Orbital

Sixty-Two Detour

Samantha is trying her best to hide her concern. “David, now is not the time to tell me that you want to join the two-hundred mile up club.”

“Something is bothering me. When I met Ling he was wearing gloves, just to type into a computer.”

“He’s a materials scientist. Those guys tend to freak out about possible contamination. I do the same. Not to that extent, but it’s common.”

I point to the storage locker. “Eduard and Alton just gave me the cylinder.”

“The one Ling planted in my lab?”

“They found his fingerprints on it.”

Samantha thinks this over for a moment. “You’re saying that it’s odd that he’d touch it with his bare hands? Maybe he was in a hurry?”

“Possibly. But if he was going to go through the trouble of ditching the cylinder in your lab and leave his prints, it would seem it would have been a hell of a lot easier to toss it out Attwell’s little airlock.”

“So you don’t think he was trying to frame me? Just keep the cylinder hidden until he needed it?”

“No. I don’t think he put it there. I think Ling was framed.”

“Then why did he kill himself…oh shit.”

“Yeah,” I reply.

She lowers her voice, “You think he was murdered.”

“And made to look like a suicide. After I found a method for destroying the spacecraft with the canister, the real culprit wanted me out of the way and a scapegoat. Hastily framing you while I was adrift was a way to create a distraction for later on when I started the hunt for the missing canister.”

“And while I was sitting in jail, they were plotting to make Ling the fall guy.”

“You weren’t in jail…” She makes a cross expression telling me not to challenge her on that matter. “It was custody.”

She drops the matter. “Who, then?”

“The canisters could have been switched by anybody. Including someone on the ground. Tamara showed me how the robotic manipulator can be operated from any terminal. After the cargo was loaded someone could have used them to do the switch. They never needed to go near the cargo airlock. It could all be done after the fact.”

“You’re saying somebody on the ground could have done everything? Even kill Ling?”

“Attwell’s plasma airlock is computer controlled. Even the hatch. That could be triggered on Earth. But somebody had to write ‘Sorry’ on the glass. And somebody had to place an explosive in the canister and get the other one off the station. While some of this may have been done by someone remotely, there’s definitely an operative on the station.”

“Other than Ling.”

“Ling was innocent the whole time.” A painful realization sets in. “And I could have saved him.”

Samantha grabs my arm. “Don’t do that to yourself. We all heard the all hands announcement you made. Ling went the other way. If he’d listened, then he wouldn’t be dead.”

“Maybe. So why didn’t he? He’s not a stubborn guy.”

“Someone told him to go to Attwell’s lab. Wait? You don’t think it was him?” Her eyes go wide.

“The only other person with that kind of access is Tamara. Maybe Butler. Any one of those three could be the culprit.”

I turn on my secure link to Space Ops. “This is Dixon. I need you guys to tell Sagan station there’s a weather issue and we have to delay the landing by a few hours.”

“Affirmative,” says Baylor. “What’s going on?”

“Short answer, I’m not sure. But I think Ling may have been framed and the real culprit is still on the station. I need some time to figure this out.”

“Any reason to not come back now and let us sort it out later?” asks Jessup.

“Hold up a moment.” I have a flash of realization and take Cara’s hard-drive out of my pocket and turn to Samantha. “What exactly did she say when she gave this to you?”

Samantha eyes the device with suspicion. She tries to think for a moment. “I think she said, ‘We forgot to give this to you.’”

“Not ‘I’?”

She shakes her head. “I’m pretty sure it was ‘we.’”

“That means somebody told her to give it to you.”

“Tamara and Butler helped me take apart the DARPA backups.”

“It could have been either of them?”

“Maybe. Or Attwell himself.” I pull her head into mine. “Listen to me carefully. In a few seconds Tamara is going to get notified of the weather delay. We’re going to have to leave the ship and go back in the station. I need you to play along as if everything is cool. Can you do that?”

“I’ll try.”

I give her hand a squeeze. “You’ll be fine. Just stay close to me. Got it?”

“What are you going to do?”

I hold up the drive. “Find out if this is what I’m afraid it is, then find our killer.”