"Vengeance murder won't solve the problems of this station," Aeneas said. "You may as well tell me what happened. Everyone else seems to know."
"Yeah. Why not?" She sat across from Aeneas, every movement graceful and lovely, in stark contrast to the angry expression of her eyes. "It started a long time ago. Men get lonesome up here, Mister. They need a girl. Not just a lay, either. It took Marty Holloway longer than most, but he started coming to see me after six months. You will too if you stay long enough. Me or one of the other girls." She looked defiantly at him.
Aeneas said nothing.
"You will. Anyway, after about a year, Holloway starts talking to me a lot. I liked him. He's pretty cheerful and he seemed like a good worker. But he tells me how he's going to be rich when he gets down. Well, what the hell, we all are, but he meant rich and famous. Going to retire from the whole ratrace and spend his life hiking in the woods. Maybe buy some mountain land and put together an animal preserve. Or be the top man in a really big national park. Does this make sense?"
Aeneas remembered long nights when he and David Hindler stood watch together, and they talked of the things they would do when they'd taken Jerusalem… "Yes."
"Then he starts telling me Hansen won't own this place much longer, but I shouldn't worry because he can fix it so I go on Valkyrie anyway… I want on that, Mister. And I want in the Moon colony. So I listened. Pretty soon Marty had me convinced. He had me wondering if Miss Hansen could last a year. But I didn't say anything to anybody until he asked me to help him."
"What did he want?"
"I'm a pretty good biotech, Mister. I do my share of that work up here. Marty wanted me to poison the vaccine cultures so the yields would go down. Nothing drastic, nothing that would really hurt the station, just cut down production. So I told Amos."
"What did the captain do?" Aeneas asked.
"Amos wanted me to cooperate with Marty, but I wanted no part of that. I told Marty to go to hell. The next day when I was coming off shift I saw Marty go into my lab, so I went to the captain and told him about it. Amos went in after Marty. An hour later one of the construction people saw the captain drifting away from the airlock."
"Were there any other witnesses?"
She wouldn't answer. "There's no point in this," she said.
"We'll see." Aeneas turned to Dr. Eliot. "Is there any place you can assemble the entire crew?"
"Yes-"
"Please call them together in one hour. Until then, leave me alone here." His voice carried command, and when Eliot looked into his eyes they seemed as deep as the stars outside the viewport.
The messroom was large enough to hold the hundred men and women with room to spare. It was the full width of the central section of the crew quarters, twenty meters across and more than twice that in length. Thin aluminum flooring made the floor flat across its width and curved gently along the length. The walls were curving sections of a cylinder, with a metallic shine of impervious synthetic cloth. There were several viewports, deep, proving that the inner walls were covered with something outside them.
Aeneas let Kit Penrose lead him into the room. He noted small groups of crewmen clumped together, nervous little groups speaking in low voices that died away as they saw him.
"You know who I am." His voice, raised to carry through the messroom, sounded tinny and high-pitched. He had been told that the gas mixtures in the station would do that, but he hadn't noticed when he spoke in normal tones.
"What the hell are you doing here?" a man demanded. He came across the room to Aeneas: a tall man, sandy-haired and square-jawed, his muscles hard. He had the confidence of a man long in space, and more; a man who made his own destiny and controlled the destinies of others. It was a confidence that Aeneas recognized easily…
"Hello, David," Aeneas said quietly.
"Eh?" Penrose said. "That's Martin Holloway."
"His name is David Hindler," Aeneas said. "He is, or was until very recently, an agent of the CIA."
Holloway- Hindler smiled with half his face. "And Aeneas MacKenzie is, or was until recently, political and legal advisor to the President of the United States."
"I work for Miss Hansen now," Aeneas said. The room was still; everyone was listening,
Holloway shrugged. "You betrayed Greg after damn near twenty years with him-how long before you double-cross Hansen, Aeneas? Just what the hell are you doing here, anyway?"
"I have come to try a case of murder," Aeneas said.
Holloway looked up in surprise. "By what authority?"
"My own. I am commander of this station." He looked to Eliot.
"That's what Miss Hansen says," Eliot announced. "She appointed MacKenzie in Captain Shorey's place."
"That's stupid," Holloway said. "You've got no authority. Companies don't make law and courts and appoint judges-"
"Then I appoint myself. Sit down, David. You are charged with the willful murder of Captain Amos Shorey. How do you plead?"
"Go to hell! You've got no authority over me." He looked around for support.
"But I do." The quiet voice demanded attention. Holloway looked back to Aeneas and saw that he had taken an odd-looking gun from inside his coveralls. Holloway started to reach for his own "Don't!"
The command halted his move for a second.
"The first dart contains a tranquilizer," Aeneas said. "The rest have cyanide. And I've practiced in this gravity. Keep your hands where I can see them, David. And please sit down."
"I'll sit." Holloway eyed the gun warily. "But you can't make me accept the authority of your court. You're no better than any other gunman-don't the rest of you see that? You let him do this to me, and which one of you's next? Do something!"
There were murmurs of assent, and several crewmen stood menacingly.
"Wait," Aeneas commanded. The helium in the atmosphere in the station made his voice shrill, but the timbre of command remained. "You may as well hear me out. How many of you hope to go with Valkyrie ? Or to the Moon colony?"
About half. Kittridge Penrose was among them.
"And why?" Aeneas asked.
"Because we've had enough of Earth and bureaucrats and laws and regulations," Penrose said. "We can't breathe down there! We've had it with the Martin Holloways -and people like you, MacKenzie!"
"Yet you cannot live without law," Aeneas said. "There is no civilization without justice."
"Law? Justice?" Penrose was contemptuous. "Rules, regulations, taxes, traps for people minding their own business."
"Those are perversions of law." Aeneas deliberately kept his voice low so that they had to strain to listen. "There can be no civilization without law and no civilized men without justice. Earth's law cannot govern here. It cannot even govern Earth. But that does not mean you can dispense with law altogether."
"So you'll give us laws?" Holloway said contemptuously.
"No. But this satellite is not independent of Earth. It is not sovereign. It must have government. Miss Hansen has given me that task."