Orbital

Fifty-Seven Search Party

I divide the crew into eight teams of two, based on randomness and who I assume is least likely to collude with our suspect. I take Tamara, Attwell and Warren with me to the command module so we can watch the search on the monitors that cover the public areas.

At Tamara’s suggestion, we have each of the teams use a video camera to transmit their search so we can follow along as they go into areas not covered by the station cameras.

I have four teams start their search in the lower section of the station and the others go from module to module in the upper section, starting with the least secured areas first.

If possible, I don’t want anybody yelling at me about violating industrial secrets or whatever. Which is kind of silly, due to the fact that most of the research up here takes place on little glass slides and is stored in computers we’re not asking for access to.

On a monitor, Samantha and Corine Monroe, an astronomer from Ohio State, enter a module where we store food supplies.

“You want us to search everything, boss?” asks Samantha.

“Please.”

She stares at the camera and rolls her eyes. “Were you my manager when I worked at McDonalds?”

“Couldn’t have been me. I worked at Burger King.”

“Really?”

“Fact. It’s how I paid for laser eye surgery so I could become a pilot.”

“You ever think that flipping burgers was your true calling?”

“Back to work.”

“Seriously,” says Laney in my comm. “Could she be trying any harder to flirt with you?”

I just make a noncommittal grunt.

One upside to using scientists to search the labs of other scientists is that they’re very respectful of the equipment. Perhaps a little too cautious.

I watch as Eduard and Alton enter Warren’s lab and do a quick inspection, looking behind his exercise equipment and into the cabinets, then leave.

“Hold up,” I call into the intercom then look over at Warren and Tamara hovering to my right. “Do you consider that thorough?”

Tamara shakes her head. “Each of those modules has an air filtration system under the floor. There’s a couple feet of extra space in there. And…” She gives Warren a sideways glance.

Warren reluctantly replies. “My refrigerator, where I keep samples. I’ll give Eduard the code if he promises not to lick all the vials.”

I call into the intercom. “You hear that guys? What part of ‘There might be a bomb on this station’ is unclear to you?”

“Perhaps you should call the bomb squad,” says Alton.

“They’re ten thousand miles away. That’s why I’m counting on you. I’m not asking you to touch or defuse anything. Just find the canister.”

I check the other monitor as a team enters the storage module below. Ling flashes his light into the crevices behind the crates then turns to the camera.

“This looks clear here,” he explains.

I have to resist the urge to be sarcastic. These are really, really smart people, but their street smarts are non-existent. “Dr. Ling, I need you and Randolph to look inside the boxes.”

“Inside?” He pans his light over the forty-foot long module. “There are hundreds here.”

“Yes, I understand. The more inconvenient the place, the more likely.”

“This is going to take forever,” says Warren. “Can I have your permission to go back to my lab once they’ve finished searching?”

“Negative. I need your eyes here helping me. And I’m going to have another team double-check the other’s work.”

He mumbles something about me being a petty tyrant. I just ignore him. I understand the frustration.

“Any suggestions, Collins?”

Tamara has been watching the monitors intensely. She’s either very concerned they won’t find something or afraid that they will.

“We need to check the superstructure, inside the walls. But we need people who won’t mess with anything that shouldn’t be tampered with.”

“Who do you trust?”

“Other than Butler and myself? Nobody.”

“How about Cara and Butler?” I ask.

“Okay. But I want to watch.”

“From here.”

She gives me an angry look at the suggestion that I don’t trust her. Too bad. The last thing I need is her and her helper pulling some kind of shenanigans to keep something concealed.

“Dr. Attwell, how hard would it be to make some kind of millimeter radar or some other device to look through the walls?”

“Give me a week and I could have something.”

Ugh. “That doesn’t really work with our time schedule.”

“Maybe a couple of days for something crude if I can get working on it right now.”

“Let’s finish the search first.”

“I’ve been thinking,” says Tamara. “We’ve got special thermal scanners we use to look for leaks and unequal temperature distributions. They also help us find faulty components in the wall. We might be able to use them to look for the canister. If it’s just a hollow chamber, it might show up as a cold pocket. And if we know the size.”

“Good call. How long to set up?”

“There’s one in the emergency tool kit in every module.” She drifts over to the red cabinet on the wall and pulls out a rectangular screen.

Of course. How did I overlook that?

I open up the intercom to the whole station. “Listen up folks. I want one member from every team to take the thermal imager from the emergency kit and use that to scan the hull for a rectangle the size of the canister.”

“How big was the canister again?” asks Doug Naylor, an industrial biochemist.

I thought I was pretty specific about that already. These people… I click through the monitors to see where he’s searching.

He and Amy Kim are in Samantha’s lab. Naylor has his head in the floor panel under her counter.

“It’s about twenty inches tall, Dr. Naylor. Should I send you a photo again?”

He pushes away and turns to the camera Kim is holding. “Maybe you want to come look at this instead?”

Kim rotates her camera to show a gleaming silver cylinder nestled behind a cluster of hoses.

Damn.