Orbital

Thirty-Five Downlink

Back inside my secure lab, I call down to Earth and get Admiral Jessup and Captain Baylor’s faces on my monitor.

“I read your preliminary report,” says Jessup. “What’s your current assessment of the security here?”

“Well, first off, Attwell and Collins are totally suspicious of me. Collins is worried that I’m here because there’s going to be something that could destroy her station about to happen. And Attwell is totally spooked. I don’t know what he knows about the laser from one of his labs ending up on the Chinese satellite, but he’s totally paranoid about me.”

“I expected as much. Collins is just agitated by anyone with a military connection.”

“Her largest renter is DARPA,” I reply.

“Yes, but she sees Attwell and his team as pure research. You’re an unknown factor to her. Do you think she has any idea why you’re there?”

“Not that she’s let on. I think she just doesn’t want a repeat of what happened on the Korolev.”

“That makes two of us. While Attwell hasn’t officially been told what happened, he’s a very smart guy with lots of back channel connections. He knew an inspection would be happening sooner than later.”

“But I’m not DARPA.”

“True. But he also suspects, rightfully, that we’d be doing an undercover inspection too.”

“So the two most important people on the station are already on to me on day one? That must be a record.”

“Dixon, if I wanted to send a spy, I would have sent one. Besides, I’m more worried about whoever is on to you that isn’t letting you know. What was Ling like?”

“About as earnest as you could expect. And Yancey came to the station after the Silver Glass went missing, so I don’t know if she has any clue as to what I’m up to.”

“And the other personnel on the station?”

“I haven’t interacted with everyone yet. But it’s a pretty good cast of characters for a murder mystery.”

“And what is your assessment of the security?”

“On paper I think it probably looked sound to whoever signed off on it. In practice, it’s a disaster. The fingerprint scanners have to use a wireless network that’s not always working. This means that the DARPA folks are using number codes that could be swiped by anyone with a camera hidden in the right place.” I hold up a small credit-shaped piece of plastic. “I put this on the outside of the secure section and saw Yancey and Ling enter in their codes. You could do the same from the security cameras.”

Baylor speaks up, “What about access logs?”

“People go back and forth so many times up here, I’d be amazed if anyone could accurately tell you when they were in a specific spot.”

“What about camera footage recording when people go through the secure section?” asks Baylor.

“Besides the problem you mentioned with the Earth-based backup, I think it would be pretty easy to spoof the cameras using video projection. I wouldn’t believe anything they showed me.”

“So anybody could theoretically have access to that lab,” says Jessup.

“Yes. Although…I’m no expert at this thing, clearly, but part of me wonders if that’s the whole point?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been here one day and I can already see that any motivated person could gain access to the lab. And as you point out, I’m no spy.”

“You’re saying the security vulnerabilities are intended to be intentionally obvious?”

“It’s like the crime show where the husband who murders his wife goes through the trouble of breaking a window so it looks like an intruder.”

“Which would point to Attwell,” says Jessup.

“Yes, but that might be a little too on the nose. I was thinking that whoever stole Silver Glass had some other method to do it. The fingerprint scanners and faulty cameras are just a red herring.”

“So, who and how?”

“I don’t know. My starting point is going to be finding out if the wonky scanners are just an accident or something intentional. Collins said that there was some RF leakage from another section that was creating the issue. Finding the source of that might be illuminating.”

“Do you plan on searching the station?”

“Just the outside.”

“Do you have a means to do that without arousing suspicion?”

I hold up my new space shoes and let them float in front of the camera. “I’m going to take these out for a test run and see what I find.”

“Won’t you need someone to be a spotter on the spacewalk?”

“I put a request in to the station messaging system and got a volunteer from our resident biologist and barista.”

“Samantha Turco?” asks Jessup.

“Yes. She’s logged a hundred hours in EVAs, so she’s qualified. What do you know about her?”

“Very little. She was a NASA payload specialist but never went up with them. She got recruited by a chemical company to do research on the Sagan. One of several people that left the program to go private.”

“It’s a faster way into space,” I reply.

“Do you trust her?” asks Baylor.

“No. I don’t trust anyone that much.”

“So what’s your plan if she’s the man we’re looking for? Isn’t letting her escort you while you’re looking for the jammer a risk?”

“I have a solution for that. I’ll be using a frequency scanner to look for the device. It also doubles as a magnetometer. Which is something I’d use if I wanted to see how well magnetic books cling to different parts of the station.”

“No offense, Dixon, but these are very clever people. She’s going to see through that if she’s the spy.”

“True. Which brings me to my second test.”

“And that is?”

“If I don’t come back from this walk, then you know she’s suspect number one.”

“This is not a well-thought out plan,” says Jessup.

“If you wanted one of those, you wouldn’t have sent me.”