Well, I'm back from my son's graduation from Navy boot camp in Illinois. I didn't have the time to write anything while I was gone, but I at least had the time to think a lot, and this is the result.
Nan
Home: Murder By Earthlight -- 8/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
The blackness inside the hole was absolute, since there was no atmosphere to refract the sunlight and lessen the darkness inside. Clark unsnapped the hand light from the belt of his pressure suit and shone it into the cave.
The shaft of light, sharp and clearly defined, illuminated the inner floor, showing it to be relatively flat and clear. Clark flashed the beam around, successively revealing rough, bare rock walls.
What was *that*? The light brushed something white that lay against the base of the rock wall to their right -- something that Lori was sure shouldn't be there. "Move the light to the right," she directed sharply, aware that the pulse had begun to beat light and fast in her throat and that she felt quite suddenly short of oxygen, in spite of the fact that the gauge inside her helmet showed that she had plenty of air left.
Clark did so, and all three of them floated silently, staring at what the light revealed.
A pressure suit lay there -- and it most certainly had an occupant. But the suit couldn't have protected him from the vacuum, for one arm of the suit had been slashed from elbow to wrist.
"Oh oh," Zeb's voice said softly.
Moving carefully, Clark floated forward, holding Lori against his side, until he could shine his hand light directly upon the face of the dead man.
"Do you recognize him?" Zeb asked. Clark's grandson was floating just above them, Lori realized abruptly, also looking down at the murdered man. In the illumination of the hand light, much dimmer than the naked sunlight outside, the faceplate was clear and the face inside was plainly visible.
"Yeah," Lori said. She turned her head and looked determinedly away. "It's Edgar Johnson. And this time he really is dead."
**********
And now, Part 8:
"There," Clark said, sounding, Lori thought, a little tired. "The crawler's tracks are all where they should be. Now all we have to do is put the footprints in place. Make sure you don't disturb anything important."
"I won't." Lori said. She clambered out of the little crawler and skirted the ruffled dust in front of the cave as she made her way toward its entrance, to a spot from which she could see the pressure suit sprawled on the rocky floor. Clark and Zeb were right on her heels. A few moments later, they made their way back to the crawler and climbed in. Zeb triggered a switch and air began to whoosh into the cabin.
"Now," Clark said, opening his faceplate and shoving back his hood, "I guess you should do the honors."
"Yeah, I guess so." Zeb followed suit. He looked wryly at Lori, who was also removing the bulky head covering. "You know, there hasn't been a murder in Luna City for nearly ten years. Why is it that when you two show up we have one within twenty-four hours?"
"Just lucky, I guess," Lori said. She fell silent, while Zeb used the crawler's radio to make contact with the outside world. The radios within the suits, Zeb had explained, were of limited range and on a closed circuit -- apparently to keep from interfering with other radio communications in the area -- a reasonable precaution, considering how many persons were out on the surface of the Moon at any one time. It did explain, Lori thought, why he hadn't been concerned about anyone overhearing their conversation. The radios could be set to contact someone outside their group, but their range made such contact iffy. Not so with the Moon crawler's radio. Zeb made contact within seconds and reported their find.
The information seemed to provoke an inordinate amount of confusion among whoever it was that he was speaking with and others within earshot. There were repeated demands for clarification and considerable agitation over an event that would probably have generated no more than passing interest among the members of the Metropolis Police Department. While the discussion continued, Lori remained quiet, thinking.
It was obvious that murder *was* a rare event among the closed communities on the Moon. Accidents weren't nearly as rare, and the person with whom Zeb was speaking seemed almost incapable of comprehending that big time crime had come to their city. But Edgar Johnson was probably involved in the theft of important research data from an Earth-based company. He had apparently devised a plan wherein he could profit from the transfer of a radically new technology from the company that had developed it -- Genie Electronics, on Earth. But his plan had required a confederate, who had evidently decided that he could profit a good deal more if his associate was no longer around to share in the spoils. And the confederate didn't even have to forfeit his true identity on Earth in order to profit from the theft. All that was necessary was for Edgar Johnson to vanish. If it hadn't been for the three of them, his body would likely never have been found.
She sat still, staring out of the crawler at the barren lunar landscape, absently looking at the cave that concealed the body of Edgar Johnson. If they couldn't prove that he had taken the records of the research, Marilyn could very well lose both her position and her reputation, not to mention her career. And how, the thought occurred to her to wonder suddenly, had the Security log acquired a record of Marilyn accessing the important files if she hadn't actually done so?
The thought was a new one, and she sat chewing it over in her mind. The only way that Security could have a record of Marilyn accessing the fatal files was if someone had used her computer and her security code. Lori was familiar with the kind of security system that Genie utilized. Even persons with clearance couldn't access secure files except from their own computers. If Marilyn hadn't done it, someone else had, and who would have a better opportunity to do such a thing but someone who worked in the department?
But why?
The obvious answer to the first question was Edgar Johnson. Even getting hold of Marilyn's security code had to have been difficult, and must have been done by someone who worked, if not closely with her, at least in the same office -- but why would he go to such trouble to incriminate Marilyn? And for that matter, why would he then access the file using his own computer when he could have stayed anonymous by using Marilyn's computer for his dirty work?
Using Marilyn's computer doubtless had been designed to throw the company's security people off the track, but that could have been accomplished more easily with the use of a colleague's computer, not the computer belonging to the head of the department. And, of course, he wouldn't have needed to use his own computer at all -- so why had he done it?
Unless he hadn't.
It was then that her mind made one of the jumps that had made her famous among her colleagues at the Daily Planet -- one of the qualities that could have defined Lois Lane, herself.
"Clark," she said suddenly, "I've got a wild idea."
Her husband had been listening to Zeb's conversation on the radio but now he looked quickly at her. "What?"
"We haven't been thinking," she said. "Someone used Marilyn's computer to access the files for the stolen technology. But if Edgar Johnson stole the stuff, why go to the trouble of accessing them from Marilyn's computer if he used his own to access them as well?"
He stared at her. "That's a good question. Are you saying that Johnson *didn't* steal the stuff?"
Lori shook her head. "No. I think he did. But I think that maybe *he* was the accomplice, not the other way around. I think whoever planned this didn't tell Johnson everything. I think whoever killed Johnson may have used Marilyn's computer to incriminate her. I think he planned to kill Johnson all along, have him 'disappear', and have evidence turn up that implicated Marilyn as the mastermind. That's why *both* computers show up on the Security log. Whoever killed Johnson wanted them connected -- maybe have it look like they planned it together, and that then he vanished and left her holding the bag."
"You're saying that you think this was meant to incriminate Marilyn? That part was pretty plain."
"Yes, I know. But I don't think it was meant for profit, even though that's probably a nice addition. I think the main purpose was to get Marilyn."
Clark was silent, and she could almost see the wheels in his head turning. "Revenge?" he said finally.
"Yeah," Lori said. "That's what I think."
For a long moment, they stared at each other.
"I wonder," Clark said suddenly, "if Talbot Grey spent any time in Metropolis during the last few days."
**********
Wilson Brown was a tall, slender man, whose bronze skin matched Zeb's in tone. His high-cheeked, hawk-nosed face made Lori think that, like Zeb, a number of races had been blended to produce the impressive police detective. He looked to her like the kind of man who started every day with fifty pushups and a needle shower and found herself wondering how he managed to keep those broad shoulders in the low-gravity environment of the Moon.
"Detective Brown," he introduced himself. "You're Clark Kent and Lori Lyons, from the journalists' convention at the Luna Hilton."
"That's right," Clark said.
Brown's gaze shifted to Zeb. "Doctor Zebadiah Kent, from Armstrong University. Any relation?"
"Clark is my distant cousin," Zeb told him.
Brown gestured to one of the contoured plastic chairs that sat around the table. "Please sit down."
They obeyed and Lori took an instant to appreciate, as she had been doing since she had been on the Moon, how soft the hard plastic felt. One of the effects of the low gravity that you really didn't think about until you experienced it, she thought.
"Do you want to tell me just how you managed to find Mr. Johnson's body?" the detective asked, with deceptive mildness. "It seems a little unlikely that you'd have found it if you hadn't been looking for it."
"We weren't looking for a body," Lori said. She slid her hand into Clark's and felt him squeeze it lightly.
"Then, what were you looking for?"
"We had reason to think," Clark said, "that the accident at the solar collector earlier might not have been an accident -- and that Mr. Johnson might still be alive. We were looking for evidence."
"I see. Care to tell me how you came to this conclusion?"
Clark and Lori glanced at each other and Clark shrugged. "Sure. It started with a call from our boss, not long after we got here..."
In a few sentences, he sketched the events that had led up to their discovery, suitably edited, and when he finished, Detective Brown was frowning thoughtfully. "So, you think Johnson was murdered by his partner in this deal?" he said.
"Yes," Lori said.
"And do you have any idea who this partner might be?"
"Someone who probably arrived from Earth in the last 48 to 72 hours is our guess," Clark told him.
"That leaves a lot of suspects," Brown said.
Clark gave an expressive shrug. "It could be anyone," he said. "We're going to have one of our people back on Earth try to track his movements for the last few days. That might tell us something."
"I see." Brown studied the three of them for several seconds. "Why do I have the feeling that you're not telling me the whole truth?"
"I have no idea," Clark said. "We really don't *know* anything else."
"But you suspect something, don't you?"
"Possibly," Clark said, "but it's based on a lot of guesses."
"Just like your guesses about Johnson after the 'accident'," the detective said, somewhat dryly. He got to his feet. "All right, you can go. I won't tell you not to snoop around because I know you'll do that no matter what, but don't screw up any evidence. And if you think of anything that might be of help, call me." He extracted a small, white card and handed it to Clark.
"We will," Lori said.
The detective nodded. "I'll hold you to that," he said.
**********
Considering the length of the actual interview, they had wasted a huge amount of time waiting around in the police station, Lori thought. She glanced at Clark, who hadn't spoken for some minutes. "Now what?"
Her husband was frowning slightly, an expression that, Lori thought, was amazingly attractive on him. His dark, heavy eyebrows, knotted into a frown like that always gave him a dangerous expression that was curiously exciting. Not that she liked it when Clark was upset enough to frown, but still --
"Yeah," Zeb added. "What's the next step? Normally I don't get involved in stuff like this -- I'm more the 'swoop in and save the day and swoop out' kind of guy. But I figure this is good experience." He dropped the light tone suddenly. "And I *really* want to catch this guy."
"I know," Clark said. "This was a particularly cold-blooded murder. I've run into plenty of sociopaths over the years, but this kind of thing --" He broke off. "If it really is Tal, Marilyn was smarter than even she knew to turn him down."
"I've been meaning to ask," Zeb remarked, "ever since you mentioned him -- who is Talbot Grey?"
Briefly, Lori filled Clark's great-grandson in on the short history that Clark had given her of the other journalist. Zeb listened in silence and when she was done he whistled softly. "I see why you think he might be a suspect," he said slowly. He looked at his great grandfather. "Do you have any evidence that the two of them might have known each other?"
Clark shook his head. "Not really, except that they stayed at the same hotel, and that doesn't mean anything. Still, Tal's the only person I can think of that really has a reason to hate Marilyn, and I know that he hates John. And he's here at the critical time."
"He's a correspondent for a news service in Tanzor," Lori said suddenly. "And Johnson worked for Genie in Fostonia for ten years. That's right next door. I don't suppose that proves anything, but it's a possible connection."
"True," Zeb said. "It might only be a coincidence, of course, but it's certainly worth checking out. I guess you've got some kind of plan of attack."
Clark nodded. "Lori said it back at the station. We're going to make a call to the Planet. We've got a researcher there who can do some checking for us and see if Tal was in Metropolis in the last few days. If he was, John can put some people on it and see if they can find out where he stayed, and who he talked to. That might take a little longer, but we're short on time. The convention only lasts one more day."
"I think I'll ask Carla to check on Tal's background in Tanzor, too," Lori said thoughtfully. "She might be able to find out if he knew Johnson when he was in the area. I admit it's a long shot, but you never know."
"In the meantime, if you'll show me what this guy looks like, I'll keep an eye on him if he wanders around the city," Zeb said. "I can't hang around inside the hotel for very long, but I can sure watch him if he leaves."
"What I'm wondering," Lori said, "is if he got hold of the files that Johnson had. Clark said one of Johnson's bags was missing, and so were a couple of his microdisks. He must have taken them along and hidden them somewhere. If Grey didn't get hold of them, he's going to be looking for them -- unless he plans on just forgetting about the files, that is."
"I doubt it," Clark said. "If another company never shows up with the technology, Marilyn could get off the hook. If your theory is right, he'd want to be sure that doesn't happen."
"And, in case he does have them," Lori said, "we'd better find him right away, before he manages to take them to wherever he intends to take them."
"Would he have killed Johnson before he got hold of the disks?" Zeb asked. "It seems to me that he'd have waited to be sure he had them."
"Maybe," Clark said. "But, as you pointed out, it's hard for someone to just disappear in a closed environment like the lunar cities. He may not have had a choice, except to kill Johnson when he did. And if I were in Johnson's place, participating in something like this, I wouldn't trust any partner without some insurance. I doubt he would have, either. After all, if we're right, Johnson couldn't have known there was another, more important agenda."
"True," Zeb agreed. "But let's hurry anyway, just in case."
They were approaching the Luna Hilton as he spoke, and a moment later they stepped on the platform that delivered them to the hotel lobby. Clark looked around the busy area. "Tal is in the bar, talking to Brad Thompkins." He fell silent for a moment. "Lori, do you think you could find out which room he's in?"
"Sure," Lori said.
"Good. Go ahead back to our room and get started. I'll be there in a few minutes. I'm going to take Zeb into the bar to introduce him to Tal. And then, I think I'll take an evening stroll past Tal's room."
**********
tbc
