Fatal Boarding (13 page)

"They should have some temporary gravity
shortly to hold us over while the real problem gets fixed."

As she clutched at her mouth and fought back
the impulse, I coasted around the desk and snagged an earth replica
paperweight that was beyond her reach. "I've been told to oversee
the effort to locate Commander Tolson. Can you fill me in?"

It made her forget the nausea for the
moment. She shook her head, and then winced from the effect it
gave. "They just called in. There's been no sign of him. Everything
from seven to three has been covered. Even most of the equipment
lockers that are large enough to be entered are being searched. No
one has seen him. It's the damnedest thing!"

"Grey spoke to him last?"

"That's what I was told. He was getting
ready to turn in for the night. He had been in meetings right up
till 01:00. We've paged him on all his priority channels and he
hasn't answered. The ship's net has been screwing up, but there
haven't been any com problems. We have five looking for him.
They’re on special channel sierra-tango. Some may be sick and out
of it now, though."

"So he hasn't been heard from for more than
two hours?"

"Yeah. It's hard to believe he wouldn't call
in after we'd lost the gravity. And, he's always supposed to be
available to Captain Grey." She choked and quickly pressed two
fingers to her lips, looking at me with those pleading, brown
eyes.

I nodded supportively, pushed myself over to
the entrance, and shut the door. "You're really handling this
exceptional well, Ann-Marie. Half the crew is down in sick bay and
most of the others are probably incapacitated. I was surprised to
find you here at all."

She forced a tiny smile. "Thanks, Adrian.
This part wasn't in the cruise brochure. It's never happened to me
before. And they say you get used to this, but I don't think
so."

"It’s true. Most people adapt to no gravity
by the third day."

"Oh god no!"

"Don't worry. They'll have it up before
then. I know how bad you're feeling. There's something important I
need to ask you about, and you'll need to trust me. I know how
famous executive secretaries are for their loyalty. Nothing you say
will go beyond this room."

She narrowed her stare.

"What if Commander Tolson was somewhere he
didn't want to be found, someplace that was his own personal
business, a place where he'd rather not have it known he was
visiting."

She looked taken back. With cool
professionalism she began organizing her desk once more. "I don't
know what you mean."

"Ann, we're having a lot of serious problems
on board right now. We need Jim Tolson, if only to know he's okay.
I know that you know almost everything that goes on around here.
This isn't the time to hold back. We've had quite a few accidents
on board in the last hour. We need to know where to look. You have
my word anything you say while be strictly confidential. No one but
you and I will know. Everybody's got a private life on board this
ship. Does Jim Tolson have a private association that no one knows
about? A place he would not want to be found."

"Well, even if he did, he'd answer his
pages."

"Yes, he would, unless something was wrong.
Tell me the gossip, Ann. Trust me."

She swallowed twice and gave a pained look.
She wiped her mouth with two fingers and spoke like a child telling
a naughty secret. "There was something I've heard. I doubt there's
any truth to it. Or, maybe it's not what they say. Maybe it's just
a special project or something like that. I feel bad just repeating
it. It's so unlikely, really."

"Please, Ann. Who?"

"Ms. Brandon. I'm told he visits her during
off hours, often late. They were associates before this trip. He
helped get her the position. She's very upset about the suspension.
He may have visited her to console her. But that wouldn't explain
why he hasn't called in."

"Is the search team checking the occupied
crew quarters?"

"They ring or knock. But if there's no
answer they don't force entry. They began looking at 02:10. They
call in on the hour. So, it's about ...thirty minutes from the next
check in, unless they find him."

"I’ll monitor the channel and report to the
Captain, myself."

She got halfway through a nod and with one
hand over her mouth crunched stiffly across the carpet and
disappeared into the bath.

I used the terminal on her desk to call up
crew quarter assignments. Maureen Brandon's was on level five,
stateroom eighteen-B.

Brandon and Tolson. It was hard to imagine.
A young, cold beauty bedding an ancient, gruff, overweight senior
officer. He had helped her get the promotion. Brandon's reputation
for stepping on people in her quest for advancement had not
included sleeping with them. It was one of those odd occurrences
that made you wonder who was actually using who. If the affair was
really happening, it was a stark testimony to one person's absolute
resolve toward ambition.

I made my way to level five, and pulled
myself along the dimly lit corridors. Where there are only crew
quarters and no general support areas, the lighting is kept to a
minimum. The low light had a touch of gloom to it, something a
little gravity would improve.

I had never seen Brandon's quarters. There
had been no reason to visit her. No invitations had been
forthcoming. Why stop in to say hello to an ice maiden who would
appraise your value to her career, and simply dismiss you like a
head mistress. Her door was the last one on a dead-end corridor,
next to a service hatchway for the ship's internet. Pell Avenue. I
hung to the recess of her door and tapped at the chime. No answer.
Wait one minute, try again. No answer.

To barge in or not? I shrugged, opened the
service panel and hit the open switch. Nothing. Locked out.

It left me in an awkward position. Call
engineering to remotely unlock the door, and attract undesirable
attention to Brandon, who had already had enough? If Tolson was
present, it would also be exactly what he didn't want. If no one
was home, I would catch it later when she found out. If she was
there, her wrath would be immediate. I thought about it for a
minute and decided that one must live up to one's reputation. I
pinched the Com button on my watch. "Tarn to Main Engineering."

"Rodrigez, go ahead."

"Ms. Brandon is having a problem with the
lock on the door to her stateroom. Level five, eighteen-B. Would
you get someone to unlock it for us, please?"

"Yes sir. It'll take a few minutes to call
it up."

As I hung there waiting, a ship-wide
announcement came over the loudspeakers. "Attention all personnel;
there will be a test of ship's gravity in ten minutes. Please stow
all loose gear and expect gravity in all areas."

When the message finished repeating, I heard
the tiny click by Brandon's door. I swung around and tapped the
open key. The doors swished open.

The scene that lay beyond the open door was
so intensely perverse it caught me off-guard. My first impulse was
to beg forgiveness, hit the close key, and make a run for it.
Clothes, pillows, and blankets were drifting around the room. Near
me, an open prescription bottle had emptied its tiny blue tablets
into the air. They looked like a familiar illegal drug. A clipboard
with an erotic image of a man and woman locked on its display
floated in a slow turn within the pills.

Brandon's terminal was located directly
across the room. The control seat had been turned to face the door.
She was sitting in it, completely naked, cold blue eyes wide open
and staring. Her soft white legs were spread open and propped up on
the chair arms, held in place by loose straps just above each knee.
Her feet were floating upward. Her wrists were loosely bound behind
her head by a similar strap that ran around the throat. Her mouth
was open in a suspended kiss. It was a typical pose you would find
in an erotic adult magazine. She made no effort to move or speak,
just sat there, completely vulnerable, staring through me.

I stuttered, "Ms. Brandon.”

No reply.

“Maureen?"

No answer, only the stare of those cold,
blue eyes. I moved slowly toward her and began to feel a familiar
sick feeling in my stomach. Before I realized what was happening, I
crashed hard to the floor, as the queer assortment of floating
items rained down around me.

I pushed myself up and guessed the new
gravity to be heavy, probably one and a half Gs. It was kind of a
dirty trick on the crew, going from weightlessness to too heavy,
but better than nothing.

I stood and collected myself, no worse for
the wear. I reached for Brandon's throat and found a steady pulse,
then grabbed a blanket from the floor and covered her. I undid the
straps and repositioned her arms and legs to a more comfortable
position. She continued to stare straight ahead. I shook her on one
shoulder. "Maureen?"

Nothing.

A few light slaps on the jaw and her eyelids
began to flutter. I trudged to the bath and filled a cup with cold
water. When I returned she was wincing, but still out of it. I
touched the cup to her lips. She drank a few swallows, but coughed
up the last of it.

"What! What is it!? Where am I?" She looked
down at the blanket covering her. "What's this? Where are my
clothes? What are you doing here? Where's Ji..." She jerked her
head to look around the room for someone, clutching the blanket
tightly to her. She looked up at me, dazed and disorientated. "What
the hell is going on? I feel sick."

"It's probably the heavy gravity. You seem
to be okay. Ship's gravity was off for a while. Do you remember
that?"

"There's been nothing wrong with the
gravity. What are you trying to pull? I know you. Your Tarn.
Security. How'd you get in here? Why are you here?"

"I came to see if you were okay. I found you
just like this. What's the last thing you remember?"

"I was with... Wait a minute; I don't have
to tell you anything. I want my clothes."

She stood up with a jerk, keeping the
blanket close, staring at me like I was a sex offender. She clamped
one side of the blanket around behind her, found a robe on the
floor near the bath, backed in and shut the door.

I studied the trashed room. Possessions were
scattered everywhere. Her bed was still folded into a sofa, without
the seat cushions. A squeeze tube of hygienic lubricant was stuck
between the folds in the backing. The contents had oozed out onto
the backrest. Beside the sofa, draped over one edge, something
caught my eye. A pair of coveralls too large for her. The name tag
over the breast pocket was visible, Tolson. She came out of the
bath in the blue robe looking half angry, half scared. She stood by
the door wondering what to do next.

"How long was the gravity off?"

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"I asked you a question!"

"Asked you first."

It impressed me that she was recovering so
quickly. Had she been her usual self, she would have dismissed me
already and sorted things out by herself. She still looked
scared.

"I know you, Mr. Tarn. You're the loose
cannon who doesn't follow procedures. It's why you’re not on the
bridge."

"Which of us doesn't follow procedures?"

For a fleeting moment she looked injured. "I
think it would be best if this conversation continued with someone
of a higher rank. I'm sure you have other things you could be
doing. I'll talk to Commander Tolson about this matter."

"Funny you should mention him."

"What?"

"We can't seem to locate Commander Tolson.
That's really why I'm here."

She looked away and went to the sofa. She
sat on the pillow-less, hard metal surface and hugged herself. "Why
would you come here to find Commander Tolson?"

"Ms. Brandon, loose cannons like me have
their uses. Maybe the fact that I’m here is a really good thing for
you. They say people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw
stones. I rarely do. My understanding is that you've been working
with the Commander off-hours on a special project, something that
will enhance ship's security. That's why I came here, okay? Someone
is going to investigate what happened to you and why you do not
remember ship's gravity being off. If it is me, you will have the
strictest of confidentiality. Perhaps, it would not be necessary to
bring anyone else in on this, except maybe the doctor, and he's so
overloaded right now even that will be difficult. My questions will
be easy. You are sitting next to Commander Tolson's coveralls. I
know he was here. Ship's gravity was off for almost two hours.
What's the last thing you remember?"

She debated her options for a moment, and
then tested the water. "Commander Tolson was here. We were
discussing combining the life sciences scanning array with the
security sensors to enhance the system. I sat down at my terminal
to run a simulation for him and that's the last thing I
remember."

"Do you know what time that was?"

“About one o'clock."

"That makes you the last person to have seen
him. Did he mention he might be going any place in particular after
he left here?"

"Back to his quarters to sleep."

"You're sure?"

"Yes, but he wouldn't have done that until
after. ...We were working and all."

"So, you don't remember how you came to be
dressed in only a blanket. You don't remember the no-gravity
period, or Commander Tolson leaving. Is that correct?"

It seemed to startle her. She looked up at
me and seemed vulnerable for the first time. "What happened?"

"I'm not sure. There have been some other
memory lapses on board recently. Maybe related to the system
problems we're having. You should call the Doctor and speak to him
as soon as possible. He'll understand. How are you feeling right
now?"