Space Case (21 page)

Lunar day 189

Much later in the morning than expected

“Wake up, sleepyhead.” The words
were soft and gentle in my ear.

I groggily pried my eyes open and found Zan Perfonic peering into my sleep pod. “What time is it?” I groaned.

“Nearly lunchtime.”

“What?” I sat up, cracking my head on the low ceiling. “Darn it! I overslept!”

“It's all right,” Zan said soothingly. “School's been canceled again today. You're not missing anything.”

I lay back down, rubbing my head. “I couldn't fall asleep,” I explained. “I was up until five in the morning.”

“Well, you had an emotionally exhausting day yesterday. And a stressful night in the gym as well.”

I groaned again. “You know about that?”

“
Everyone
knows about it. It's all anyone is talking about. Lars Sjoberg is threatening to sue NASA, Chang, and anyone else he can think of. Meanwhile Chang is saying it was self-defense—and that you can back him up. Although Nina has already viewed the security footage from the gym and she says the evidence looks like it's in Chang's favor.”

I was starting to feel a little weird, having this conversation while I was still in bed. Under the sheets I was only wearing my boxers. “Do you mind closing your eyes while I get some clothes on?” I asked.

“Oh, of course.” Zan ducked away from the entrance to my sleep pod. “Sorry. I didn't want to barge in on you like this, but I really need to see what you've found.”

“It's okay. I've wanted to talk to you since yesterday.” I peered out of my sleep pod and saw Zan standing at the far end of the room, her back to me. She was watching the big SlimScreen, which was displaying a fictitious landscape full of rainbows and unicorns instead of Hapuna Beach. Violet must have reprogrammed it. I leaped to the floor and scurried over to the bureau. “I even came looking for you—”

“Dash! I told you not to do that! No one can know we're working together.”

“I was careful. I didn't
tell
anyone I was looking for you. I just looked.”

“You haven't told anyone about me? Or what we're doing?”

“No. I swear. Where were you last night?”

“In the temp quarters. I'm sorry. I was wiped out from the trip here.”

I yanked on a T-shirt and shorts. “Okay. I'm dressed.”

Zan swung back to face me. “Did you get the footage of the air lock?”

“Yes.”

Zan's face lit up in excitement. Her eyes were almost the exact same color as those of the unicorns on the SlimScreen behind her. “Well . . . ?”

“Dr. Holtz might have been forced to go out the air lock against his will.”

The news upset Zan—and yet she seemed excited by it too. I could understand why. I'd felt the same way: It proved we were both right about the death being suspicious. “How do you know?”

“It's better if I show it to you.” I'd slept with my watch on to protect it. I touched it to our tabletop SlimScreen, transferring the security footage Kira had found, then played it for Zan.

“It doesn't look like anyone's forcing him to do anything,” Zan said.

“Just wait.” I fast-forwarded to the point where Dr. Holtz started signing with his hands.

“What's he doing?” Zan asked.

“It's sign language,” I told her. “The way deaf people used to communicate.”

“Oh. Right. Do you speak it?”

“No. I had to have the computer translate it. Dr. Holtz said, ‘This is a murder. Earth killed me. Find my phone. Tell my family I love them.' ”

Zan took in a sharp breath and turned away. It looked like she was trying not to cry. She bowed her head and rubbed her temples, like she was trying to process everything.

I froze the footage on the image of Dr. Holtz on the moon, staring up at earth. “Do you want to watch it again?”

Zan shook her head. “No. Once was enough. To know that another person was behind this is so . . . so upsetting.”

“Well,” I said cautiously, “Dr. Holtz doesn't actually say that another
person
is behind this. He says the earth made him do it.”

“Yes, that is odd. But I suspect it's some sort of code for the name of whoever forced him onto the moon.”

“Isn't the sign language already code enough?”

“Maybe not,” Zan replied sadly. “Maybe he was afraid the killer would watch the footage and erase it if they recognized their name. Which would mean the killer would have access to the security system . . .”

“Nina,” I said.

“She's the only one with that kind of access here,” Zan agreed. “And she's been trying to block any investigation since the beginning.”

“But why would she want Dr. Holtz dead?” I asked. “And how did she force him to go out the air lock?”

“I don't know,” Zan admitted sadly. “Maybe there's another camera angle that shows her. You might have to grab all the footage from around the staging area that night.”

I started to say, “We did,” but caught myself at the last second, not wanting to mention Kira. “I did. There's no one else visible in any shot except Dr. Holtz.”

Zan sighed. “Then she must have gotten to him earlier somehow. Sometime between his conversation in the bathroom and the time he went out the air lock. Something important transpired in those two and a half hours. Dr. Holtz says, ‘Find my phone.' He must have recorded something on it. Do you have any idea where it might be?”

I sat on an InflatiCube, daunted. “No. I tried his room last night, but it was locked.”

Zan shook her head and started pacing. “I doubt he would have hidden it there anyway. That's far too obvious. I guarantee you, Nina—or someone else—has already scoured his quarters. And he wouldn't have kept the evidence on him, either, knowing they'd search his body.”

“The science pod, then? He had a station there.”

“He shared that station with Dr. Janke. And it seems too obvious as well.”

“Then where?” I asked, feeling frustrated. “This base isn't huge, but there are still thousands of places to hide something as small as a phone.”

“I know.” Zan sounded as frustrated as I was. “We'll both just have to think on this.”

I hesitated before bringing up my next point, aware Zan wouldn't like hearing it any more than I had. “There's one other thing you should know. According to my parents, there's a possibility that Dr. Holtz was losing his mind.”

Zan stopped pacing. She whirled toward me, her eyes wide in surprise. “Why would they say that?”

“They said he'd been acting strange lately. And talking to himself. They think he might have gone out the air lock because he was paranoid or schizophrenic or something. They even think his big discovery might not be real, like a figment of his imagination.”

Zan looked very upset by all this for a moment, but then shook it off. “Dr. Holtz might have seemed a bit erratic lately, but I'm sure your parents are wrong. He wasn't crazy. I spoke to him very recently and he seemed as sane as could be—”

“That doesn't mean he was sane all the time.”

“True, but your parents were basing their analysis of
him on random observations as well. There has never been a documented case of life on the moon driving anyone crazy. There were hundreds of people up here during the construction of this base and there are dozens living here now. Some of them might have gotten depressed or desperately homesick, but nothing worse than that.”

“Well, what if Dr. Holtz was losing his mind
before
he came here?” I asked. “What if this was Alzheimer's or something?”

Zan shook her head. “Dr. Holtz was thoroughly vetted by NASA's medical staff before being approved for this mission. Because of his age, they were certainly checking for Alzheimer's or any other type of disease like that. If he'd shown even a trace, they would have flagged him. But he was given a clean bill of health, mentally and physically.”

“It's been six months since then,” I said. “And he wasn't visiting Dr. Marquez like he was supposed to. Although Chang says that probably didn't matter.”

“Six months isn't long enough to go from completely sane to imagining great scientific discoveries and thinking that someone is forcing you out the air lock. Trust me on this, Dashiell. I've studied human psychology.”

I raised my hands in surrender. “All right. I'm just telling you what my folks said. Dr. Holtz didn't seem crazy to me either . . . up until he signed that the earth had killed him.”

“That's not crazy. It's code for something.”

I nodded agreement, although I wasn't quite as convinced as Zan about this. “Is there anyone else besides Nina who might have had access to the security footage?”

Zan focused her bright blue eyes on me. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, I know Nina's been acting suspicious through all this, but she doesn't seem to have a motive. Whereas some other people do.”

“Like who?”

“Lars Sjoberg. He didn't like Dr. Holtz at all. That's what the whole thing in the gym was about last night. He was saying all sorts of bad stuff about Dr. Holtz, and Chang got upset.”

“What kind of bad stuff?”

“That Dr. Holtz did a lousy job making this base fit for humans. Even though that wasn't really his job.”

“Hmm.” Zan began pacing again. “Lars blew half a billion dollars to come up here. He's probably looking for someone to blame besides himself. And he certainly has a violent side.”

“And now, suddenly, he's demanding that Nina put him and his family on the rocket back to earth. Like he's trying to get away from the crime scene as fast as possible.”

“That's true.”

“Is Nina going to let him?”

“I don't know. Letting the Sjobergs go will cause a huge mess as far as scheduling is concerned. A lot of the other temps would end up stuck here until the next rocket comes. But NASA doesn't want one of the world's most wealthy and powerful men telling people he's being held prisoner up here. They need the money from future tourists to keep this place going. So it's possible that if the Sjobergs sign a contract swearing they won't bad-mouth Moon Base Alpha, NASA will find a way to let them go home tomorrow.”

“So he'll get away?”

“He's very wealthy and powerful. I suppose that back on earth he might be able to keep from being arrested. For instance, he could move to a country where the US couldn't extradite him.
If
he's even guilty. We don't really have any proof of that.” Zan stared thoughtfully at the big SlimScreen, watching the digital unicorns as they frolicked beneath the rainbows. “Who else do you suspect?”

I paused, not thrilled about what I had to say next. “Chang Hi-Tech.”

Zan looked back at me, surprised. “Really?”

“He accused Dr. Holtz of stealing an idea from him a long time ago. He says he's over it, but maybe that's a lie. Last night, in the gym, he was pretty scary when he was angry.”

“I suppose. But if he really has been holding a grudge all
this time, why not kill Dr. Holtz on earth? It'd be far easier to cover his tracks there.”

“If he did it, he's done a good job covering them here,” I said. “There doesn't seem to be any evidence against him at all. Maybe he thought he could make it look like an accident better up here. Or get Lars Sjoberg to take the fall for it.”

“Good point,” Zan admitted.

“There's also Dr. Marquez,” I offered. “According to Chang, he's not a very good psychiatrist. Dr. Holtz tried to block him from coming up here and he knew it.”

“Really? That's interesting.”

“And Daphne Merritt's up to something too. I saw her fiddling with the station computers last night. I don't know if it has anything to do with Dr. Holtz, but it was suspicious.”

“Wow.” Zan blew out a big breath. “That's quite a list of suspects.”

“There's one more thing,” I said. I brought up the threatening text on my smartwatch and showed it to Zan. “This isn't actually from Kira. Someone hacked her account and used it to send me this.”

Zan read the text, then looked to me with fear in her eyes. “When did this happen?”

“Last night after dinner. That's why I was trying to find you. I showed it to my parents, but they said it was probably someone like Patton Sjoberg trying to scare me.”

“I suppose that's possible, but . . . I think you're right to be concerned.” Zan shook her head sadly. “Oh, Dash. I'm sorry. I was hoping something like this wouldn't happen.”

“So . . . you think I'm really in danger?”

“I'm not sure. If it was really the killer who sent this, they're not telling you that they're coming for you next. They're just warning you to back off—which probably means they're scared. We've gotten close to them and they're worried they'll get caught. But this certainly isn't something to take lightly, either.”