Ian flashed a rare grin. “I wouldn’t want to be using anything from Yeager without your say-so, Commander, would I? Mutera and Silvany have the hydro plant going again, up at the crater.”
Hydro, of course, Mike recalled. Despite the warmth, sunlight was less intense here, and it was often rainy. The ancient caldera four thousand meters above them had been plugged, dammed, and filled with fresh water to serve as the colony reservoir. Dena’s doing, probably—much simpler than a fusion plant, no tritium residue, and it would have appealed to her historical sense.
Ian turned and stared at him. “Look, Commander, we can’t bring Dena back, but we ll make it right for her, won’t we, now?”
Was it that obvious? Mike wondered what the hell his face looked like. He nodded to Ian.
“Mike, the work up there—” Ian gestured toward the orchard hill, “it was done by hand, I’d say—after the equipment shut down. Nadine’s still up there, is she?”
“Yes,” Mike said. “Maybe long enough.”
“Mike?” Nadine called, as if summoned by his thought. He looked up the hill, and she came down toward them, taking the long strides of a human in a hurry on a Mars-class world. But going downhill that way had its risks, and she unceremoniously slipped and tumbled into a muddy creek bed at the base of the hill when she tried to stop. She stood up and shook the mud off her hands in disgust and pulled a hibiscus from her hair.
It might have been funny, but they all had very unfunny things on their minds and no one laughed. Mike and Ian loped over to the bottom of the hill and helped her up.
Nadine tossed her head back toward the hill, sending a wave of dirty hair over her shoulder. “One hundred and twenty-six graves.”
Mike flipped his visor down and gazed skyward for a moment as it displayed the colony data. “There were 127 personnel on Griffith…”
“Quite,” Ian remarked. “So number 127 couldn’t bury him or her self.”
“Assuming the 127th person did die,” Nadine added.
People shifted their feet uncomfortably. A survivor? Or a murderer?
“I know what you’re getting at,” Mike said. “It’s unlikely that only one person would have survived what killed the others—unless he or she was what killed the others. We’ve done a pretty thorough search, but we assumed we were looking for someone who wanted to be found. There’s no way we’d find someone in that jungle who really didn’t want to be found. It’s been fourteen years, I know. But still, he or she might be a bit unbalanced by now, and maybe dangerous.”
“Mike, let me take a good look at the bodies before we assume that,” Nadine said, scraping mud out of her hair. “Ian, can you get some people together? I want those graves exhumed. You’ll need to be careful—the food preservation bags weren’t designed for years of underground use; they could burst—”
Ian held up a hand. “Uh, Mike, I’d rather get some of the robots together for this. They’ll get the job done faster and they won’t be making quite as much stink about the proceedings, if you catch my meaning.”
Mike was unable to suppress a smile at Ian’s black humor. “Good idea.” He turned to Nadine, who would be dealing with the bodies, regardless. “Plague?” he asked her.
“No.” She shuddered. “These people didn’t just get sick and die. I got radar images of some of the skeletons. Broken bones—lots of trauma.”
“A riot? Caused by something psychotropic?”
“Not impossible, but any saboteur would have had to bypass the water or food supply screening equipment. More likely some biological factor.”
“Could a killer—or killers—have been under its influence, too?”
“Either that or the colonists might have gotten crazy the old-fashioned way—on their own. Or there’s something we just don’t understand—something that’s not chemical, not biological, but that somehow gets to the brain through another channel. I’m not getting weird on you. Lights flashing at certain frequencies used to drive some people to convulsions.”
Mike frowned. Mass murder from light flashes? “Suppose someone was reasonably sane but wanted the place alone and was sufficiently ruthless to do it that way. Still, that’s just a different kind of psychosis, isn’t it? Megalomania?”
Nadine smiled. “That might be paranoia—on your part. Who’d want to rule a whole world with no other people in it? He’d be totally isolated, almost half a dozen light-years from company. And I don’t think one person could have done this, sane or otherwise—people would defend themselves, eventually.”
“Maybe they did,” Ian said, “and lost.”
Mike shook his head and looked up at Epsilon Eridani, a smaller disk than Tau Ceti as viewed from his home world and not much larger than Sol viewed from Earth. “I can’t believe a First Contact would come down this way. The handful of people wouldn’t be much of a threat to them—besides, anyone watching us ought to be too far ahead of us to be doing that kind of thing, wouldn’t they?”
Ian nodded, but frowned. “That’s the prevailing theory. On the other hand, there are human beings that torture insects, dogs and cats just for the fun of it. I’ll have the Cochran do a more intense survey of the highlands. Keep an eye open for evidence, just in case.”
“Which brings us back to a possible survivor,” Nadine said, fixing her hair behind her back. “Ouch.” She pulled what looked like a caterpillar from her hair, frowned at it momentarily, and tossed it aside. “I need a shower. This jungle isn’t all nice—he or she may be in trouble.”
“OK,” Mike conceded. “It’s a long shot, but you could be right. He or she may be in trouble, but may just as easily be dangerous—to us. We’ll reallocate some of the robots to guard duty from now on. Yeager,” he spoke to the ship, “notify everyone on the ground net so they don’t get irritated.”
Nadine shook her head and sighed. She thought he was overdoing it, he knew. But he was responsible for everyone. He touched her mud-splat-tered arm. “And please don’t you go off alone either,” he implored. She gave a noncommittal shrug. Constraints on a free spirit were a hard thing—but Mike needed her, and needed to be sure of her.
“Wouldn’t think of it,” she muttered.
Nadine’s tiny lab filled one side of Yeager’s infirmary, and its autodoc and a bunk over it hung like porch swings to stay level under any combination of lift or thrust. Cabinets filled the walls above and below the lab bench, and video screens lined the wall at eye level, above a work surface brightened by a vase of Wendy flowers. Nadine sat on the stool in the center.
Mike watched her work—she was concentrating very hard on something more important than his questions—and he was reluctant to interrupt. Besides, the wait gave him precious time to think.
Even in virtual reality, the autopsies were… grisly… and time-consuming. From the start it was obvious that all 126 had died violently. Gunshot wounds, stabbings, bludgeonings, immolation, and signs of torture marred each corpse. Aliens wouldn’t be using human-style weapons…
“That should do it,” Nadine finally said. “Gunshot wounds. The trajectories indicate the bullets radiated from about here.” She held a hand out in front of her chest as if holding a handgun. “I’d say they were self-inflicted. Mike…” She was trembling. “The subject was a ten-year-old boy.”
He put a hand on her shoulder. “Care to go for a walk?”
She sighed, then turned and smiled at him. “I’d love to.”