Space Case (29 page)

Dr. Holtz gasped. Even with the distortion we could hear the fear in his voice. “You wouldn't dare!”

The video suddenly ended. There was a burst of static, and that was it.

Everyone turned to Chang. I could see shock and dismay on all their faces.

“Where's the rest of it?” Nina demanded.

“I don't know,” Chang said. “Destroyed, I guess. We were lucky to get as much as we did.”

“Lucky?” Nina snapped. “We've got garbage. We can't even tell who confronted Dr. Holtz!”

“But we know
someone
confronted him,” Mom said. “And that to keep his discovery a secret, they forced him to go out the air lock.”

“We can't even tell if the killer's a man or a woman,” Nina groused. “And we don't know
how
they forced Dr. Holtz out—”

“They blackmailed him!” Dad cried. “You heard them! They threatened his family!”

“We don't know if that worked,” Nina shot back.

“It would work for
me
,” Mom snapped. “And Dr. Holtz is dead. What else do you need?”

“Uh, guys,” Chang said, “I know we're all freaked out by the murder and everything, but . . . Dr. Holtz said he made alien contact! This is huge!”

“We don't have any proof of that,” Nina said curtly. “Only Dr. Holtz's say-so. And as we're all aware, he might have been going insane.”

Dad glared at her. “I think the fact that we have a murderer on tape proves that Dr. Holtz didn't wander out the air lock by accident.”

“But it doesn't prove he wasn't crazy,” Nina countered. “He could have merely imagined this alien contact and the killer mistakenly believed him. But then we can't question the killer, because we have no idea who they are!”

“Check the security feeds,” Kira suggested. “Whoever was controlling the robot arm would be on them.”

Nina shook her head. “Whoever it was shut down the security system before coming after you. All the recordings from tonight were stopped hours ago.” She pointed toward the computer. “That recording was the best lead we had.”

My mind was racing. Despite Nina's argument, I still believed Dr. Holtz's story of alien contact—but the thrill of that had already been dulled by frustration and anger. I
couldn't believe that the recording I had worked so hard to get had failed to identify the killer. And yet it seemed to me that I was missing something. There was a clue I had overlooked somewhere during the last few days.

“It's not like the killer can get away,” Dad pointed out. “It's someone on this base. We'll simply have to question everyone about the events. I'm sure the killer will slip up somehow.”

“Not necessarily,” Nina sighed. “We could go through the whole dog and pony show and end up right back where we are now.”

“Well, we have to do something!” Dr. Howard exclaimed. “This person didn't only kill Dr. Holtz. They nearly killed two children! And if we don't find them soon, what's to say they won't try to kill again?”

Mom turned to Chang. “Isn't there some way you can get some other data from that recording?”

“I've done my best,” Chang said. “I'm only a genius, not a miracle worker.”

I wondered if Chang was telling the truth. Maybe
he
was the killer and he hadn't tried to clean up the recording at all. Or maybe the recording had been fine and he'd done the damage himself, covering up his own presence on it.

“Please,” Mom said. “Can't you try?”

Chang sighed and turned back to the monitor. “Computer, is there any way to clean up this recording?”

“Perhaps,” the computer replied. “What would you like me to lean it up against?”

“Not
lean
it up, you stupid machine!” Chang snapped. “
Clean
it up! Can you
clean
it up more?”

“I'm sorry,” the computer said. “The recording is in very bad shape. I'm afraid this is the best that can be done.”

Everyone sagged, looking defeated.

Except me. I'd just realized something important.

Computers could make mistakes. Despite all the amazing things they were capable of, they were still fallible. The base computer misunderstood and misinterpreted things all the time.

The problem was, we tended to forget this. We tended to think the computers were perfect and trust them completely.

I had done exactly that the day before. I'd trusted the computer when I shouldn't have.

“I think I know who killed Dr. Holtz,” I said.

Lunar day 190

Really early in the morning

Everyone turned to me at
once.

“Who?” they demanded.

“Well,” I hedged, “I'm not one hundred percent sure—”

“Great,” Nina muttered.

“—but there's a way to check it out,” I finished quickly. “You see, Dr. Holtz
tried
to name his killer the other night—only we didn't understand what he was saying.”

Everyone asked questions at the same time. “When?” “Why?” “How do you know?”

“Hold on!” Dad told them all. “Give Dashiell time to
explain himself.” He then looked to me expectantly, as eager to hear my thoughts as everyone else.

I suddenly found myself very nervous, wondering if I was right. But I pressed on anyhow. “Kira found footage of Dr. Holtz inside the air lock, right before he went out onto the moon. He was using sign language in it, but neither of us speaks sign language, so we asked the computer to translate it for us. Unfortunately, I think the computer got something wrong, though at the time we didn't realize it. We assumed the computer was right—and that we just didn't understand what Dr. Holtz meant. Or that he had space madness or something.”

“What did he say?” Nina asked.

“That he was being murdered. And that earth had killed him.”

When everyone looked at me quizzically, I said, “That's the part the computer screwed up. I have the footage right here.”

Despite the fact that I'd been smacked around by a giant robot arm, my space suit had protected my watch well (not to mention myself), so it was in much better shape than Dr. Holtz's phone had been. I touched it to the computer in front of Chang, transmitting the video file, which popped up on the screen. “You can still speak sign language, can't you, Mom?”

“Oh,” Mom said. “I could never speak it fluently, Dash.
I only tried to learn it to communicate with my grandfather when he was sick.”

“But you know
some
, right?” I pressed.

“I suppose,” Mom said. “It's been a long time, though.”

“Well, try,” Nina ordered.

I scanned through the footage until I got to Dr. Holtz signing inside the air lock. “Here,” I said. “This is where he says he was being murdered.”

We all watched as he pointed beneath his open hand.

“That's the sign for murder, all right,” Mom said.

Dr. Holtz began to make the quick series of movements with his hands.

“This is where I think the computer got it wrong,” I told her. “Where it translated ‘earth killed me.' ”

Mom watched and nodded. Then she paused the footage. “You're right,” she said. “That's not the sign for ‘earth.' He's making letter signs.”

“You mean he's spelling?” Dad asked.

“Yes,” Mom said. “In American Sign Language there isn't a sign for every name. Instead you spell them out, letter by letter.”

“Then why did the computer say ‘earth'?” Kira asked.

“It must have thought Dr. Holtz was spelling ‘earth,' ” Mom suggested. “And it simply interpreted that as a name. So it said ‘earth killed me' in the same way it would have
said ‘Jim killed me.' Only Dr. Holtz was probably spelling something else and the computer misread it.”

“So what was he spelling instead?” Chang asked.

“Let's see.” Mom scrolled the footage backward to the point where Dr. Holtz began spelling.

The first thing he did was raise his hand with a finger pointing to the side.

“Oh my,” Mom said. The color drained from her face.

“That wasn't an
E
, was it?” I asked.

“No.” Mom still seemed to be in shock.

“Was it a
G 
?”

Everyone looked to me, surprised, then to Mom for confirmation.

She nodded. “Dr. Holtz wasn't spelling ‘earth.' He was spelling ‘Garth.' ”

Everyone in the room reacted at once. I saw astonishment, disbelief, and betrayal.

“Mr. Grisan?” Kira asked, shocked. “He's a spy for the military?”

“I guess, if that's what Dr. Holtz thought,” I said. “Whoever he works for definitely has some power over NASA. Dr. Marquez told me Mr. Grisan was the only person here who didn't have to sit with him every week.”

“Computer,” Nina demanded, “where is Garth Grisan right now?”

“Dismantling the main air lock,” the computer replied calmly.

Everyone gasped in alarm.

Nina was the first to race out the door. The rest of us were right behind her.

“Stop right there,” Mr. Grisan ordered.

As the computer had said, he was standing by the main air lock. The control panel had been ripped off, and wires dangled out of it.

Mr. Grisan was wearing a full space suit, helmet and all. He no longer looked like the reserved, meek man we knew. That had all been an act. The real Garth Grisan was a daunting presence with a cold look in his eye and a commanding voice. He warned, “If anyone comes a step closer, I'll open both doors at once and depressurize the whole moon base.”

“That's not possible,” Nina said.

“It is now,” Mr. Grisan told her. “I overrode the safety protocols. Although I won't do anything unless you force me to.” He placed a thumb on the keypad and shook his head sadly. “I was really hoping things wouldn't come to this.”

It was twenty feet to the air lock from where we all stood. There was nothing but open space in between us. There was no way to get ahead of Mr. Grisan.

Nina raised her hands, signaling him to calm down as she edged closer to him. “Take it easy . . .”

“Stop!” Mr. Grisan ordered. “I'm not bluffing!”

Nina froze where she was.

I noticed Zan Perfonic wasn't with us anymore. I had no idea how long she'd been gone—or how much she'd witnessed in the control room. I could only hope that she was circling around to get the jump on Mr. Grisan somehow.

“What do you want from us?” Dad asked.

“Your cooperation,” Mr. Grisan replied. “Unfortunately, you have all become privy to information that should have remained secret. And I am prepared to take drastic measures to make sure it goes no farther than this spot.”

“Are you crazy?” Chang asked. “If you open that air lock, you won't just kill us. You'll kill everyone else here.”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Mr. Grisan said calmly. “There are forces at work here you don't understand.”

“Then explain them to us,” Mom pleaded. “Why is it so important that no one learn that there has been alien contact?”

“That's not the case,” Mr. Grisan informed us. “The
right
people can know about it. In fact, they
should
know about it. Dr. Holtz wouldn't listen to reason, though. He wanted to tell everyone. He wanted the whole world to know. And I knew I couldn't trust him to keep his mouth shut.”

“Why
can't
the whole world know?” I asked.

“Grover's Mill,” Mr. Grisan said.

“Oh, come on,” Chang groaned. “You can't be serious.”

“What's Grover's Mill?” Kira asked.

Chang started to explain, but Mr. Grisan beat him to it. “On October thirtieth, 1938, an actor named Orson Welles did a radio broadcast in which he reported that martians had landed in Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Although Welles warned people before the broadcast that it was merely for entertainment, people who tuned in during the middle believed it—and they were terrified. There was a massive panic.”