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Chapter Seven
--- Wednesday, eight-twenty-eight AM
Ben and Maria lay on their backs, side by side, with their feet pointing at the wall and their heads at the other end, where the foot of the bed would normally be. The fingers of their near hands were intertwined, as if they’d known they were about to die and wanted to send each other one last message of love. Each outside hand was tucked neatly under the small of the back. They were both fully dressed except for their shoes, which were cosily arranged on the floor below their heads. There were no obvious signs of struggle or conflict, save for the small bullet hole each one had in the top of the head.
Karen had stopped just inside the door apparently in shock. Lois slid past her and took a quick look around. That was when she spotted the small pillow under the edge of the bed. She nudged it out with her shoe and saw that the killer had apparently used it as a silencer. There were two holes in it, both of which showed burn marks consistent with a small pistol having fired through it.
She looked at but didn’t touch the entry wounds. Neither victim had bled much, which suggested to Lois that the killer had either known a lot about anatomy or had gotten extremely lucky with two immediate kills in two shots. She’d covered the crime beat enough to know that being shot once with a small-caliber weapon, even in the head, wasn’t guaranteed to kill you.
But there weren’t supposed to be guns on the station! Someone up there was not only dangerous, but close to crazy. Having a gun on a space station was as stupid and dangerous as putting out a cigarette by dropping it into a bucket of gasoline. The military security forces which Karen led didn’t even carry them.
Despite knowing they were dead, Lois still felt each of their necks for a pulse. Nothing. Their bodies had already begun to stiffen into rigor mortis. That meant they’d been dead for at least two hours, probably not much more. She’d have Clark ask the doctors he was working with if the lower gravity changed the way rigor progressed.
She glanced around, looking for empty cartridges. Nothing. Maybe they’d been kicked under the bed, or the killer had picked them up, or the weapon was a revolver. If the empty shells weren’t in the room, the doctor would have to dig the spent bullets out of the victims to try to identify the murder weapon.
Lois turned back to Karen, who was still frozen to the floor, staring at the two bodies on the bed.
“Karen?” No response. “Karen? We need to call someone.”
Still no response. Lois shook her head and punched out the security office number on the interior comm panel.
“Sergeant Matthew Walker, Prometheus security. How – “
“Sergeant Walker, this is Lois Lane.”
“Yes, Inspector?”
“Major Vukovich and I are in Ben Zimmerman’s quarters.” She paused and took a deep breath. “Please contact the next officer in the chain of command and send him here, along with two non-coms. We’ll also need Doctor Watson and a stretcher team.”
“How many injuries, Inspector?”
“Two dead.”
There was a pause. “Two? Accidental deaths?”
“No. This is absolutely murder. ”These two people were shot to death.”
“Sh-shot?” It was the first time Lois had heard the imperturbable sergeant sound well and truly perturbed. “They were shot? You mean, like, with a gun?”
“Yes. My guess is a small-caliber handgun, a twenty-five caliber or a little larger. I didn’t find any empty brass. Make sure you warn everyone on duty that there’s someone running around the station with a gun, and that person has already used it to kill twice. We don’t want it to happen again.”
“Uh, I hate to ask this question, ma’am, but is there any way it could have been a murder-suicide?”
Lois glanced over her shoulder at the bed. “No. Both victims were arranged on the bed, side by side, shot in the top of the head. There’s no sign of a weapon. Plus, somebody used a pillow as a silencer.”
“I see. So I’m not going to be mentioned in Police Weekly as the fastest to solve a crime, then?”
Lois paused for a quick grin, once again thankful for Matt’s dry sense of humor. “Nope, sorry. Please tell your officers about the armed suspect.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll sure let them know. What else?”
She frowned in thought, then added, “Please send whatever forensic teams you can scare up to these quarters. We need to check for fingerprints, take photographs, monitor power usage, and find any other records you might dig up on either Ben Zimmerman or Maria Gomez, including their movements for the last twenty-four hours.”
“Yes, ma’am. Anything else?”
Lois paused. “Can you think of anything else?”
“Well, ma’am, it’s highly probable that whoever killed Claude Guilliot also killed the Zimmermans, so shouldn’t we check up on the rest of our suspects and try to track their movements also?”
She nodded. “Yes, you’re right, Sergeant. Thank you for thinking of it. Please ask another officer to get on that.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll send these instructions in the Major’s name.”
Lois frowned in irritation at his apparent slight, then realized that the others in Karen’s command might not see suggestions from her, a civilian, in the same light as orders from their CO. “You’re right, Matt, and thanks. One of us will touch base with you as soon as we can. Please hurry the doctor, if he can be hurried.”
“Will do, Inspector. Walker out.”
She turned back to Karen, who was still locked in place, staring at the dead couple. “Karen?” She put her hands on Karen’s shoulders and shook her gently. “Karen? Come on, Major, we have work to do.”
The Major’s eyes blinked once, then twice more, and she lifted her gaze to Lois’s face. “He – he was going to – to talk to me. He was going to tell me something. Something important.” She looked at the bed again. “Important enough to die for.”
Lois shook her a little harder. “Snap out of it, Major! We need you!”
Karen knocked Lois’s hands away and straightened. “Okay!” She took a deep breath and said, “I’m okay. You – you were on the comm. What did you say to Walker?”
Lois stepped back and assumed a ‘parade rest’ stance. “Whoever’s next in line in your chain of command is coming with two non-commissioned officers to inspect the room. Dr. Watson is on his way with a stretcher team to do the medical stuff. Another officer is running down the movements of the rest of our suspects for the previous twenty-four hours. I also informed Sergeant Walker that the victims were almost surely killed with a small-caliber handgun. He will make sure that everyone on your team is aware of the danger.”
She stopped. Karen rubbed her face with her hands. “Good report, Inspector. And good decisions, too.”
“With respect, Major, Sergeant Walker suggested tracking the other suspects before I thought of it.”
Karen glared at Lois. “You’re not military, Lois, so drop the lingo.”
“If that’s what you want, sure.”
Karen shook her head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just – it’s a bit of a shock, you know?”
“I know.” Lois stepped closer. “If it’s any consolation, it means somebody thinks we’re getting very close to finding the killer.”
“No. It isn’t any consolation at all.” Karen indicated the dead couple. “And I doubt they’d think so, either.”
“No, they wouldn’t, but you have to know that this isn’t your fault. They didn’t die just before we got here. They’ve been dead for at least a couple of hours.”
Karen nodded as the comm buzzer sounded. Lois palmed the button and said, “Zimmerman quarters, Inspector Lane speaking.”
“Inspector, this is Sergeant Walker. We need one more person to check on a suspect and Lieutenant Ronalds asks if one of you could handle it.”
“What’s tying up your other people?”
He sighed. “Apparently someone brewed up a batch of moonshine and hosted a party in the number two commons room last evening. Lieutenant Lee is heading up the detail watching over them. I don’t have all the details, but I understand that there were a few fights and a couple of fairly serious injuries.”
“Does the Lieutenant need reinforcements?”
“No, ma’am. His crew checked out nightsticks and tasers. Everything’s under control, but the situation is still a little dicey and the Lieutenant says he can’t spare anyone at the moment.”
Lois glanced at Karen, who nodded. “I’ll stay here until the med team arrives. You take it.”
Lois turned to the panel. “I’ll go, Sergeant. Who needs checking on?”
“Carrie Hillman. She isn’t responding to calls to her quarters.”
“Is she the only one you need me to see?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Have you called the dental office to see if she’s there?”
“No, ma’am, not yet.”
“I’ll take care of it. I’ll relay anything I learn to your office. I assume you’re acting as the information center?”
“We call it ‘command and control,’ Inspector, but yes, that would be me.”
“Right. Lane out.”
Lois set off down the passageway, thinking about how military she was acting. Perry would have a fit if he could see her now. She was supposed to report the news, not make it.
But she didn’t see that she had a lot of choices. She had to work with the military personnel on the station, and since they were all trying to catch a murderer, that took precedence over her own sensibilities. She consoled herself by promising herself a long, luxurious bubble bath as soon as she got back to her own apartment back down.
--- Wednesday, late morning
Dr. Breedlove was most unhappy. “She came in on time this morning and screwed up on the job and I sent her to her quarters! I don't know where she is now! I don’t monitor my people when they’re off duty!”
Lois crossed her arms and forced herself to be patient. “Doctor, I have to find her. I have some questions for her and I need those answers now.”
He flapped his arms in frustration. “Do you know there was a riot in the commons last night? I’m going to have at least half a dozen emergency dental repairs this morning, and our esteemed chief medical officer, Dr. John Quincy Watson, has informed me that he’s tied up on another case and could I please tend to the trauma room, that’s a good fellow?” He stomped twice. “I’m a dentist, not an emergency room attendant!”
“We all have our little difficulties to deal with, Doctor.”
“Yes, we do. Now, if you excuse me?”
Lois lifted her index finger. “One thing more, please. Tell me what Ms. Hillman did this morning that caused you to send her away.”
He snorted. “I don’t have time – “
“You can tell me here and now or you can tell me at the security office. Your choice.”
He glared at her for a moment, then blinked. “Very well. We had a patient, an older woman, who needed a filling in a left lower molar and chose nitrous oxide instead of local anesthetic. Ms. Hillman administered the gas and set the mixture wrong. Instead of the patient being sedated, she was intoxicated. She grabbed me on the inside of my leg and called me ‘Pookie.’ It was quite shocking.” He put his hands on his hips. “Then she asked me to do something I didn’t understand but which I suspect was quite intimate and personal, and that’s when I removed the gas mask from her face and ordered Ms. Hillman to leave before she asphyxiated someone.”
“Is your patient still suffering the effects of the gas?”
“No. Nitrous oxide, also called ‘laughing gas’ by the uninitiated, departs from the body within a few deep breaths and has no long-term effects. It doesn’t work on everyone, but those who are susceptible go under and stay under as long as I need them to.”
“Mind if I look at your exam room?”
“What? Why?”
“I just need a glance, Doctor. I won’t be a minute.”
He rolled his eyes like an outraged teenager. “Fine! Whatever! Be my guest.”
Lois followed the outraged dentist to the treatment cubicle. She looked around and noted the absence of a spit sink, the presence of the standard dental drills, suction tube, and polishing tools, and the two gas masks hanging on one wall.
“Find everything yet?” he snarled.
She frowned at the masks. “Where are your main gas bottles?”
“Don’t have any.” He flipped open a panel below the masks. “We use these smaller hand-held bottles. They’re easier to handle and cheaper to haul up here from Earth. We don’t have our own manufacturing facilities ready yet.”
“I see. Thank you, Doctor. I’ll get out of your way now.”
“Good. It’s about time.”
--- Wednesday, mid-day
Lois pressed the call buzzer to Carrie Hillman’s quarters a second time. When there was still no response, she spoke into the room’s announcement unit.
“Ms. Hillman, this is Inspector Lane. I have to talk to you. If you don’t open up, I’m going to get the override code for this door and come in without an invitation.”
She waited a three-count, then another, and pushed the announcer again. “Okay, that’s it. I’m calling for the override – “
The door whooshed open and Carrie stood there, her face tear-streaked and her eyes bloodshot. “What do you want?”
“I need to ask you some questions. Mind if I come in?”
“Yes.”
Lois waited a moment, then shrugged. “Okay, I guess I can stand in the passageway. I need to ask you where you were last night and this morning.”
Carrie’s eyes narrowed. “Asleep. In bed. Alone.”
“What about dinner? Did you go to the cafeteria?”
“No. I had one of those frozen cardboard things from the refrigerator in my room.”
“Did you go to work yesterday?”
“No. I went in this morning and Dr. Breedlove sent me away.”
“Why was that?”
“I made a mistake.”
“Oh? What happened?”
Carrie’s eyes flickered slightly. “I handed him the wrong instrument during a procedure.”
It was the wrong answer. Lois tried to control her reaction. “What about yesterday evening? What did you do?”
“There was a documentary on the station’s educational channel. It was all about Reconstruction in the American South after the War Between the States. It was about three hours long and I watched the whole fiddle-winkin’ thing and I doubt I could give you three names or events right now.”
Lois nodded. “Okay. I think someone will want to talk to you later. Will you be here the rest of the day?”
“Here or one of the cafeterias.”
“Thank you.”
Lois nodded and turned to walk away. It was all she could do to maintain a steady gait until she turned a corner, then she trotted to the nearest comm panel.
The pieces were finally falling into place.
Claude was immobilized by something that didn’t remain in his system.
Laughing gas would intoxicate or immobilize some people, and didn’t remain in the system after exhalation.
Carrie worked in the dental lab and had access to laughing gas.
She was very familiar with the anatomy of the human head.
She lied about why she was sent home from work, probably because she didn’t want Lois to connect laughing gas to Claude’s death or to her.
There was no way to be certain that Carrie had been in her quarters all night.
She was the most passionate suspect, and she’d have the most intense need to do something about Claude and about the Zimmermans, assuming Lois’s read on everyone’s character was accurate.
Carrie was the killer. Lois was reasonably certain of it. And she had to let Karen know what she’d learned.
She punched the code for the security office. After a moment, she heard, “Prometheus Station Security, Sergeant Walker speaking. How may I help you?”
Lois took in a breath and put her finger on the transmit button, but froze in place when she heard the all-too-familiar ‘snick-snick’ of a semi-automatic pistol being cocked. She slowly turned her head and saw a dark-blue pistol clasped in a woman’s small hand, a hand which was covered by a white latex medical glove.
The woman whispered, “Turn off the comm panel, Ms. Lane.”
Lois pressed the ‘off’ button. “Okay, Carrie. It’s off. Now what?”
She replied in a normal voice. “We go up.”
Lois nodded. “Any particular level?”
Carrie motioned with the pistol. “Just climb. I’ll let you know when to stop.” Lois moved towards the nearest spoke. Carrie added, “And if you call out to anyone, I’ll shoot them dead, so climb quietly.”
--- Wednesday, early afternoon
This was bad. This was very bad.
Lois knew that Carrie intended to kill her. The girl was armed and in charge, and the only chance Lois would have would be to take her by surprise somehow. Calm. She had to be calm. She had to wait for her opportunity to get Carrie upset and push her into a mistake. The girl was either a little unhinged or a closet sociopath. If she really was a sociopath, there was almost no chance to get her upset over what she’d done, but if she was fighting with herself mentally and emotionally to justify her actions, Lois knew she’d have a shot. But there might be only one, and it wouldn’t be available for long, so she had to be ready.
Maybe she could make her own chance.
They climbed in silence to level fourteen, where Lois stopped. “I need to rest for a minute.”
Carrie was breathing harder than Lois was, so she nodded. The girl had spent too much time at less than Earth gravity to be making like a circus performer, Lois thought. “Okay,” panted Carrie. “One minute. No more than that.”
Lois nodded back. After a moment, she said, “Carrie, you know there’s no way for you to get away with this.”
“You’re not arresting me and you’re not reporting me to the Major.”
“But you can’t get off the station, and you can’t get rid of the evidence.”
“What evidence? My gun? It’s going out the maintenance airlock as soon as I take care of you. They’ll never find it. It’ll end up as part of the trash floating around the station. Besides, I don’t plan to shoot you.”
She’s going to take care of me but she’s not going to shoot me? Oh, that was reassuring, thought Lois. And here she’d been thinking that Superman wouldn’t be much good up here.
Keep her talking, find a weakness. “How did you get the gun on the station to begin with?”
“I came up with the first batch of colonists. Superman himself lifted the shuttle up into orbit.” She wiggled the pistol. “I had this in a false bottom in my makeup bag. They weren’t as thorough on the contraband searches back then.”
“Were you planning to shoot someone that long ago?”
“A girl never knows when a firearm will come in handy.” Carrie nudged Lois’s foot with the pistol. “Let’s get going. And remember that I’ve got a .25 caliber pistol with a full nine-round magazine. It’s not a big bullet but it’s effective, it doesn’t have much recoil, and it’s not very loud. And I can hit whatever I aim at. You call out to anyone, you let anyone see us, I’ll shoot them dead. Remember that.”
Lois resumed climbing. “Where are we going, Carrie?”
“My deck fifty. You remember where it is, don’t you?”
“Uh, the zero-gee construction storage area?”
“That’s it.”
“Why are we going there?”
Carrie sighed. “Do you really want me to tell you?”
Lois shrugged. “You might as well. It’s not like you can brag about it to anyone else.”
“Okay, if you really want to know. You don’t know how to move around in null gravity and I do. I’m going to whack you in the head with something from up there and knock you out. Then I’m going to drop you down one of the spokes, all the way to the bottom. By the time you reach the habitat level, you’ll be traveling at well over a hundred miles an hour, and that’s simply not survivable. But if I hit you hard enough, you won’t know about it. You probably won’t feel the impact at the bottom of the spoke whether I knock you out or not. And they won’t be able to tell one little bruise from all the other messy parts.”
“What if I don’t let you whack me in the head?”
“If you get to be too much of a bother, then I’ll just shoot you. It won’t be the first time I’ve shot someone today.”
“Yeah, I guess not.” Lois reached level seven. “About that, Carrie, why did you kill the Zimmermans?”
“I was in the cafeteria when Ben talked to the major. They didn’t see me, but I overheard some of what he said. He was going to tell her about me. So I gave them each a little shot of sedative and then gave them each a bullet.”
Carrie’s matter-of-fact tone lifted goose-bumps on Lois’s arms. “What did he know about you that we didn’t already know?”
“Ben saw me with the nitrous bottle I used on Claude.”
“Ah, yes, the nitrous bottle. That was the key.”
“You talked to my boss before you came to see me, didn’t you, Inspector? The pompous, self-centered, self-important Dr. Breedlove? Is that how you figured out I was the one you were looking for?”
“Yes.” Keep going, keep talking, keep looking for an edge, something to use, anything. “Tell me, Carrie, how did you lure Claude up to that low-gee passageway?”
“I told him I wanted to do it again up there with him. I brought the bottle with me, along with the duct tape and fishing line. He looked at me funny and almost backed out until I showed him how good the laughing gas made him feel.” Carrie bared her teeth in a parody of a smile. “He said he’d never had better.”
Lois barely controlled her shudder. “So you had sex with him there in the passageway before you hung him?”
“I wanted to make sure he had a good sendoff.”
Lois hesitated on the ladder. “Of course. How did Ben happen to see you?”
“I was trying to take an indirect route back to the dental lab with the bottle after I used it. I passed by his quarters just as he opened the door and leaned on the frame. The idiot was wearing nothing but a towel and a stupid grin.”
“So? It was his wedding night. He told us he was taking a short breather.”
“Not too short. His old lady – and I do mean old – was right behind him, and she wasn’t wearing anything at all. She put her arms around his waist and pulled him back inside. Just before the door closed, she pulled his towel off and tossed it out into the corridor. Ugh.” She shuddered. “They laughed. They were having – they laughed! They laughed at me! And to think that wrinkled old crone ever touched my Claude!”
“You know, Carrie, Maria Gomez wasn’t that much older than I am.”
Carrie’s temper suddenly flared. “She was too old for Claude! She used him! She almost devoured him! She sucked the life right out of him! She had to die too!” The girl stopped and gripped the ladder fiercely. “You have no idea what a great man Claude was! You didn’t know him like I did.”
That settled it for Lois. The girl was more than a little crazy and waiting would only get a certain nosy reporter who was masquerading as a police inspector killed. Lois decided it was time to push for that little advantage. “Actually, Carrie, I did know him like you did.”
Carrie froze to the ladder. “What?”
Lois kept climbing. Looking down, she said, “Aren’t you coming?”
“Stop!” Carrie pointed the pistol at Lois’s legs. “What did you mean?”
“Oh, I had an affair with Claude when he worked at the Daily Planet about three or four years ago.”
Carrie lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Really.”
“Don’t you believe me?”
“No! I don’t believe you! You’re just trying to – to mess with my head!”
“No, really, I did. Wasn’t a very long affair, but it was just long enough to find out – “
“Stop it! I told you I don’t believe you!”
Lois shrugged. “Your choice. Although if I described the kinds of things he liked to do with women you’d probably recognize them. For example, he liked to put his – “
“That’s enough!” Carrie screeched. “You shut your filthy mouth!”
Lois stopped and looked back. The girl was more than a full level behind her. “Oh, Carrie, he lied to you, the same as he lied to everyone else. He spent the night with me – “
Carrie bared her teeth. “Shut up!”
“ – and the next morning he stole my story and printed it under his own name – “
Awkwardly, she lurched up two rungs. “I told you to shut up!”
“ – and then he told everyone in the newsroom that I was frigid and unresponsive in bed.”
She began to tremble. “Shut your filthy mouth, you – ”
“Which is kind of funny, because I seem to remember that Claude went to sleep before I did that night. He didn’t say much to me afterwards. He just dropped his head on the pillow and sighed and closed his eyes and – “
Carrie extended the pistol at Lois’s face and shouted, “I said SHUT UP!”
Lois waited while Carrie panted out her rage. When the girl’s face relaxed slightly, she asked, “Carrie? If Claude was such a great man, why did you kill him?”
Carrie’s face abruptly shifted from flushed to pale. “What?”
“Why did you kill Claude?”
She dissolved into tears. “Don’t you know? Don’t you understand? He was supposed to marry me! He was supposed to be my husband! He was supposed to help me raise our child! But those women polluted him! They twisted his mind and his heart! They wouldn’t stop chasing him! They wouldn’t leave him alone! He was a great man but he wasn’t perfect! He had so much love to give! I wanted all of it but I couldn’t take it all in! I wasn’t – I wasn’t enough for him by myself! I wanted to be but I couldn’t! He was – “
Whoa! What had Carrie said? Their child? Oh, boy, this just kept getting more and more interesting. “Wait a minute! Child?” Lois could barely ask the question. “Carrie? Are – are you pregnant?”
She wiped her face with her free hand and almost fell away from the ladder. “Y-yes. I’m pregnant.” She caressed her stomach with her gun hand. “Claude’s baby is inside me.”
“Oh, Carrie, are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure! I know when I’m pregnant!”
“But – “ Lois hesitated, then plunged in, disregarding the water level. “Carrie, why didn’t you keep your other two children? Why this baby and not the others?”
Her eyes shone again. “Those men weren’t great, not like Claude. They didn’t have his potential, his future. They weren’t worth the time I’d have to spend having their babies.” She smiled wistfully. “But Claude was worth it. He was worth everything. We would have been so happy together.”
Lois closed her eyes and sighed. “I’m so sorry.”
Carrie flipped her emotion selector switch over to anger again. “Sorry? For me? Don’t be! I’m carrying Claude’s baby and no one else is! This is mine! It was supposed to be ours, but those women, they pulled him away from me! He wasn’t perfect! He couldn’t hold off all the beautiful, cold, heartless women who wanted him! He tried but he couldn’t do it! They didn’t love him, not like I did! They couldn’t! They had hearts like glaciers and wombs as cold as liquid oxygen! Be sorry for them and not for me!”
“No, Carrie. I’m not sorry you’re pregnant. I’m sorry because you told Claude about the baby, didn’t you?”
The girl didn’t respond. “You told him, didn’t you, Carrie?”
She hesitated, then answered in a small voice. “Yes.”
“And he didn’t offer to marry you, did he?”
The voice stayed small. “No.”
“What did he say?”
Carrie’s eyes filled with tears. “He said – he said he knew how to get rid of it. He said he’d ask the doctor to do it. J-just like he had before!” Her sobs tore at Lois’s heart. “He – he laughed when I said I’d marry him! He said there were too many truly beautiful women in the world for him to – to tie himself to just one! To plain old me!”
“But you had two abortions before. What was – “
“Those other men? Ha! They were weak. They were soft.” Her voice gentled. “Not like Claude. He was so – so perfect. He was smart and sexy and funny and I could listen to his voice all day.”
“Those other men must have loved you, too.”
“No! Claude was the only one for me! And I was the only one for him! If those horrible evil women had just left him alone everything would have been fine! We would have been happy! I would have made him happy! He would have been a great man and our baby would have been so wonderful! Our lives together would have been incredibly great!”
Lois felt for her. This girl was so messed up. “Oh, Carrie, please let me help you. I can talk to the Major and – “
“No!” Anger leaped back into her eyes. “I’m going to have this baby and I’m going to keep my baby and we’re not going to prison! Now climb!”
“Carrie, we can get you the help you – “
She lifted the pistol again. “Climb or I shoot you right here.”
Lois glanced at the panel that told her she was at level two. “Okay, Carrie, we’ll go up to deck fifty.”
--- Wednesday, mid-afternoon
Lois drifted across the handrail to a hatch at the top of the spoke. The label above it read, “Level Zero Construction Storage: Zero Gravity. Caution Is Advised.”
Good advice, she thought.
“Open the hatch, Inspector. I need something to use as a club, and there’s lots of likely candidates in there.”
She looked down at Carrie and at the pistol in her hand. Of all the places she’d ever thought she’d die, the space station wasn’t one of them. At least, not from something so mundane as a bullet wound or a fall. If she was going to die here, why couldn’t she die in a manner more fitting to her environment? Why couldn’t she get caught in an airlock open to space? What about radiation poisoning? Alien attack?
She shook her head and told herself not to be stupid. She really, really didn’t want to die. There were so many stories still waiting to be written, so many bad guys waiting to be exposed, so many evil schemes awaiting her investigation.
And Clark was waiting for her, back down on Earth.
And she didn’t want to die because she wasn’t crazy. But Carrie apparently was insane enough for both of them.
She pulled the hatch open and Carrie called out, “That’s good. Now slip through very slowly, and keep your hands off the hatch frame.”
Lois had to get away from this crazy girl. Carrie knew how to move around in null gravity and Lois didn’t. Carrie had a gun and Lois didn’t. Her only chance was to put some distance between them as quickly as possible, then find a place to hide or something to fight with.
The room lights were down and it was almost dark. Lois kept her hands clear of the door frame as she’d been told, but as she floated into the room, she aimed herself at a dim light across the open area and pushed sharply against the door frame with her feet as if diving into a pool of water.
She barely made it. Carrie’s fingers brushed along her ankle and foot as she dove away. The girl’s snarl chased her into the darkness.
Suddenly Carrie called out, “Lights up maximum!”
The room was ablaze with light. To Lois, it looked like a warehouse drawn by Salvador Dali, with everything that wasn’t tied down or strapped down or magnetically attached to the wall slowly bouncing along the floor or drifting past the walls. Carrie sang out playfully, “I see you, Inspector. Please don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.”
Carrie’s touch on Lois’s leg had put her in a slow flat spin and changed the angle of her jump. Instead of landing at the glow light near the top of the storage area, she slammed sideways against a series of metal lockers on the far wall. She gasped as an extrusion from one locker jabbed deep into her ribs, but she forced herself to grab something to keep from bouncing back and to pull herself at an angle away from her original path. It was almost like swimming in three dimensions.
She had to keep going, to get away, because Carrie was floating across the room, watching every move Lois made. “Come on, Inspector, you’re helpless in here. I can catch you just about any time I want, and you can’t get out of range of my gun.”
Lois slid a three-foot long welding rod out of a rack of rods against the wall and pulled herself away from Carrie and her gun. “You don’t want to kill me, Carrie. I can tell. You want to live for your baby.”
For the first time since Lois had met her, the girl smiled openly and freely. “Of course I do. And what better way to celebrate my baby’s birth than to take care of you, the last threat to my freedom, in the room in which he or she was conceived?”
“What? You mean you – Claude was here with you and this is where – oh, yech! That’s even more disturbing than the laughing gas thing, Carrie.”
The girl floated closer, out of pole range but close enough to shoot. “Not to me. I told you I like to come up here and float around naked. I just put my clothes in a laundry bag and tie it to the door. After I lock it, of course, which I did before I came over here after you. You don’t know the code, so you can’t get out that way.”
Well, that’s one more option down, thought Lois. “So, are you going to shoot me now? Or are you still going to club me senseless?”
The girl drifted closer. “Oh, I’ll decide in a minute. I’m actually enjoying our conversation. I’d hate to cut it short.”
Lois pulled herself along the wall towards the corner, hoping to take Carrie by surprise somehow. “You know, I agree with you. I’m enjoying this conversation too. You should go with your feelings on this, you really should.”
Carrie smiled again as she drifted closer. “I wish I could, Inspector. But I’ve already spent more time with you than I planned. I’ve got to get ready to leave.”
Keep her talking, thought Lois. “Leave? You can’t leave. None of the suspects on Major Vukovich’s list can leave, me included.”
“You think so?”
“I had to put my thumb on a print reader before I was allowed on the station. I’m pretty sure they have the same ID procedure on outgoing passengers, too.”
“Ah, but Carrie Hillman isn’t leaving the station. Carolyn Townes, laundry worker and maintenance drone, is the one who’s getting on the shuttle. Her contract is up and she’s going back down. A little hair dye, a little makeup, some padding in my bra and around my waistline, and no one will recognize me. I know because I was testing it last night when Ben was talking to the Major. And my thumbprint will pull up her ID profile, not mine. It’s a perfect false identity.”
Lois felt the corner under her feet. She was almost in position and the welding rod was balanced in her right hand, hidden behind the folds of her coverall beside her leg. “I don’t believe you. You don’t have access to the computers to do something like that.”
“No, I don’t. But Claude did. He’s the one who put Carolyn Townes in the system. He worked in the computer lab, remember? And he did all that while he convinced his boss he was just slightly smarter than a box of rocks.” She giggled. “Claude was smarter than all of them put together.”
Lois opened her mouth to protest, then closed it. It just might work long enough for her to get back to Earth and lose herself in the general population. And Lois didn’t want that to happen. If she’d just drift a little closer –
Keep her talking as long as possible. “Why did Claude put a false identity in the computer for you, Carrie? What was in it for him?”
She shrugged and waved the gun to one side. “To see if it could be done, at first. He wanted to put in his latest book. The computer security up here really sucks. I guess they didn’t expect anyone to try something that sneaky.”
Lois eyed the distance between them; not close enough yet. Let Carrie keep talking and drifting closer, let her reminisce a little more –
“He had another identity for himself, too, in case he decided to go back down before his two-year hitch was up. He actually put me in when we first started seeing each other. He said we could use them whenever we wanted. We could leave together and no one would ever find us. That was when – “ the girl clouded up and refocused on Lois. “That was when he promised me we’d be together forever! That we’d never be apart! And those women took him away – “
She was out of time. “Lights off!” shouted Lois. And she jumped towards Carrie and swung the rod at the spot she’d last seen the pistol.
The pistol cracked and the bullet whined off the steel walls behind Lois. The rod came down and missed everything, and Lois’s reaction to the swing spun her end over end. Then she collided with Carrie in mid-air and felt the hot crack of the pistol a second time and heard the bullet go past her ear with a ‘wheet’ sound.
She pushed the rod away and grappled for Carrie’s gun hand. Carrie screamed, “Lights on full lock baker-niner-golf-yankee!”
Lois’s face was inches away from Carrie’s contorted features. The pistol was pointing almost at Lois’s chest, held away only by sheer desperation. Carrie tried to push away from Lois, but Lois grasped her frantically with one leg and pulled them together again. With the lack of anything solid to push against, it was almost like wrestling under water.
Lois grabbed Carrie’s right hand with both of hers and forced the gun away. Carrie curled her left hand into a fist and punched Lois in the face once, twice, a third time, before she yelped with sudden pain. Lois shook her head to clear it and glanced at the girl’s now useless hand. She’d broken at least one finger against Lois’s skull, probably more. Score one for being hard-headed, Lois thought, then bent her efforts to controlling the thrashing girl.
She couldn’t do it. None of her martial arts training was of any use in null gravity except the ability to bend her attacker’s arm away from her. Carrie kept trying to kick away, and Lois kept pulling her back and kept trying to wrap her legs around Carrie’s waist to keep them together. If they drifted apart even a few feet, the girl would use the gun and it would be all over but the burying.
Lois yelled, “Lights off!” Nothing. “Lights off!” Still nothing. “Lights down max!”
Carrie leaned closer and tried to bite Lois’s shoulder, but Lois jerked away and she got only a mouthful of cloth. She spat out the cloth and growled, “I locked them on, stupid! I want to see you die!” She tried to bite Lois a second time and missed again. “I’m tired of talking now!”
Carrie twisted her gun hand across her body and broke free of Lois’s right hand, then pinned Lois’s hand under her left arm. Only Lois’s left hand holding Carrie’s gun hand kept her alive, and Carrie was making progress against Lois’s grip.
“Carrie! You don’t want to do this!”
The girl yanked her gun hand down and almost broke free. “Yes I do! I want to kill you! I want to kill all of you!”
“Why?” Lois managed to grip Carrie’s waist with one leg and pull them close. It gave her a little leverage, but their joined struggles sent them spinning randomly in the middle of the room. “Why kill all of us? What did we do to you?”
“You took my Claude! You all took him away from me!”
The constantly changing background and lack of weight was starting to make Lois dizzy. “You’re the – the one who killed him! You – you hung him with fishing line like the catch of the day!”
“Because you made me! Because you took him! You wouldn’t leave him alone!”
She lifted her left hand and hit Lois across the side of the head with her forearm and screamed as she jarred her broken hand. “Yaaah! Let go! Let me go so I can kill you!”
Carrie hesitated because of the pain, else Lois might have lost control of the girl’s gun hand. Lois took a deep breath to clear her head, then quickly renewed her grip and shouted, “Give me the gun, Carrie!”
“I’ll give it to you! Here! Take it! Yaaah!”
She bent her wrist and elbow towards Lois and slowly but surely pointed the barrel of the pistol closer to Lois’s head.
She pulled the trigger.
The gun fired.
