just the usual cuts and scrapes. Oh, there was Tommy’s burnt hand, but I doubt that that was self-inflicted.”

“It sure wasn’t!” Rodriguez said, with some heat.

Jamie said, “Without naming names, is there anything in anyone’s psych profile that would throw suspicion on him? Or her?”

“No, I can’t think of anything. Of course, we’re all daft just to be here, but outside of that, nothing.”

“What about your psychological profile?” Trudy asked, forcing a smile to show she wasn’t being nasty.

“I’m as dotty as any of you.” Vijay smiled back. “But that doesn’t mean a thing, does it?”

“Who has access to acid strong enough to burn through the nuke’s shielding?” Rodriguez asked.

“Any one of us,” Dex replied.

For the first time, Fuchida spoke up. “I have detailed photographs of the punctures made in the garden dome during the storm. I could measure their height above the floor of the dome and compare that to the height and arm lengths of each of us.”

“That sounds pretty shaky to me,” Jamie said.

Fuchida nodded unhappily. “Yes, it would be quite inconclusive. I’m grasping at straws.”

“What we need is Sherlock Holmes,” Dex quipped. “Or at least Hercule Poirot.”

“Miss Marple,” Trudy Hall said.

“Hillary Queen.”

“Hell,” said Rodriguez, “I’d even settle for Inspector Clouseau.”

Everyone broke into laughter.

At least the tension’s snapped, Jamie thought. A little, anyway.

He made a quieting motion with both hands and said, “All right, we don’t have a detective and we don’t have a confession. So here’s what we’re going to do.”

They all turned to him, expectantly.

“From here on, nobody goes anywhere alone. We work in teams of at least two. If we can’t figure out who’s sabotaging us, at least we can stop whoever it is from doing more damage.”

“I’ll go with Trudy,” Rodriguez immediately called out. “I won’t let her out of my sight!” He grinned wolfishly.

Jamie hiked his brows, but continued, “That means we keep two people at the comm console all night long. One to man the console itself and the other to watch the dome and make sure nobody’s sneaking around when he or she is supposed to be sleeping.”

“I’ll team with Vijay,” Dex volunteered. “We can handle the comm center.”

Jamie looked at Vijay and saw that she was staring right back at him. “No, Dex, if you don’t mind I’d prefer that you teamed with Mitsuo. The two of you can take the first shift, then Vijay and I will relieve you at two.”

Dex hesitated just a fraction of a second, then grinned and shrugged. “Okay, fine.”

Vijay continued to look directly at Jamie.

”IN THE OLD DAYS,” PETE CONNORS WAS SAYING, ”EVERY PIECE OF EQUIPMENT was made to order. Every vehicle, every sensor, every nut and bolt was built specially for the project. That’s why space exploration cost so much.”

The mission controller was strolling along the beach with two reporters, giving them a “background” briefing for the upcoming launch. To their right the surf boomed against the atoll’s reef, and beyond that the blue Pacific stretched as far as the eye could see beneath a balmy sky dotted with puffs of white clouds. To their left, the squat conical shape of a Clippership rocket sat on the launch pad, embraced by a steel spiderwork of scaffolding, swarming with busy technicians.

“It’s still not cheap,” said the woman reporter, raising her voice to be heard over the brisk wind and distant surf. The wind and humidity had tousled her auburn hair. She wore slacks and a long-sleeved blouse, despite the warm sun.

Connors gave her a toothy grin. “No, it’s not. But it’s a lot better than it used to be. Orders of magnitude cheaper now.”

The male reporter, young but already paunchy and balding, had a serious frown on his face. “Yeah, but no matter how you put it, the replenishment mission isn’t launching as scheduled. When will you launch?”

Without missing a beat, Connors said, “We’re looking at next Monday now. Might be a nighttime launch, we don’t know for certain yet.”

“But the launch window—”

“We’ve got a fair amount of flexibility there. With the additional specific impulse that nuclear propulsion gives us, we can widen the launch window considerably.”

The woman asked them to stop for a moment. She took off her shoes, shook sand out of them, and stashed them in her copious shoulder bag.

The male reporter asked, “Is a week long enough for you to stock the spacecraft with everything you need?”

“You mean the backup power generator?” Connors nodded vigorously. “That’s where our logistics policy pays off. We’ve kept backup items in inventory since the original launch, back more than a year ago.

The backup nuke is on its way here from the States, and we’ve ordered a replacement for it, just to keep our spares inventory full.”

“Do you expect another failure of the nuclear generator?” the woman asked.

Connors smiled his widest. “No. But then we didn’t expect the one that did fail to bug out on us.” Of the several hundred men and women working for the Second Mars Expedition on Tarawa, Connors was one of only five who knew that the nuclear power generator had been sabotaged. He had no intention of letting that number grow to six.

“So you’ll be able to launch on Monday?”

“Looks that way,” he said, nodding. “Even if it’s a few days later, that’s no sweat.”

“And the flight itself will take five months to reach Mars.”

“Right. They’ll land just about three weeks before the original eight are scheduled to leave Mars.”

“What about the scientists?” the woman asked. “How are they handling this delay?”

“They’re impatient to get going, of course,” Connors admitted. Then he spread his hands out to sweep the beach, the lagoon, the breathtaking sky. “But waiting another week here isn’t exactly breaking their hearts.”

Both reporters laughed.

“HI,” RODRIGUEZ SAID. “THE A TEAM IS READY TO TAKE OVER.”

Without turning to face him, Stacy Dezhurova pointed to the digital clock readout on the main comm screen. “You are early.” The clock read 01:58.

Trudy Hall said, “I couldn’t sleep.”

Dezhurova looked up and cocked an eyebrow at her. “You mean this oversexed oaf would not let you sleep.”

Rodriguez raised his hands. “Hey, don’t blame me. It wasn’t my fault.”

Wiley Craig got up slowly from the chair next to Stacy’s. “Well, I sure as hell can sleep. Hardly keep my eyes open.”

“Go on,” Rodriguez said. “We’ll take over now.”

Jamie’s idea that no one works alone had been eagerly endorsed by Dezhurova, once she and Craig arrived at Dome Two. It slowed down everyone’s work, but there had been no “accidents” over the past five sols.

Dezhurova got up from her chair. It creaked noticeably.

“Hope that’s the chair and not you,” Craig wisecracked.

She tried to glare at him, but ended up grinning with the rest of them. She and Craig headed off to their cubicles while Rodriguez sat at the comm console.

“Keep an eye on them,” he said softly over his shoulder to Trudy. “Make sure they go to their quarters.”

Jamie lay on his bunk, hands clenched behind his head, wide awake. This expedition’s turning into a fiasco, he thought. Work’s slowed down to a crawl because of this saboteur, whoever he is. Not that we were accomplishing all that much over the past month or two.

He stared up into the dark shadows of the dome. Not even the sighing night wind calmed his troubled spirit.

Well, when the archeologists get here they can poke around the building and let us get back to our original tasks. There’s a whole planet to study. God knows how many other cliff dwellings we’ll find, once we start actively searching for them.

He heard footsteps padding slowly across the dome. Silently, Jamie got out of his bunk and went to the door of his cubicle. He had left it unlatched: closed almost completely, but unlatched so he could slide it open a crack without any noise.

He saw Wiley Craig shuffling tiredly past, heading for his own cubicle. Stacy must already have turned in, he thought.

Returning to his bunk, Jamie wished for the millionth time that Vijay were here with him. Not now, he commanded himself. This is no time for that kind of thing. I’ve got to find out who the madman is. He’s going to kill somebody if we don’t catch him soon!

The digital clock read 03:09 as Rodriguez leaned back in the little wheeled chair and shut down the logistic inventory program.

“We’ll be okay until the resupply mission lands,” he said, thinking aloud.

“Are they going to land here or at Dome One?” Trudy asked. She had a photomicrograph of one of the deep-dwelling bacteria on the screen in front of her.

“It’s gotta be here,” he said. “No sense landing at One, nobody’s there.”

“I wonder how the garden is doing?” Trudy mused, still looking at her screen.

Rodriguez shrugged. “Oughtta be okay for a while. No bugs, no weeds, nothing to bother them. Stacy said she kept the battery power

on, so the heaters will keep ‘em from freezing at night. If we get back there before the batteries go flat the plants can make it.”

Trudy nodded. She could see the reflection of her own face in the display screen. Pale, drawn, worried.

“And the nutrient pumps, too?” To herself, her voice sounded small and weak. Frightened.

“Yep, the pumps too. But we gotta get back there and plug in the L/AV power system with the fuel generator.”

She looked over at him and smiled. “Are you volunteering?”

Rodriguez grinned. “Sure, why not? Manual labor is an old family tradition.”

Turning back to the screen, Trudy thought, No, I can’t let you do that. It wouldn’t be right.

Nearly half an hour later she got to her feet and stretched. “I’m going to get some coffee. Want some?”

“Yeah. It’ll help keep me awake.”

Trudy walked swiftly, silently to the galley. She poured two mugs of hot coffee. Into one of them she dropped several of the sleeping pills that Vijay had given her when she complained about difficulty getting to sleep.

“They’re very mild,” Vijay had said. “If they don’t do the job, let me know and we’ll try something else.”

Trudy had tried the pills and they had worked wonderfully. One little pill and she slept dreamlessly. But how many will it take to make Tommy sleep? Three seemed to be the right amount.

Sure enough, half an hour later, Rodriguez’s eyes were glazing over.

“Jeez,” he muttered thickly, “I can’t keep my eyes open.”