Dead Man on the Moon (32 page)

Adrienne helped them to their feet. With great exaggeration, she mouthed "Medical bay" at them and pointed toward the stairs. Karen nodded, and the two of them followed Adrienne through the shuttle to a small but efficient-looking sick bay. Two examining tables could be sectioned off by curtains, and cabinets filled with medical
supplies lined the walls. Karen gestured at Linus to sit on one of the tables while she rifled expertly through them in eerie silence. Adrienne stood in the doorway, her plump arms folded across her chest. Linus's ears still hurt like hell, and his skin was turning a reddish purple. His entire body ached.

Karen fastened a cuff around Linus's elbow and injected it first with a clear fluid, then with a yellow fluid. The pain instantly eased. She did the same to herself, and relief crossed her blotchy face. Next she took an earplug from a drawer and slid it into her left ear. She handed one to Linus, and he did the same.

"Can you hear me?" Karen said. Her voice sounded high and tinny, as if she were talking through helium, but she was perfectly understandable.

"Yes," he said gratefully. "Thank you."

"You sound like a cartoon character," Karen told him. "I can regrow our eardrums in a couple hours back at the medical center, but these neural simulators will do for now. The pain's easily manageable, of course, though I can't do anything about the bruising except recommend long, hot baths. Besides all that, how do you feel?"

"I think I'm all right. How about you?"

"Other than terrified, I'm fine."

Linus turned to Adrienne Miao. "Thank you. If you hadn't shown up, we'd be dead now."

"Hey, it was my pleasure." The licorice whip moved around her mouth like a cigar. "I heard the alarm go off and ran down to see what the hell was going on. I don't think anyone else was onboard, to tell the truth. You got lucky."

"So what the fuck happened?" Karen demanded in her new squeaky voice.

"I'm guessing it was something to do with the computer," Linus said. "Let's take a look."

A few minutes later, they were bending over Adrienne Miao, who was in turn bent over a terminal the connected directly to the main computer bank.

"Here it is," she said, pointing to the display. "An order to open emergency airlock 5D."

"Who authorized it?" Linus squeaked.

Adrienne started. The licorice whip fell from her mouth and drifted toward the floor. "Oh, Jesus. It says I did. But I didn't do it. You have to believe me."

"I do believe you," Linus said grimly. "But I'm afraid I'm going to be cooking a lot of crepes for poor Vanessa."

"Why is that?" Karen asked.

"Because the shuttle's entire computer bank is now evidence in a case of attempted murder, and I need to take it with me."

"I think I'll just pop down to the medical center and start on our eardrums then. I don't want to be anywhere near ground zero when Vanessa gets the news. Furious won't begin to describe it."

"Can I go with you?" Adrienne asked wistfully, and Linus sighed.

Vanessa was indeed furious. She raved, she screamed, she shouted, and she threatened. She shattered two teacups, no small feat in low gravity. And it didn't help that to Linus she sounded like Minnie Mouse throwing a temper tantrum. But in the end she was forced to allow Valerie Marks and Linus to remove the databanks and haul them back to Security for analysis. Linus only partly mollified her by promising to have them back by the next day.

While Marks escorted the computers to the security station, Linus stopped at the medical center and found Karen in one of the examination rooms. Her face was purple by now, as were Linus's arms and legs. He'd have to take a long, hot bath tonight. Karen held up a covered petri dish.

"It's ready, love," she said in her squeaky voice. "You're just lucky that regrown tympanic tissue isn't at all prone to cancer, unlike cardiac tissue. Otherwise you'd be hearing Disney voices for the rest of your life."

He ignored this and lay down on the table on his side as she instructed. Linus always kept his eyes closed during
any medical procedure, unable to stand watching it come near him. He felt Karen's cool fingers brush the side of his face, and his groin tightened unexpectedly as it had back in the airlock. His face flushed as he felt the erection grow down the side of his leg. It pulsed warm with every beat of his heart, demanding immediate attention. His mind burst with images of Robin and Karen together on the examining table with Linus himself sandwiched between them. Their bodies writhed and twined together. Linus clamped his teeth together. A tiny touch, a faint pressure, would make him burst. He had never felt so horny in his life. More than anything in the world he wanted to snatch Karen (Robin?) into his arms and feel her warm mouth on his, slide into her, feel her moist heat around him.

"All done with that side," Karen said. Linus winced. He'd gotten her voice in weird stereo—normal in one ear, squeaky in the other. He pulled the plug from his other ear, then rolled over, side-to-stomach-to-side in order to hide his arousal, and let her complete the procedure with his other ear. He almost came the second time she touched him, and he bit his lip until he tasted blood to keep control.

"You're shaking," Karen said as she finished up. "Are you all right? I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"No," he said hoarsely, sitting up with his back to her. His erection ached as it rubbed softly against his underwear, and he felt close to the edge. "Everything's fine. Just some post-trauma jitters, I think."

"It's okay, love. You survived, and everything's fine."

Unexpectedly, Karen hugged him from behind. Her breasts pressed into his back, and Linus came. A wave of pleasure washed over him, and he shuddered hard under the intensity of it. Warmth flooded his groin.

"It's okay," Karen whispered in his ear. "I'm here. You can cry. I won't tell anyone. Promise."

Linus almost laughed. She had mistaken orgasm for tears. Story of his life. He grabbed her wrist, squeezed, then gently disengaged himself.

"Thanks, Karen," he said. "I just need a minute alone."

She gave him a long look, then nodded and withdrew. The minute the door had shut, Linus scrambled out of trousers and underwear and managed a quick cleanup with a washcloth he found in a pile of linens and dampened in the sink. The sticky underwear he thrust deep in the waste-basket, the damp trousers he pulled back on. Jesus, what had gotten into him? Linus couldn't remember the last time he had creamed his jeans. He was acting like a horny teenager or something. It was certainly abnormal in a man of forty. The whole incident scared him half to . ..

.. . half to death.

Linus grimaced. Near-death experiences made lots of people horny. It was either an adrenaline rush, or the result of a subconscious desire to leave children behind in case the next such incident turned out rather worse. That was all it had been.

Had Karen felt the same thing? Maybe she'd had the same reaction when he touched her wrist.

Jesus. The thought of Karen having a spontaneous orgasm was making him hard again. He firmly reined in this line of thought, finished doing up his trousers, and splashed cold water on his face. A glance in the mirror told him he looked like shit. Multicolored blotches were splashed across his face, and his eyes looked like the aftereffects of a three-day bender. Sexy he wasn't.

Once he had made himself as presentable as possible, he exited the examination room and asked a passing nurse where Karen might be found.

"She's undergoing a procedure, Chief," the young man said. "Do you need to see someone?"

Linus gave himself a mental shake. Of course—someone would have to restore Karen's ears as well. He'd check back with her later. Right now he had to track down a killer.

Back at Security, he realized he had switched his obie off. He had several messages waiting for him. One was from the Mayor-President, demanding an update. Linus thought
about that. Calling her was a calculated risk. Linus could call her back later, which would increase the chances of pissing her off but also increase the chances that he'd have something to tell her. Or he could call her right now, decreasing the chance of pissing her off but also decreasing the amount of information he'd have for her.

He decided to wait.

Down in the evidence room, he found Valerie Marks hooking up the shuttle's computer bank to a police terminal. The bank itself was a gray box the size of a small briefcase. Valerie left once she was sure everything was set properly. Linus accessed the shuttle's main computer and was about to check the airlock records when his obie trilled. The alarm indicated a top-priority call, and it was coming from the Mayor-President's office. Linus sighed and pulled his monocle around. Ravi Pandey's expression was dark and chilly as a crate on the far side of the moon.

"What's this I hear about you making off with the entire computer bank of a Tether Station shuttle?"
she said in a controlled voice.
"Vanessa May grave just called me in a fine temper."

"Did she tell you why I confiscated the computer?" Linus asked mildly.

"I couldn't get much out of her, to tell the truth"
said the Mayor-President.
"I assume you have a good reason, Chief Inspector, but I need to know what it is."

"Someone sabotaged the computer so it would open the airlock Karen and I were processing for evidence in the John Doe case," Linus said. "He or she almost killed both of us. Since there's a good chance the person who arranged that is the same one who killed our mystery man, I took the computer bank to see if I can figure out who it was."

"I see. Keep me informed, then."
And she signed off.

"Thanks for your concern," Linus said to empty air. "It's not like I nearly died or anything."

He turned back to the computer with a sigh and started searching. He readily found the order to open the airlock, but as Adrienne Miao had said, the order appeared to
come from her. Linus didn't think for a second it really was Miao, of course. If she had really tried to kill Karen and Linus this way, it seemed highly unlikely that she would also have saved them at the last minute—or used her own, easily traced access codes to open the airlock in the first place.

Linus tapped the table with his fingertips. Too many things didn't match here. The body had appeared to come from a Luna City airlock, but it had actually come from the shuttle. The body had been missing one shoe. The airlock had been opened, but not by the person who matched the access codes. The John Doe's DNA didn't match the DNA of anyone registered on Luna. What else didn't match?

On impulse, Linus checked the shuttle computer to see if it contained the biometric data of its crew. It did. Another checked showed that it still contained a list of the crew who had been on board the day Adrienne Miao had overshot the landing. None of them had been reported missing, but wasn't it possible that something wouldn't quite match? Linus called up John Doe's DNA and told the computer to check it against the DNA of the shuttle's crew. The computer ran the check, and Linus held his breath.

No matches. Dammit!

"What's going on, love?"

Linus jumped. He hadn't heard Karen come in. Her expression was lightly quizzical, though her skin was blotched and purple with bruises. Linus realized he was leaning toward her for a hello kiss and pulled back in confusion. Karen appeared not to notice.

"I'm looking for matches," Linus told her. "But I'm coming up empty."

Karen looked over his shoulder at the computer data winking on the holographic display. "It seems to me that only a member of the crew could pull of something like this," she said. "I mean, even assuming you were a world-class hacker, would
you
know how to order a space shuttle's computer to open an airlock?"

"No," Linus admitted. "I wouldn't even know where to start."

"So the killer has to be someone on the crew roster," Karen said, pointing. "Logic would also say that the same goes for the victim."

"The victim could have been a passenger," Linus said. "Though none of the passengers from that flight have been reported missing."

"Did you check John Doe's DNA against the passenger data, just to be sure?"

Linus nodded. "Long ago. That's the weird thing, Karen. Everything matches perfectly, except for the victim. He doesn't match anything or anyone. We know he was on the shuttle because we found his DNA in the airlock, but the computer doesn't have a record of him among the crew or passengers. Miao said stowaways are impossible, so where the hell did John Doe come from?"