Space Case (17 page)

“Hold on,” I told her. “I need a minute to figure this out.”

“You know what he's doing?” Kira asked, excitedly.

“Maybe.” I kept my eyes closed, digging through the recesses of my mind. I knew Kira had a point about the gloves. They were important somehow. Space gloves had always been trouble for astronauts. The issue was, space suits had to be inflated to the right atmospheric pressure or you'd die—but when you inflated them, the gloves filled up with air as well and got stiff, which made them hard to use. It was like having your hands inside balloons. In the early days of moonwalks, even something as simple as making a fist had been incredibly difficult. Over the years NASA had spent billions to improve the gloves—as well as the rest of the suits. Through a combination of space-age
fabrics, new pressure systems, and robotics embedded in their exterior, the gloves became far easier to use—but they still aren't perfect. Making any motion with your fingers is work, which meant that, no matter how casual Dr. Holtz was trying to appear, the signs he was making with his hands weren't random.

Signs.

A sudden memory came to me. I was six years old, visiting my great-grandfather in Palm Springs, California. I didn't know it at the time, but it was the last time I was going to see him. My parents knew he was sick, though, and so did he; Mom and Dad had brought me there to say good-bye to him. I remembered being upset that Great-Granddad couldn't play with me the way he normally did when I came to visit. Instead he was staying inside on the couch while I swam in his pool with my father. Dad had been teaching me to do a cannonball, and I wanted Great-Granddad to see, so I looked through the glass doors into the house.

My mother was talking to Great-Granddad, her back to me so that he could watch me through the windows. Only she wasn't talking at all. She was making gestures with her hands—and Great-Granddad was responding in kind.

My eyes snapped open. “It's sign language!” I exclaimed.

My sudden outburst caught Kira by surprise so badly she
tumbled off her InflatiCube. But she sprang right back to her feet. “What's sign language?”

“You know how people are sometimes born without the ability to hear?” I asked.

“Sure. Deafness. My cousin had that. But they gave her a cochlear implant and she could hear right away. It's no big deal.”

“Right. But it wasn't always like that. Not so long ago, you couldn't just give an operation to a deaf person, or a blind person, or someone who was paralyzed, and make them like everyone else. Instead, if you were born deaf, or blind, or paraplegic, you stayed that way.”

“I know,” Kira said, a little indignantly. “I read history.”

“Well, how do you think deaf people communicated back then?”

Kira looked at me blankly. It was probably the same look I'd given my parents when they'd asked me to guess how people had ever taken photographs before there were digital cameras. And then I saw the wheels start to turn in her mind. “They used their hands?”

“Exactly,” I said. “It was called sign language. Almost no one uses it anymore, because pretty much everyone who's born deaf gets the cochlear operation right away, but Mom once told me that sign language used to be one of the most common languages in the world.”

“So Dr. Holtz might have learned it when he was a kid!” Kira suggested.

“Right. Maybe he had a relative who was born deaf. Or who lost their hearing. That's what happened with my great-granddad. His ears went at the end and he was too sick to operate on to fix it, so he and my Mom had to learn signs to communicate.”

Kira whooped happily. “You're a genius, Dash! I never would have thought of that in a million years!”

“I'm sure you would have soon enough.”

“No. I've never even heard of sign language before. So what's Dr. Holtz saying?”

“I don't know,” I admitted. “I never learned it myself. But the base computer is programmed to understand thousands of languages. Maybe this is one of them.”

“Of course!” Kira exclaimed. “Computer, can you translate sign language?”

“Which Mayan language?” the computer replied. “I am programmed for Ch'olan, Tzeltalan and Q'anjob'alan.”

“Not
Mayan
language!” I snapped. “
Sign
language. Can you translate
sign
language?”

“American Sign Language?” the computer asked.

“Uh . . . I guess.” I hadn't known there were other kinds.

“Yes,” the computer told me. “I have that capability.”

“Great!” Kira said. “I'm going to play a piece of video.
Please analyze it and tell us what Dr. Holtz is saying.”

“I will do my best,” the computer replied.

Kira rewound the footage to the moment of Dr. Holtz stepping into the air lock, then played it. We watched as he made his hand signals again and let it continue beyond the point where we'd paused the footage before. As Dr. Holtz signed, I felt a terrible sense of fear begin to overwhelm me. Because every moment took us closer to the end of Dr. Holtz's life. I didn't want to watch it—and yet I had to, for Dr. Holtz's sake.

Obviously he'd hoped that someone would watch the footage. That was the whole point of signing. To get a final message across. And yet, at the same time, he was hoping that whoever had forced him out onto the lunar surface wouldn't notice what he was doing.

Save for the one quick glance at the camera, he faced out the window toward the moon. His hands seemed to move completely independently of the rest of him. On occasion he moved his arms, lifting his hands close to his helmet, though he did it with a subtlety that made it look more like stretching than signing.

After about twenty seconds the outer air lock door slid open. Although it wasn't visible, all the precious oxygen in the air lock would have dissipated instantly.

Dr. Holtz didn't cower from his fate. Instead he met it
boldly. He stepped out the door, onto the dusty surface of the moon. He had stopped signing by now. His message was finished. If anything, Dr. Holtz seemed to be relishing his final moments of life. After all, he was spending them on the moon. He bounded twice on the surface, then turned back toward the moon base, tilting his head back as far as he could.

“What do you think he's looking at?” Kira asked.

“Let's find out. Computer, zoom in on Dr. Holtz.”

“Yes, sir.” The image of Dr. Holtz enlarged, got grainier, and then resolved.

In the visor of Dr. Holtz's space helmet we could see the reflection of a blue-green ball above him.

“It's earth,” Kira said. “What do you think he's looking there for?”

I shrugged. “Maybe he wanted to be looking at something beautiful when he died instead of this ugly moon base.”

Kira nodded, accepting that. “It happens in only a few more seconds,” she told me. “Do you want to see it?”

“No,” I said honestly. “I don't.” I liked the idea of my last image of Dr. Holtz being one in which he was still upright, staring at earth from the surface of the moon. “Computer, can you translate the signs he made?”

“Yes. Here is what Dr. Holtz signed: ‘I am being murdered—' ”

“Really?” I looked to Kira, my heart thumping. I was at once thrilled and horrified to have been right. Kira seemed to be struck the same way. “You're sure? He says he was being murdered?”

The computer explained, “Well, in actuality he was simply making the hand signal for ‘murder.' In American Sign Language, the verb forms of ‘to be' are not signed, but are instead extrapolated from the context. One could also argue that he was saying ‘This is a murder,' but ‘I am being murdered' seems more appropriate.”

Even though I'd suspected there had been foul play, it was stunning to hear it confirmed. Somehow the computer's voice made it worse. The computer, being a computer, was completely emotionless, even when discussing such an awful event. It seemed horribly wrong to me.

“What else does he say?” I asked.

The computer replied, “The full transcript of his statement is: ‘I am being murdered. Earth killed me. Find my phone. Tell my family I love them.' ”

Kira and I kept our eyes locked on each other, trying to make sense of all that. She was the first to speak. “
Earth
killed me?”

“That's correct,” the computer replied.

“How could the earth kill someone?” Kira asked, this time to me.

I could only shake my head in response. “I have no idea. Maybe that's why he wants us to find his phone—”

“You mean that ancient cell phone he had back on earth? He was still using that thing?”

“Yes. He said the smartwatch screens were too small.”

“That must have been thirty years old.” Kira shook her head. “Boy, what a caveman.”

“Dr. Holtz wasn't anti tech,” I said defensively. “He lived on the
moon
, for Pete's sake. He just liked using his old phone.”

“So what are you thinking? That he left some evidence on it somehow?”

“Yes. Or maybe a longer explanation for why he did this.”

“Where do you think it is? His residence?”

“I doubt it. If he was trying to hide his phone, that's the first place anyone would look.”

“What makes you think he hid it?” Kira asked.

“If you had evidence proving someone killed you, would you leave it out where anyone could find it?”

“Good point.”

“Still, it's probably worth checking his room anyhow,” I admitted. “Just in case.”

Kira jumped to her feet. “Let's do it now, while everyone else is still at dinner.”

“Wait,” I said. “I need a copy of those recordings.”

“Sure,” Kira agreed. “We need to show them to someone,
right? I mean, we've got Dr. Holtz stating he's being murdered here.”

“By planet earth,” I said with a sigh. “Whatever that means.”

Kira said, “It's still evidence, though. Who should we give it to? Nina? She won't be able to ignore this.”

“She might try,” I countered. “This is probably the last thing Nina wants to see.”

“So? This is a murder! Someone has to investigate it!”

“Don't worry. Someone will.” I touched my watch to the SlimScreen. The computer immediately downloaded the recordings of Dr. Holtz to it. “I know who to show these to.”

“Who?” Kira asked.

“I can't tell you right now.” I hurried out the door.

Kira did her best to follow me, though she was still having trouble walking in low gravity. “Oh, come on! I got them for you!”

“And I owe you big for this.” I led the way down the catwalk. Dr. Holtz also lived on the upper residence level, at the opposite end from Nina. We had to pass the Sjobergs' suite on the way. I could hear Lars raging inside. It sounded like he was on the phone, shouting at someone on earth. “I don't care what it takes! Just get me off this godforsaken rock!”

As we reached Dr. Holtz's residence, my smartwatch pinged, delivering a text.

To my surprise, the text said it was from Kira. Which wasn't possible, as she was standing right in front of me, jostling the knob of Dr. Holtz's door.

Even more unsettling was the text itself.

Dash—Be careful—or you'll end up like Dr. Holtz.

Kira turned back to me, frustrated. “The room's locked. Any idea how to get in?”

“Uh . . . no.” My mind was racing after the threatening text. Whoever had sent it must have hacked Kira's account to hide their identity. But the message was still clear: They knew I was investigating and wanted me to stop. But was it from the killer themselves, or someone who didn't want me snooping? And if it was from the killer, was this just a scare tactic—or would they really come for me, too?

“Dash?” Kira asked. “What's wrong?”

I met her gaze and saw the concern in her eyes. I wondered if I looked as scared as I felt. My heart was pounding, and I could feel sweat blossoming on my brow. And now, here I was, with Kira, poking around Dr. Holtz's door right out in the open, meaning whoever had sent the text would know she was helping me out.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Oh, please,” Kira sighed. “You look like you just got punched in the stomach. What's going on?”

I couldn't bring myself to tell her the truth. Not right then. I didn't want to frighten her. “You ought to get back to your room,” I told her. “I have to go find someone.”

“Who?”

“Someone who can help us,” I said, and then ran off in search of Zan Perfonic.