“No, no one closer than New Jersey, in the United States,” said Fuchs. “I’ll transfer his personnel file to you.”
“He was working on the habitat?” Cardenas asked, even though she knew the answer.
“Yes,” said Fuchs absently. “Now the project will have to stop until we find someone to replace him.”
Amanda said, “We’re coming to the infirmary, Kris. We’ll be there in five minutes.”
Cardenas said, “Hang on. Give me an hour or so to do this scan. I’ll know more about it by then.”
Amanda and Fuchs both nodded their agreement.
Despite her youthful appearance, Kris Cardenas looked grave, almost angry as she ushered Amanda and Fuchs into her tiny infirmary. It was the only medical facility on Ceres, the only medical facility between the Belt and the exploration bases on Mars. Cardenas could handle accident cases, if they weren’t too severe, and the usual run of infections and strains. Anything worse was sent to Selene, while Cardenas herself remained among the rock rats.
She was twice an exile. Because her body was teeming with nanomachines, no government on Earth would allow her to land on its territory. This had cost her, her husband and children; like most of Earth’s inhabitants, they were terrified by the threat of runaway nanotechnology causing pandemic plagues or devouring cities like unstoppable army ants chewing everything into a gray goo.
Her anger at Earth and its unreasoning fears led her to cause Dan Randolph’s death. It was inadvertent, true enough, but Selene banned her from her own nanotech laboratory as a punishment for her actions and a precaution against future use of nanomachines for personal motives. So she left Selene, exiled herself among the rock rats, used her knowledge of human physiology to establish the infirmary on Ceres.
“Have you found what killed Ripley?” Amanda asked her as she and Fuchs took the chairs in front of Cardenas’s desk.
“I wouldn’t have caught it, normally,” Cardenas said tightly. “I’m not a pathologist. It damned near slipped right past me.”
The office was small, crowded with the three of them in it. Cardenas tapped a keypad on her desktop and the wall opposite the doorway turned into a false-color display of Niles Ripley’s body.
“There was nothing obviously wrong,” she began. “No visible trauma, although there were a few small bruises on his chest and back.”
“What caused them?” Fuchs asked.
“Maybe when he fell down, inside his suit”
Fuchs scowled at her. “I’ve fallen down in a spacesuit. That doesn’t cause bruising.”
Cardenas nodded. “I know. I thought maybe he died of a cardiac infarction, a heart attack. That’s when I went for the scan,” she explained. “But the coronary arteries look clean and there’s no visible damage to the heart itself.”
Fuchs squinted at the image. A human body, he thought. One instant it’s alive, the next it’s dead. What happened to you, Ripley?
Amanda echoed his thoughts. “So what happened to him?”
Cardenas’s expression grew even tighter. “The next thing I looked for was a stroke. That’s still the number one killer, even back on Earth.”
“And?”
“Look at his brain.”
Fuchs peered at the wallscreen, but he didn’t know what was normal in these false-color images and what was not. He could make out the white outline of the skull and, within it, the pinkish mass of the man’s brain. Tangles of what he took to be blood vessels wrapped around the brain and into it, like a mass of tiny snakes writhing inside the skull.
“Do you see it?” Cardenas asked, her voice as sharp as a bayonet.
“No, I don’t see… wait a minute!” Fuchs noticed that while most of the brain was a light pink color, there was an area of deeper hue, almost a burnt orange, that ran straight through the brain mass, from front to back.
“That orange color?” he said, not certain of himself.
“That orange color,” Cardenas repeated, hard as ice.
“What is it?” Amanda asked.
“It’s what killed him,” said Cardenas. “Ruptured neurons and glial cells from the front of his skull to the back. It did as much damage as a bullet would, but it didn’t break the skin.”
“A micrometeor?” Fuchs blurted, knowing it was stupid even as his mouth said it.
Amanda objected, “But his suit wasn’t ruptured.”
“Whatever it was,” said Cardenas, “it went through the transparent plastic of his helmet, through his skin without damaging it, through the cranial bone, and pulped his brain cells.”
“Mein gott,” Fuchs muttered.
“I have two more bits of evidence,” Cardenas said, sounding more and more like a police investigator.
The wallscreen image changed to show Ripley’s dead face. Fuchs felt Amanda shudder beside him and reached out to hold her hand. Ripley’s eyes were open, his mouth agape, his milk-chocolate skin somehow paler than Fuchs remembered it. This is the face of death, he said silently. He almost shuddered himself.
Cardenas tapped her keyboard again and the image zoomed in on the area just above the bridge of Ripley’s nose.
“See that faint discoloration?” Cardenas asked.
Fuchs saw nothing unusual, but Amanda said, “Yes, just a tiny little circle. It looks… almost as if it had been charred a little.”
Cardenas nodded grimly. “One more piece of the puzzle.” She reached into her desk drawer.
Fuchs saw her pull out a thin strip of tape, not even ten centimeters long.
“This was stuck on Ripley’s right glove when he was found,” Cardenas said, handing the tape to Fuchs.
He stared at it. Hand-lettered on the tape in indelible ink was BUCHANAN.
Coldly, mercilessly, Cardenas said, “Buchanan is a mechanic for Humphries Space Systems. He has access to tools such as hand lasers.”
“A hand laser?” Fuchs asked. “You think a hand laser killed Ripley?”
Cardenas said, “I got one from the HSS warehouse and tried it on my soysteak dinner. One picosecond blast ruptures the cells pretty much the way Ripley’s brain cells were destroyed.”
“Do you mean that this man Buchanan deliberately murdered Ripley?” Amanda asked, her voice faint with shock.
“That’s exactly what I mean,” said Cardenas, as hard and implacable as death itself.
CHAPTER 14
By the time he and Amanda got back to their own quarters, Fuchs was blazing with rage. He went straight to the closet by the minikitchen and started rummaging furiously through it.
“Lars, what are you going to do?”
“Murderers!” Fuchs snarled, pawing through the tools and gadgets stored on the closet shelves. “That’s what he’s brought here. Hired killers!”
“But what are you going to do?”
He pulled out a cordless screwdriver, hefted it in one hand. “It’s not much, but it will have to do. It’s heavy enough to make a reasonable club.”
Amanda reached for him, but he brushed her away. “Where are you going?” she asked, breathless with fear. “To find this man Buchanan.”
“Alone? By yourself?”
“Who else is there? How much time do we have before this Buchanan takes off in one of Humphries’s ships and leaves Ceres altogether?”
“You can’t go after him!” Amanda pleaded. “Let the law handle this!”
Storming to the door, he roared, “The law? What law? We don’t even have a village council. There is no law here!”
“Lars, if he’s really a hired killer, he’ll kill you!” He stopped at the door, tucked the screwdriver into the waistband of his slacks. “I’m not a complete fool, Amanda. I won’t let him kill me, or anyone else.”