Farside (28 page)

Before McClintock could reply, Grant went on, “And two: if the person did it deliberately he—or she—certainly isn’t going to admit it.”

“I suppose not,” McClintock agreed.

“So how in hell am I supposed to find out anything?”

His face growing serious, McClintock said, “I’m not a detective, either, Grant. But we’ve got to find out who’s responsible for your technician’s death, and you’re the man who knows your crew best. It’s up to you.”

“Why don’t you ask Selene to send some—”

“No!” McClintock snapped. “The professor has absolutely forbidden us to ask for help from Selene. This is our problem and we’ve got to solve it for ourselves.”

“I don’t understand why.”

“Because he doesn’t want Selene shutting down Farside, that’s why.”

Grant muttered, “Better to shut down this facility than to have more people killed.”

Pointing a finger in Grant’s face, McClintock said sternly, “This is your responsibility, Grant. The fate of this facility and everybody here depends on you.”

Terrific, Grant thought. Now they want me to be Sherlock Holmes.

Aloud, though, he said to McClintock. “I’ll see what I can do. But I’m not promising anything.”

McClintock beamed at him, pleased. “Just do your best, Grant. I’m sure you’ll be able to crack this problem.”

Grant got to his feet and McClintock did likewise.

Putting out his hand, McClintock said, “We’re depending on you, Grant. All of us.”

Grant took the proffered hand reluctantly. “I’ll try,” he said.

*   *   *

Where to start? Grant asked himself as he headed back to the teleoperations center. Most of the Farside staff were members of his crew, forty-eight engineers and technicians, plus another dozen and a half working on Cyclops. The rest were clerks, paper shufflers, maintenance personnel, and other workmen. There was Dr. Kapstein, Farside’s one-person medical staff. And Trudy Yost, the only astronomer on-site, except for Uhlrich himself. And McClintock.

Sitting at an unused console in the dimly lit chamber, Grant scrolled through the names. Not Uhlrich and not McClintock, he said to himself. I can scratch them off right away.

Whoever did it had to have been at Mendeleev at one time or another, Grant realized. How many of my people have even been out there?

But then he thought, Suppose somebody planted the nanos on one of the guys going out to Mendeleev? It could’ve been anybody on my crew!

It could’ve been me, he thought. No matter what Kris says, I might have planted the nanos on Win when I checked out his suit.

He decided to call Kris Cardenas.

*   *   *

Kristine Cardenas was in her quarters, her travelbag on the bed, packed and almost ready to be zipped up for the return flight to Selene. Carter McClintock had phoned and asked to see her before she left.

As soon as McClintock stepped into her room, he took one glance at the travelbag and said, “I’ve come to ask you to stay, Kris.”

“Stay? I can’t stay, Carter,” she said.

He tried to smile but it looked forced. “We have a crisis on our hands here. A real crisis. We need your help.”

She shook her head. “I can’t stay away from my lab indefinitely. I’ve got a big design conference with Anita Halleck’s people tomorrow.”

“It won’t be indefinitely,” he countered. “Probably just a few more days.”

Cardenas started zipping up her bag. “I’ve got to be back at Selene tomorrow morning. I’ll be available on the phone and by computer link. I can answer your questions from Selene just as well as I can from here.”

McClintock frowned slightly. “Look … Kris. It’s not me. It’s Professor Uhlrich. The poor man’s in a panic. He needs you to stay here and help us find out what’s going on.”

“Nothing’s going on,” she said. “You’ve decontaminated that shelter, haven’t you? That’s the end of your problem.”

“But how did the nanos get there? Who planted them there?
That’s
our problem.”

“What do you expect me to do about it?”

Waving a hand in the air, McClintock replied, “I don’t know. But you’re the expert on nanotech and this is a nanotech problem.”

Hefting the bag, Cardenas said, “No, Carter. It’s a human problem. Either a fool or a madman planted disassemblers in that shelter. The nanomachines were merely his weapon of choice. It’s exactly the same as if he’d planted a land mine.”

“But—”

She brushed past him, heading for the door. “I’m going back to Selene, Carter. You can talk to me anytime you want to—from there.”

TELEOPERATIONS CENTER

Grant sat at one of the consoles and put in a call to Dr. Cardenas. The teleoperations center was quietly busy with two teams of techs monitoring the robots’ construction work at Korolev and Gagarin, while a third team huddled around Trudy Yost, who was happily operating the Mendeleev telescope.

In the bud-sized microphone he had wormed into his ear, Grant heard the phone say, “Dr. Cardenas is unavailable.”

“Is she in her quarters?” Grant asked, keeping his voice low enough so that he wouldn’t disturb the others.

The phone’s softly feminine voice replied, “Dr. Cardenas is unavailable.”

Privacy protocol, Grant realized. There’re no surveillance cameras in the rooms, only out in the corridors and workplaces. He asked for the surveillance command system and quickly scanned through the camera views.

And there was Kristine Cardenas, marching determinedly along the main corridor with her travelbag in one hand, looking taut, almost angry. McClintock was striding along beside her, talking nonstop, gesticulating with both hands.

She’s heading for the landing pad, Grant realized. He called up the transportation program and saw that a lobber was due in from Selene in twenty minutes. Kris is heading back to Selene and McClintock’s trying to talk her out of it.

Grant pulled his earbud out, got up from the console, and headed for the reception area. The three teleoperations teams sitting at the other consoles barely noticed him leaving.

I can’t talk to her while McClintock’s yammering away at her, Grant told himself. I’ve got to see her alone.

He hustled down the corridor, actually passing Cardenas and McClintock along the way. He nodded a hello to them as he went by. Kris gave him a tight smile, McClintock didn’t even blink, he was so intensely pleading with her.

Nate Oberman was at the desk in the reception area, looking bored, his chair tipped back and his soft-booted feet on the desktop. Watching a video. When he saw Grant enter the little room Oberman scrambled to his feet, looking surprised and a little guilty.

“Relax, Nate,” said Grant. “I’ve got to get into that lobber as soon as it sits down on the pad. Before they begin unloading.”

“Okay,” Oberman said uncertainly.

“Let me use your phone, please.”

“Sure.” Oberman cleared his screen, then stepped away from the desk. “Be my guest.”

Grant called the flight monitor and asked her to patch him through to the pilot of the incoming lobber. Grant recognized the pilot once his beefy face showed on the phone screen.

“Hey, Grant, how’re they hangin’, buddy?”

“Fine, Derek. And you?”

“Gonna be busy landing this bird in a coupla minutes.”

“I understand. Look, I need to come aboard as soon as you land. Before you start unloading cargo.”

“You goin’ back with us?”

“No, I just need a few minutes with your outbound passenger.”

The pilot frowned with puzzlement. “She’s right there at your facility, isn’t she? Whyn’t you talk to her there?”

Making himself smile, Grant replied, “Long story. I’ll chat with her aboard your ship while you’re unloading, if it’s okay with you. I won’t delay your departure.”

“Okay by me, long’s we get out on time. My boss is a stickler for keeping to schedule.”

Clicking off, Grant turned back to Oberman. “I’ll run the access tube, Nate. You can stay at the desk.”

Oberman’s lean face looked curious, but he said only, “You’re the boss.”

Grant went to the airlock hatch and quickly scanned the controls for the tube that would connect the airlock to the hatch of the lobber, once it landed. Behind him, he heard Cardenas and McClintock enter the area. Actually, he only heard McClintock talking nonstop, more and more frantic with each sentence. He was talking to Kris, Grant knew, but she wasn’t saying a word back to him.

On the control console’s minuscule screen Grant saw the lobber settle down on the blast-blackened landing pad, silently blowing a spray of dust and pebbles across the barren, pitted ground. He worked the access tube out to the ship, watched it groping its way like a blind giant caterpillar and finally connecting to the lobber’s main airlock hatch.

As soon as the console’s lights flashed green, Grant opened the airlock hatch and sprinted along the tube to the ship. The man at the other end, in the sky-blue uniform of Selene’s transportation department, eyed him curiously.

“What’s the rush?” he asked.

“I don’t want to get in your way,” Grant said, heading for the empty passenger compartment.

He saw the ship’s pilot clambering down the ladder from the cockpit and got an idea. “Hello, Derek.”

The pilot’s face was fleshier and ruddier than it had looked in the comm screen. “Welcome aboard, Grant,” he said.

“Dr. Cardenas is your only passenger on the flight out, right?” Grant asked.

With a curt nod, the pilot said, “Unless you people make a last-minute addition.”

Shaking his head, Grant said, “No, no additions. In fact, there’s a guy with Dr. Cardenas who’ll probably try to come aboard with her. She doesn’t want him to.”

“Oh?”

“He’s trying to sell her something she doesn’t want. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t let him come aboard. Dr. Cardenas would appreciate it, too.”

The pilot shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Okay, I’ll stop him at the hatch.”

“Great. Thanks.” Grant climbed up into the passenger compartment while the pilot went to the airlock hatch.

Fidgeting along the thinly carpeted aisle between the empty passenger seats, Grant heard bangs and thumps as Farside’s technicians began unloading the lobber’s cargo. Food, mostly, Grant knew. And supplies for sixteen different kinds of equipment, from tractors to computer screens.

Kris Cardenas stepped into the passenger compartment, her eyes going wide with surprise when she recognized Grant.

“Are you going to Selene, too?” she asked as she dropped her travelbag onto one of the empty seats.

Grant hurried to her. “No. I need to talk to you for a few minutes, that’s all.”

Her expression hardened. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to get me to stay here, too. I told Carter and—”

“No, not that,” Grant interrupted. “I just need to ask you … is there
any
way that the nanos inside me could have caused the problems out at Mendeleev? Any way at all?”

“Absolutely none,” Cardenas said firmly. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened, Grant. It’s not your fault.”

“You’re certain?”

“Completely.”

Somehow her reassurance didn’t make Grant feel any better. He said, “Suppose somebody, somehow, mixed some gobblers in with the nanos you gave me?”

Now Cardenas scowled at him. “Grant, you’re getting paranoid.”

“But just suppose. Is it possible?”

“No one in my lab would do such a thing.”

He agreed with her. He knew she was right. But deep in his gut he was unconvinced.

“Is there some way to check out the possibility?” he asked.

Cardenas huffed impatiently. “I could take a blood sample and examine it.”

“Could you do it now? Here?”

“Does your clinic have an atomic force microscope?”

“No, but the maintenance center has a laser probe that can do nanometer resolution.”

Looking decidedly unhappy, almost disgusted, Cardenas glanced at her wristwatch.

“You’ve got an hour before they lift off,” Grant coaxed. “You could check my blood and still make it in time.”

Cardenas sighed heavily. “I doubt it.” But she studied Grant’s face for a long moment, then picked up her travelbag and said, “What the hell. Let’s see if we can make it.”

Grant knew that there wouldn’t be another flight in from Selene for three days. We’d better get this done before that lobber takes off, he thought. Otherwise Kris is going to be damned unhappy with me.

RACING AGAINST TIME

Leading Cardenas out of the lobber and down the access tube, Grant was relieved to see that McClintock had left the reception area. Derek got rid of him, he thought gratefully as he hurried with Cardenas along the narrow tunnel toward Farside’s minuscule infirmary.

Grant phoned the maintenance center as they entered the infirmary and told Toshio Aichi to be ready to test a sample in the laser probe, then he explained what he wanted to a surprised Dr. Kapstein while he rolled up his coverall sleeve. As he sat down for the blood drawing, Cardenas asked:

“If I miss today’s flight, when’s the next one out?”

Grant swallowed hard, then admitted, “Um … three days from now.”

“Three days?” she yelped.

“I’m afraid so.”

Glaring at him, Cardenas said, “Well, we’d damned well better get this done quickly. I can’t miss today’s flight. Anita Halleck’s people expect me to be in my lab for a design conference about their mirrors.”

Wielding a needle, Dr. Kapstein said, “This will only take a moment.”

“Three days,” Cardenas muttered while Grant flinched at the needle’s prick. “We’d better make today’s flight. I can’t hang around here for another three days.”

“I appreciate this very much,” Grant said, by way of an apology.

Clutching the vial of his dark red blood, Grant hustled Cardenas down to the maintenance center and introduced her to Aichi and Zacharias.

He explained what they needed and the two techs walked them down to the far corner of the center, where the laser probe was already humming. Grant saw from the digital clock on the probe’s readout screen that they had forty-seven minutes before the lobber was set to lift off.

As Aichi and Zacharias adjusted the laser, Toshio asked, “We are looking for nanomachines?” His face was impassive but his tone clearly uneasy.