“Can’t be, if they’re still crapping in their breeks,” said Dalziel.
“Andy, I thought I’d explained,” said Pascoe long-sufferingly. “They only need their TECs for moving around the moon’s surface. In the mother ship they just wear light tunics. The TECs were kept in the hold. Each crew member has his or her own locker and each suit is individually tailored and has a name tag stuck to it, so it’s quite clear that whoever tampered with Lemarque’s was aiming at him and no one else. Now, have you got it?”
“All right, I’m with you,” said Dalziel. “No need to go on about things. Christ, have you looked down there? Where’s this village at?”
“Let’s see. Yes, there it is, down there, in the Sea of Tranquillity.”
“Those pimples? Looks like an outbreak of chicken pox.”
Dalziel wasn’t altogether wrong. The Village, a complex of sealed domes linked by corridors, covering about five acres, did indeed resemble a patch of blisters on the lunar skin till their third braking orbit brought out the scale of the thing. Next time round, one of the domes loomed large before them, threatening collision, and then they were slipping smoothly into a docking bay, and suddenly the stars were out of sight.
The commander of the Lunar Village was waiting to greet them. He was a small balding astrophysicist with a nervous manner who passed them over with speed and unconcealable relief to his head of security, Colonel Ed Druson, a lean and wiry black man with the stretched look of an athlete who has carried his twenties training schedules into his forties.
“Welcome to the moon,” he said, offering his hand. “Hope you had a good trip.”
“Aye, it were grand,” said Dalziel, bouncing gently up and down to test the effect of gravity on his gouty foot. Delighted to feel no pain, he went on, “Only thing is, that spaceship of thine didn’t seem to have a bar, and it’s thirsty work travelling.”
“Andy,” said Pascoe warningly. “Should you, with your gout?”
“Bugger the gout,” said Dalziel. “I’ve got a throat like a spinster’s tit. I could even thole bourbon if you’ve not got the real stuff.”
“I’ll see what we can do,” said Druson, clearly wondering what the hell the Brits were up to, filling valuable shuttle space with an overweight, geriatric alcoholic who had gout.
He went on, “Like we told your people, Europa’s in a parking orbit with one of our guys acting nightwatch. We’ve got the crew in our accommodation dome. Looks like an open and shut case. Could have saved yourselves the bother of a trip, I reckon. You’ve seen our file on the German? Jesus, you Euros surely know how to pick ’em!”
To Dalziel it sounded like a just rebuke. Pascoe had provided him with copies of all the astronauts’ files plus the American incident report. This contained statements from the Europa crew, setting out where they were and what they were doing at the time of the fatality, plus Druson’s own analysis and conclusions. He saw little reason to look further than Kaufmann as culprit, and offered two pieces of concrete evidence and a motive.
The first pointer was an entry in Lemarque’s private journal. Several of the astronauts kept such journals with an eye to a literary future after their flying days were over. Lemarque’s consisted mainly of fluorescently purple prose about the beauties of space. Then at the end of a much polished speech in which he told the world of his sense of honour at being the first Euro, and more importantly, the first Frenchman, to step out onto the moon’s surface, he had scribbled almost indecipherably, Ka s’en fâche. Gardes-toi!
Ka is getting angry. Watch out!
Was Ka Kaufmann? Druson had asked. And the discovery of a microprobe in the German’s locker had deepened his suspicions. A gloss for the nontechnical pointed out that a microprobe was a kind of electronic screwdriver which would have been necessary in the readjustment of the TEC circuits.
But there was still the question of motive. And why was Ka getting angry?
“Blackmail,” Druson replied promptly. “You’ve read the file. It’s obvious.”
It certainly appeared so. The major part of the American report was a digest of a CIA investigation which concluded that Captain Dieter Kaufmann of the Eurofed Air Corps had been selling NATO technology to the Arabs for the past decade.
It was detailed and unanswerable. And it hadn’t been compiled overnight.
“It would have been neighbourly to pass this information on a little earlier,” suggested Pascoe mildly. “Say three years earlier.”
It was three years since Kaufmann had joined the Europa crew.
“We like to be sure of our facts in such a serious matter,” said Druson.
Also, thought Pascoe, Kaufmann’s full-time transfer into the Eurospace programme had removed him from access to NATO information and left him with nothing to pass on but European astrotechnology which in American terms was yesterday’s news. With no threat to themselves, the Americans had decided to keep their information under their hat till they could make maximum profit from it.
Now that moment had come.
“Can we look at the body?” said Pascoe. “Just for the record.”
“Sure. But it ain’t very pretty.”
Dalziel had seen a lot worse.
“Not very big, is he?” said Pascoe.
“Depends where you’re looking,” said Dalziel.
He turned away from the body and picked up the Frenchman’s TEC, which was also on display.
“I bet he fancied himself too,” he said. “These little fellows often do.”
“Why do you say that, Andy?” asked Pascoe.
“His name tag, for a start.”
Instead of following a horizontal line, the adhesive name strip had been adjusted to a jaunty thirty-degree angle echoing the shoulder seam.
“Used to get buggers in the Force who tried to tart up their uniforms like that,” said Dalziel, sniffing at the headpiece. “And they usually wore aftershave that’d kill mosquitoes too.”
“Seems he did have a reputation for being a cocky little bastard,” said Druson, looking at Dalziel with a new respect.
Pascoe said, “And the circuitry was definitely interfered with?”
“Oh yeah. Clear as a fox among chickens. Rush job by the look of it. Well, it would have to be, in the Europa’s hold. No time for finesse.”
“No,” agreed Pascoe. “Seen enough, Andy?”
“More than enough,” said Dalziel. “Did someone say something about a room with a bed in it?”
“Let’s go,” said Druson.
He led them to their quarters, two small bedrooms with a shared living room. When the door had shut behind him, Dalziel said, “Okay, lad. What do you reckon? Still a fit-up by the Yanks?”
“Open mind,” said Pascoe. “They’ve certainly put a reasonable case together. Maybe Kaufmann did do it.”
“Mebbe. I’d trust ’em a lot more if yon black bugger hadn’t managed to forget that Glenmorangie he promised me!”
Pascoe grinned and said, “A good night’s sleep will do you more good, Andy. Nothing more to be done till tomorrow. Then it’ll be straight down to the interrogations.”
“Hold on,” said Dalziel. “Scene of the crime, remember? Shouldn’t we fix up to visit the Europa before we do owt else?”
“Don’t worry,” said Pascoe. “I’ll be arranging a trip as soon as possible. But time’s too short to waste, so in the morning let’s get on with talking to the crew, shall we? Now I thought we’d work individually. I’ll take three and you take three, then we’ll swap over...”
“Swap away!” said Dalziel obstinately. “Until we’ve seen Europa what they say won’t make bloody sense, will it?”