Death Sentence (13 page)

Quick entry. Craft has docked with
Adler
. I am invited to permit visitors aboard. Visitors wish to view and admire the interior and contents of my fine spacecraft. I of course gladly accept this invitation to allow their visit.

"Obviously, he wrote that assuming that he was already being monitored," said Hannah.

"Agreed," Jamie said. The
Sherlock
-class ships were not large enough to be well shielded, and many of the Elder Races had astonishingly good detection systems that could easily monitor the electric impulses produced by typing at a keyboard or using a microphone connected to a dictation system. He read on to the next entry.

My visitors have up and gone, departing after an extended visit. They took a strong interest in all I had aboard and did not wish to miss any chance to learn more about my ship and my work. It may be that they will wish to return and learn more in future. It is likely they have arranged to know more about me even when they are not here. I of course wish to be generous with my time and to inform them as much as possible, but my other duties might prevent this.

It was the final entry in the personal log. It wasn't hard to interpret those words.
The boarding party has left at last. They searched everywhere, and questioned me extensively. They might decide to come back and search again
. And they wouldn't need to do that if they had found what they were looking for, Jamie reminded himself.
They have probably installed listening or monitoring devices on the ship. I'll cooperate with them and tell them anything that won't do any harm, but I won't let them find what they shouldn't get
.

"That part about how the Metrannans might
arrange to know more about me even when they are not here
is pretty clear. Did Gunther's people find any listening devices or tracking units in the
Adler
? We don't want to fly back into the Metran system with the ship we're trying to hide booming out some beacon signal telling our friends where we are."

"A little late to worry about that," said Hannah, checking her datapad. "I'm sure they checked--yeah, they did. Devices found in and on the
Adler
," Hannah said. "A small listening unit attached to the base of the pilot's seat, a signal monitor near a comm conduit, where it could read all the incoming and outgoing traffic, and a combination beacon and data transmitter stuck to the hull. The notation is that it is 'possible but highly unlikely' that there were others that they missed. If there are others, we're probably going to find out the hard way. By the way, though, you're assuming that it was the Metrannans who boarded. Wilcox doesn't say any such thing. We don't know who it might be--and it does take at least two sides to start a war."

"Point taken," said Jamie. "But why was
he
so cagey about it?"

"Maybe he was worried that they'd blow him out of the sky if he said anything they didn't like or said more than they wanted to be heard. That's probably why he stopped making personal log entries."

"That makes sense."

"Come on. Let's check the auto-event log."

Jamie paused a moment before he closed the personal log. He had been half-hoping that there would be something more, something beyond the log entries that he had already examined on his datapad. Some last word from the ghost in the machine that he had not seen already. But there was nothing--not in the personal log, anyway.

He switched over to the auto-event reporter log. The autologger monitored all the electromechanical systems on the ship and recorded every action they took.

Neither Hannah or Jamie had much experience with the recorder used on the
Adler
, and it took them a while to figure out how to bring up detailed displays of air lock activity while filtering out everything else. Once that was accomplished, it was simple enough to examine air lock activity for the period between the departure of the boarding party and the recovery of the
Adler
in the outer reaches of the CenterStar System.

What it showed was exactly what they had expected to find: The inner hatch had been opened, then closed and sealed about an hour later--long enough for Trevor to load all of his effects into the lock chamber. Then the manual override system was used to bring the lock chamber down to one-quarter of standard pressure, rather than to zero. The manual override was also used to disengage the safety systems and hydraulic door controls and send the rapid-open command to the outer hatch, releasing the pressure latches in an instant, so that explosive decompression would force the hatch door open and blow the lock's contents into space. The air lock was designed to be used that way, down to shock absorbers on the hatch hinges to keep it from slamming into the outer hull.

The autolog showed that the hydraulics were then reengaged, the outer hatch swung shut and resealed, and the lock interior repressurized.

"So that ought to prove it," said Jamie. "A perfectly standard junk-jettison job, from start to finish. It must have been Trevor that did the clear-out. And if he did do it, can you think of any reason for it besides his helping
us
?"

"No, but that doesn't mean there
isn't
another reason. Still, you've convinced me, at least provisionally. Except all you've
really
proven is that he deliberately cycled the lock with pressure between the doors. It probably was to dump unwanted gear, but we don't
know.
And there's one detail that doesn't quite fit with your theory."

"What's that?"

"Look at the time indicator on when he opened the lock: less than a day after he was boarded and more than two days before the
Irene Adler
made her transit-jump back to the Center System. The Metrannans, or whoever it was that boarded him, might still have been close enough to detect the jettison. Why would he want to attract their attention again by doing something suspicious? And if the whole idea was to clear the decks and make our search easier, then he'd want to do the reverse of that as well and make
their
search harder if they came back. He'd want as much junk as possible on board, so they'd be forced to paw through more stuff. He'd have wanted to do the jettison as late as possible. Why do it so early?"

"I can give you two plausible theories," said Jamie. "One, he
wanted
to jettison the stuff where the xenos would see it. Maybe he wanted to confuse them. Maybe he was hoping the xenos would have some reason to think the decrypt code would be in with the junk he was jettisoning. Maybe they did think that. Maybe the gag worked, and they went off after the junk instead of reboarding the
Adler
.

"Or two, and I think this is the better but grimmer explanation: Trevor knew he was
dying.
He could see that his strength was failing and figured he'd better do the jettison procedure while he still could." Jamie studied the log display, and scanned the major event reports. "That fits," he said. "Unless I'm missing something, closing the air locks was just about the last event recorded that required Trevor to perform any physical act, like carrying things or moving equipment. Everything else from there on in was pretty much done on automatic, or else was something he could do from right here at the pilot's station by working the controls."

"That is pretty grim," said Hannah. "But it does fit." She leaned in over the main data display. "Look, as long you're confirming theories, let's go back to the time period when his personal log reports the boarding party. I want to see what it says about air lock use."

"Why do you need to confirm
that
?"

"The personal logs are pretty sketchy," she said. "The autolog's reports on air lock activity will tell us how long the xenos were docked to the
Adler
. It might give us an idea how thorough the search was."

Jamie punched up the right commands, then frowned. "That can't be right," he said. "No use of the main air lock at all during that time period."

"
What?
Check again."

"I'm checking, I'm checking," said Jamie distractedly. "Date codes right, time codes, air lock activity report active--everything correct." He turned and looked at Hannah. "No air lock use," he said. "So how could there have been a boarding party?"

"The times must be wrong. Maybe your junk-jettison air lock use was really the boarding party."

"With the lock pressure cut to one-quarter and then a quick-release explosive-decompression outer-hatch opening? If there was breathable pressure on the other side, the hatch wouldn't have opened. He
couldn't
have opened the hatch--there would be higher outside pressure, tons of it, holding the hatch shut."

"Okay, okay. I take your point. But that means there wasn't a boarding party, and about two-thirds of our assumptions are out the window--and it means Wilcox was lying or delusional when he made those log entries."

"Wait a second.
We
just came aboard the
Irene Adler
, and we didn't use the air lock."

Hannah frowned. "You mean Wilcox had the other ship dock to the
Adler
through the nose hatch?"

Jamie worked the auto-event log again. "Bingo," he said. "About thirty minutes after that first personal log entry, the nose-hatch docking system was activated and made a hard dock with--whatever it was. This is just an engineering log. It doesn't identify the other ship. The interior pressure in the
Adler
didn't change, which probably means the other ship had an air lock system and used that to match pressure. I don't know if that tells us anything, but there it is. The hatch stayed open for just about four and a half hours, and once it was closed, the docking system released from the other ship. Half an hour after that, we get the second log entry. It all matches up."

"But why would he use the nose hatch?" Hannah asked. "I can tell you that the Metrannans wouldn't like it. They aren't exactly built to move gracefully on rope ladders. They have four arms and four legs, a morbid fear of exposed heights, and no arboreal ancestors to provide them with climbing instincts."

"Maybe that was exactly the point," Jamie said. "The Metrannans
wouldn't
like it. We're assuming that Trevor knew he was dying by that time, and he might well know--or at least assume--that it was the Metrannans who had done it to him. Why would he do them any favors? And what were they going to do to him if he wasn't nice? Kill him?"

"Well, maybe. But tweaking their noses as revenge for their murdering him doesn't seem quite in character for Wilcox, somehow."

"Too petty for a man brave enough to do everything we know he did?"

"Something like that," Hannah said.

"Who knows?" Jamie said. "Maybe the pilot of the Metrannan spacecraft picked the nose hatch, and Trevor just didn't feel like correcting his dumb mistake. Besides, we still don't know for sure that it
was
the Metrannans. It could have been some other species that's comfortable with ladders and heights."

"Hmmph. True enough. We'd know that and a hell of a lot more if the
Adler
had been recording the feed from her interior cameras."

"Yeah, but Trevor deliberately disabled the cams for the same reason we did. You don't record yourself on a mission designated 'War-Starter.' The bad guys could have just played back the recording and watched where he hid the decrypt."

Cutting out all the auto-record cameras and microphones was standard operating procedure for most BSI missions. Far safer to keep the system turned off at all times instead of running the risk of forgetting to turn it off while performing some crucial and secret part of the job.

"I know
why
nothing was recorded," Hannah said with some irritation in her voice. "That doesn't stop me from wishing we had the recordings. I suppose we're lucky to have the engineering logs." She thought for a second. "Any change in the gravity system while the boarding party was present?"

Jamie checked and looked toward Hannah with surprise. "Yeah," he said. "Interior grav got cranked
up
to one-point-two-one gees--Metran surface gravity."

"Huh?" Hannah leaned in and checked the display herself. "I was figuring that if Wilcox was trying to annoy them, he would have dialed gravity
down
a ways. Metrannans
hate
low gravity--and with good reason. Even a brief exposure to zero gee can kill them."

Jamie checked further along in the log. "It gets weirder. After the boarding party is gone, interior gravity was reset to three-quarters of a standard gee for several days. It was cut to zero for a couple of hours, then returned to three-quarters and left there."

"I don't get it," said Hannah. "The second part makes sense. Dialing gravity down to three-quarters is a pretty smart move if you're dying of a degenerative disease. That's enough of a reduction to ease the stress on your system, but not so much that your reflexes would get messed up, that sort of thing. But if he's going to do that for himself, why crank
up
the interior gravity to make his guests comfortable--especially when he's just docked using the nose hatch to irritate them, and when higher gravity has got to put a strain on him--maybe a big enough strain to kill him?"

"I've got all the same questions and none of the answers," Jamie said. "But at least setting the system to exactly one-point-two-one gees signals that he was boarded by Metrannans."

"Maybe
that's
why he did it," said Hannah. "It's for our benefit, just like clearing out all of his personal effects. It's a deliberate signal to us that it was beings who liked that gravity field who boarded him."

"It could be," Jamie said. "But somehow it's not all that convincing. Would he really risk a heart attack just to send us such a subtle and easy-to-miss message?
Especially
when he had so much to do after they left. Yeah, later on, he went to a lot of effort jettisoning his gear for our benefit--but it wasn't at the risk of
dying
before he could complete his preparations. Cranking up the gravity system while he was aging by, say, a year every hour would increase the odds of his dying before he'd done his job. He would only do it because it was absolutely necessary, not to let us confirm a very obvious theory about who boarded his ship."