The Trikon Deception

23 AUGUST 1998 TRIKON STATION

In the darkness of his compartment, Dan Tighe unhitched himself from his sleep restraint, floating out like a dolphin leaving the womb. He flexed his shoulders and straightened his knees, savoring the welcome sensation of morning in his muscles and bones. Rather than switch on the light, he groped along the array of storage compartments for his toiletry kit and a fresh towel. Then he carefully pulled back the accordion door, still wearing the wrinkled, faded coveralls he had slept in.

Dan enjoyed early morning. Even though Trikon Station went through sixteen sunrises in every twenty-four-hour period, hardly anyone aboard the station saw the outside except through video screens. The planners had designed the interior system to cue normal circadian rhythms. The lights in the connecting tunnels and other common areas dimmed every evening and brightened every morning in an artificial approximation of dusk and dawn. The system effectively prevented the inhabitants from “going around the clock,” the tendency to awaken and retire one hour later each day unless aroused by the morning sun.

At 0530 hours, the lights were still dim. Dan had the station to himself, a feeling of solitude that he cherished. The only sounds were the hum of the ventilation system and the occasional creaks of the module shells as they expanded or contracted in sunlight or darkness. They weren’t cricket chirps or bird songs, but they were comforting just the same.

The personal hygiene facilities in Hab 2 were superior to those in Hab 1. The hot water was generally hotter and the pressure in one particular full-body shower was the most powerful on the station. Even the Whits were tolerable. The difference in quality and comfort certainly justified a swim from Hab 1 to Hab 2 first thing each morning.

Dan was surprised to discover that someone had beaten him to his favorite shown. He could hear the man singing tunelessly as the water removal vents sucked the millions of droplets out of the air inside. The singing broke into a torrent of curses, then subsided completely. Moments later, Hugh O’Donnell emerged from the shower. His neck and chin were mottled with splotches of blood.

“Up awful early,” said Dan.

“Habit,” O’Donnell replied.

“You also know which shower works best.”

“I keep my ears open,” said O’Donnell. He dabbed his chin; the towel came away dappled with blood. “Do you know any secrets to good shaving?”

“I nick myself every damn time. But I do find that long slow strokes draw less blood than short fast ones.”

“I’ll remember that tomorrow.”

Dan closed himself into the shower and powered up the spray. The water drenched him from all directions, warm and fine, and for a moment he was a boy again, walking home through a sudden rainstorm on the last day of school. His bare feet squished in the mud of the dirt road that curved up to his house and a bead of water tickled his nose before dropping to earth.

He cut the shower and watched the vacuum vent suck away the water droplets hanging in the steamy air. The mist spiraled out, and with it the memory. He slapped shaving gel on his face, slipped his feet in the loops, and squinted one eye to focus himself in the aluminum mirror attached next to the shower head. The razor pulled slightly, and he concentrated on the long slow strokes he had suggested to Hugh O’Donnell.

Dan toweled himself dry and went to his compartment to change into his flight suit. He ate breakfast alone in the wardroom, then went to his office in the command module. He wasn’t there long before crewman Stanley rapped on his bulkhead.

“Phone call, sir.”

Dan looked at his watch. The station was set for central daylight time, which meant that it was 7:30 A.M. in Dallas, too.

“I think it’s her,” said Stanley.

Across the command module, Hugh O’Donnell floated patiently near the ceiling of Lorraine Renoir’s tiny office.

“How do you find Trikon Station?” Lorraine asked. She slipped her feet into the restraining loops on the floor and opened a wall compartment.

“Not so bad,” said O’Donnell. He had a perfect view of the razor-sharp line on the top of her head where her chestnut hair was separated and twisted into a neat French braid. “The scientists could be a little friendlier.”

“I see,” said Lorraine. An orange rubber tube slithered out of the compartment. She pinned it to her side with her elbow.

“Actually, I feel pretty damn good,” said O’Donnell. “Haven’t even seen the creepy-crawlies.”

“What are they?”

“In my case, spiders.” O’Donnell smiled at the worried look crossing Lorraine’s face. “Not real ones. More like eye floaters. Saw them all the time in rehab. Now only on occasion, like if I’m knocked out of my routine. I thought I’d be bored here, but I feel just the opposite. I’m very focused.”

“You’ve been here hardly a week,” said Lorraine.

“Ah, but I can tell, Doc. This orbiting space lab was made for a workaholic like me.”

“Is that what you are now? A workaholic?”

“Slip of the tongue, Doc. A mere slip of the tongue. What I meant to say is that there is nothing here to do except work. Consequently, I’m already a week ahead of schedule in my project. That is, how you say, fantastique?”

“Enough levity, Mr. O’Donnell. Push yourself down here and roll up your right sleeve.”

“Already, huh?” said O’Donnell. He guided his stockinged feet to a second set of restraining loops and worked his sleeve toward his shoulder. His arm muscles were wiry. The veins inside his elbow were prominent.

Lorraine cinched the orange tube around his biceps and rubbed an alcohol swab over a vein. O’Donnell made a point of staring at the Monet print adorning the wall.

“I didn’t think you would be so squeamish,” said Lorraine.

“I’ve done my share of drugs,” he said, “but nothing that required a needle.”

Lorraine expertly drew a vial of blood and pressed a bandage against O’Donnell’s arm.

“What exactly are you testing for, Doc?”

“I use a screening panel for thirty different drugs. Cocaine, amphetamines, MDMA, and a host of synthetics you probably never heard of.”

“MDMA?” O’Donnell asked. “Ecstasy?”

“That’s correct,” said Lorraine as she tried to coax the rubber tube into its compartment.

“Ecstasy on Trikon Station?”

“God forbid,” Lorraine said.

Station personnel often joked that the sleep compartments were glorified telephone booths. The command module, however, was equipped with two authentic phone booths for the personal use of the crew, the scientists, and the Martians. A call originating from the station was transmitted by unsecured radio link to any of several communications satellites in geosynchronous orbits, then beamed down to receiving installations on Earth where conventional fiber-optic lines carried the call to its destination. Calls from Earth to the station went the same way, in reverse. The system was fast but had two drawbacks. First, the various links of the phone patch often distorted voices beyond recognition. Second, although the phones had voice encryption capabilities, Trikon regulations specifically prohibited scrambling except during operational emergencies. Any ham radio operator could eavesdrop on the calls by intercepting the radio signal.

Dan sealed himself into the booth. Conversations with Cindy were always tense. Knowing that strangers the world over could be listening made it worse. After one particularly violent argument over a child support payment, a female ham radio operator from the Shetland Islands had written to Trikon complaining about obscenities emanating from space.

Cindy cut him off one syllable into “Hello.”

“I found something on Billy’s dresser and I hope it’s a joke.” Her voice, even distorted, was coldly contemptuous. “A round-trip pass on a space plane.”

“That is no joke,” said Dan. His latest ploy in dealing with Cindy was to maintain a placid tone regardless of the topic of conversation. It did not always work, but it kept him from losing his temper. Sometimes.

“You can’t take him away from me like that!”

“It’s only a visit.”

“I don’t like the idea of him going up there. Riding a space plane. It’s a glorified rocket.”

“The aerospace plane is nothing of the sort. It has been tested and retested and shaken out in all kinds of conditions. Flying in it is safer than driving to the Seven Eleven.”

“Maybe the way you drive it is.”

Dan let the barb pinch him without answering. His driving record during their marriage had been checkered with speeding tickets.

“He’s just a boy!” Cindy screamed into the silence.

“Bill is twenty years old. In most places and in most times, that qualifies him as a man.”

“Not with me.”

“When I was twenty I already had a thousand hours’ solo flight time.”

“You’re always measuring him against your milestones. That isn’t good for him.”

“I’m no psychologist,” Dan said evenly. “But is it bad for a young man to know what his father did with his life?”

Cindy grumbled. One of her subsequent gentleman companions had been a psychologist. “How did you get the passes to him?”

“Well, I knew I couldn’t call him because you won’t let him come to the phone. I knew I couldn’t write because you intercept the letters. So I hired a process server to deliver them.”

“He’s not going!”

“You’ll deny him an opportunity that every boy, as you like to call him, would love to have?”

“I’ll call Ellis Berlow! I’ll get a court order!”

“Without Bill knowing?”

Cindy mumbled incoherently, then the connection broke. Dan clicked the handset back into its receptacle. Not a bad performance. Reasonable, low-keyed, courteous. Still, he could not hear the name of Ellis Berlow without a raging sea of memories flooding back from his subconscious. He pulled himself out of the phone booth and headed for the rumpus room.

The rumpus room was another shuttle external tank, and its adaption to a pressurized, inhabitable volume had been a dry run for the later Mars module. The first station construction crew had burned the tank into orbit with Constellation. It had served as a “shanty” for the construction crews and later, as the station grew, was docked along with the other modules to provide additional space. When the Mars module was added to the station, the tank was moved to the leading end of the connecting tunnel to serve as a counterbalance.

The rumpus room had no “ceiling” or “floor,” just a continuous dull silver wall that was particularly disorienting to people with sensitive middle ears. And it was huge. Even with the partition that separated it into two sections, even with the massive merry-go-round structure of the man-rated centrifuge and the other gym equipment, going from the station’s lab and habitation modules to the rumpus room was like stepping from a crowded subway train to the great outdoors.

The variable-gravity human centrifuge had been installed for the Martians. Since opinion was divided over whether the eventual Mars spacecraft would provide artificial gravity or fly the entire mission in zero-gee, certain Martians were required to spin in the centrifuge each day while the rest were prohibited from using it at all. Mars Project medics on the ground closely monitored both groups to assess which might be better adapted for the nine-month trip to Mars.

Even with the centrifuge, there was still plenty of room for other activities. Kurt Jaeckle had transformed a section into the studio for his television show. A Swedish Trikon tech created a jogging track by attaching a ring of indoor-outdoor carpeting to the circular wall. And Dan Tighe used it to display his personal menagerie.

The rumpus room was empty except for the Swede, who ran the track in long, loping strides. Running laps in micro-gee required very little exertion, certainly not enough for a decent aerobic workout. But it was fun.

Three bonsai animals hovered on short leashes attached to the rear bulkhead: a turtle, a rabbit, and a squirrel. Dan examined each one, then dislodged a tiny pair of scissors from behind a bungee cord. As he snipped, he tried to imagine Cindy’s next step. Would she try to dissuade Bill from the flight? Or would she actually hire Ellis Berlow to obtain a court order? Dan hated that fucker. He could still sec him standing in the courtroom and arguing against his fitness as a father.

Rocket junkie, Berlow had called him, space vagabond. This court must not be a party to this man abandoning his child as he has his wife. After the judge denied the petition for joint custody, Dan saw Berlow in the courthouse men’s room. The lawyer would not acknowledge him. He simply stared into the mirror and primped his smooth brown pelt of a beard with a brush.

The scissors slipped and amputated a piece of the squirrel’s leg. Anger gurgled in Dan’s chest. Memories of his divorce evoked the worst kind of adrenaline.

“They’re nicely done.” Lorraine Renoir drifted beside him, her voice a low purr.

“Sometimes they’re too damn delicate.” Tighe took a deep breath to calm his rage at having ruined the squirrel. He caught a whiff of Lorraine’s perfume. It smelled fresh, as if she had just come out of the shower. He added: “Thanks. Glad you like them.”

“Why animals?” She plucked one of the tethers. The rabbit hopped in the air. “Why these animals?”

With a slow smile, Dan explained, “When I was a boy I liked to pretend I saw creatures in cloud formations. Most of them were silly, but one evening, along about dusk after a full day of rain, the sun broke through a patch of clear red sky just over the hills. The clouds lit up and I saw a parade of perfectly shaped animals: a bird, a rabbit, a squirrel, and a turtle.”

Lorraine nuzzled each one, then set it slowly adrift. She exuded a calm that seemed to affect everything around her, even Dan, and he was glad of it.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you the other night,” said Lorraine. “You have to understand my position.”

“That’s all right,” Dan said. “I was out of line.”

’’I have something to ask you, Dan.” Lorraine lowered her eyes as if marshaling the precise words, then looked up. “Kurt Jaeckle asked me to assist him in his TV broadcasts. I haven’t given him an answer yet. I wanted to talk to you.”

Dan felt his guts wrench, but kept his face stony. “Are you asking me for my opinion or for my permission?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe both.”

“Do you want to be on TV?”

“It isn’t one of my great dreams, but I think it would be interesting.”

“There’s no regulation against it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It isn’t—” Lorraine turned slightly away from him.

“Well?”

“It’s just that I know that you and Professor Jaeckle are not on the best of terms.”

“That’s irrelevant. The Mars Project is an integral part of this station. If you want to be Professor Jaeckle’s TV assistant, there’s nothing I can do about it as long as it doesn’t interfere with your regular duties.”

“It won’t,” said Lorraine. “So I guess you have no objection.”

He did, but none that he could articulate. Lorraine looked at him as if she expected him to say something, but when he did not she pushed against the bulkhead and headed for the hatch.

Dan watched her sail away, pausing briefly to let the Swede pass on his endless run before slipping through the hatchway. Lorraine had a calming effect on him, all right. But why, after talking to her, did he always feel as though he had just fumbled the ball?

The last dinner shift was long over. The lights in the wardroom had dimmed to a glimmer. In the exercise area, Lance Muncie strained against a variable-resistance rowing machine. With every pull of his bulging arms, with every thrust of his sinewy legs, he grunted out the number of his repetitions. Nine eighty-six, nine eighty-seven…

Freddy Aviles pulled up to the doorway. He had a tool kit lashed to his chest and ten feet of fanfold paper snaking behind him. He gathered the paper into a manageable sheaf, then continued inside.

“Hey, Lance.”

Nine ninety-one, nine ninety-two.

“Oh La-ance.”

Nine ninety-seven, nine ninety-eight.

“Lance Muncie!”

Nine ninety-nine, one thousand.

Lance unhitched himself from the machine and drifted upward. His straw-colored hair was lined with dark streaks of sweat, his cheeks crimson from exertion. His teeth were set on edge, which made his chin protrude as if daring someone to take a poke at it. Freddy had seen this expression before; Lance was worried.

“You okay, man?”

Lance grunted in response. He removed his hairnet and toweled his hair.

“You not okay.”

“I felt my calcium levels decreasing. I needed exercise.”

“Oh, calcium. I see.” Freddy nodded in exaggerated agreement. “You want to help me tonight?”

Lance patted his underarms with the towel, then braced his feet against the rowing machine while he slipped into his shirt.

“Sure, what else do I have to do?”

They drifted leisurely down the connecting tunnel and entered the Mars module. The computer circuits and multiplexers ran behind the ceiling panels in the module’s internal tunnel. Freddy hooked his arm through a handhold and trained a penlight on the top page of his papers. The page was a spaghetti of colored lines and numbers. Freddy muttered thoughtfully as he traced his finger along one of the lines.

“I tried phoning Becky again tonight,” said Lance. “She wasn’t home.”

Freddy directed the penlight at a tiny box set into a crease in the ceiling.

“That’s three nights in a row,” said Lance.

“Maybe she’s away.” Freddy tapped the box with his finger.

“Away where?”

“How would I know? People go places.”

“I’ve never gone three days without talking to her. Never.”

“You have an agreement with her?”

“What sort of agreement?”

“You know, an agreement. You up here for six months. She down there for six months. Six months a long time.” Freddy opened the box with the blade of a screwdriver. “How long you been going out?”

“Two years,” said Lance. “We met when we were seniors at Kansas. She was the prettiest girl I ever saw. Well, I showed you her picture.”

Freddy hiked himself up until his eye was an inch from the inside of the box. Wires and circuits matched the diagram on the paper.

“You talk with her about you coming up here?” he asked.

“Of course we did. I told her that it was only six months, but that it would be very good for my long-range career plans. After that, we could talk about getting married.”

“Hmmm. I see,” said Freddy.

“What does that mean? Did I do something wrong?”

“No, I just found the relay I was lookin’ for.”

“Anyway,” Lance continued, “now I’m not so sure about getting married.”

“Because you can’t get her on the phone?”

“Yeah. No. Well, yeah,” said Lance. “That’s never happened. It’s like a sign.”

“Sign of what?”

“That something is wrong. People don’t always tell you. They give you signs.”

“Maybe she just don’ expect you to call.”

“I always have before.”

“You weren’ in space before.”

“But I always called.”

“You know what you beginning to sound like, man? The catechism the nuns taught me in school. ‘Who made me?’ ‘God made me.’ ‘Who God?’ ‘God the Supreme Being Who made all things.’”

“What’s wrong with that?” said Lance.

Freddy shook his head. “Lemme see the next page.”

They floated in silence, Freddy tracing computer circuits and Lance mulling over his crisis with Becky. The Swedish tech swam down the tunnel.

He nodded to the two crewmen, then disappeared into the observation blister. As soon as the door closed, Freddy chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” said Lance.

“Look at your watch and tell me when ten minutes is up.”

Lance obeyed, assuming that the ten-minute period was related to Freddy’s work. He signaled when the time had passed. Moments later, a female Martian appeared. She ignored the two crewmen and made straight for the observation blister. The door opened and she slipped inside.

Freddy laughed.

“Now what’s so funny?” said Lance.

“I been in here the last two nights. Same thing. He goes into the blister and ten minutes later some chick shows up. Last night it was one of the Europeans. Wonder what’d happen if two showed up.”

“There would be a fight.”

“Or maybe our friend’d need some help.” Freddy winked.

“Not from me,” said Lance.

“Can you imagine? I had a water-bed once, till my cousin Felix used it one night and forgot to take his boots off. Thought I was floating then, but that’d be nothing compared to this. All kinds of tumbling, all kinds of angles. And with the Earth and stars right outside the window. Beats lookin’ across an air shaft, eh?”

“I never have.”

“Tha’s right. No air shafts in Kansas.”

There was a thud against the blister door.

“What’s that?” Lance blurted.

“Newton’s Law.”

Freddy left Lance with instructions to keep a close eye on the circuitry, then headed for the command module to test the adjustments he had made to the relay. The project that Commander Tighe had assigned him was far less complicated than he had expected. If necessary, he could have reconfigured the entire computer system in two or three evenings. But Freddy was in no rush.

As he approached the command module, Freddy noticed two figures slipping out of The Bakery. Even at a distance of one hundred feet, he recognized the red mop of Stu Roberts and the ample ass of Russell Cramer. The two men entered Hab 1.

Freddy knifed past the command module. The test he was about to run could wait. As he passed the hatch to Hab 1, he could see Roberts and Cramer at the door to Roberts’s compartment. Freddy cast his eyes up and down the tunnel. No one was in sight. He pulled himself into The Bakery. Like the Mars module, it was in nighttime illumination: pools of dim light and long stretches of shadow. Freddy nosed up to the tiny lab assigned to Hugh O’Donnell. The door was closed. The strip of cellophane tape O’Donnell stretched across the padlock each night to reveal signs of intrusion was undisturbed.

Dart throwing was easy in micro-gee, thought Hugh O’Donnell. Since the dart flew in a precisely straight line, rather than arc toward the floor in response to gravity, all you needed were an accurate aim and a correct release point in your throwing motion.

The darts were little more than plastic soda straws tipped with Velcro. O’Donnell threw three of them at the dart board, retrieved them, and returned to the foot loops at the far end of the ex/rec area. Over and over again. He never tired of throwing bull’s-eyes.

Directly below the darts’ flight path, Chakra Ramsanjawi and Hisashi Oyamo huddled over their chessboard. They played silently, although each one would chuckle when he removed one of the other’s pieces from the board. Occasionally, Ramsanjawi cast a baleful glance in O’Donnell’s direction, as if the incessant flight of the darts disturbed his concentration. O’Donnell ignored him.

“Care for a game?”

Dan Tighe hovered in the entryway.

“Why not?” said O’Donnell. He removed his three darts from the board while Dan rummaged through one of the recreation compartments for three more.

As they played, Dan scrutinized O’Donnell’s every movement. The scientist threw darts as silently and as intensely as Ramsanjawi and Oyamo concentrated on their chess. He would close one eye, tense his body, and move his throwing hand back and forth repeatedly as if it were on an invisible track before he exhaled deeply and launched the dart on its dead-straight path. There was a rigidity about O’Donnell’s movements that was completely at odds with his lanky, loose-jointed frame. Dan sensed an inability, or an unwillingness, to relax. He couldn’t decide which.

“I see you’re still shaving,” Dan said between rounds. “I thought after a few days you’d grow a beard like everyone else.”

“You haven’t,” said O’Donnell. He started to aim.

“I’ve mastered the long, slow strokes.”

“Really?” said O’Donnell, taking his eye off the target. “I suppose your face is red from windburn.”

“Yeah, well—I guess I really don’t like beards.”

O’Donnell said nothing. He fired one dart and settled into his aiming ritual with a second.

“I’m divorced,” said Dan.

“And your ex-wife had a beard.”

“Funny.” Dan forced a laugh. “That isn’t it. The lawyer who raked me over the coals had a beard. I can still see him running this tiny little comb through it like it was a mink stole. That was after my ex-wife won the custody battle for my kid. I wanted to talk to the guy, tell him what a lousy job he had done taking my son away from me. But he was too interested in preening his goddamned beard.”

“I guess that would make me shave every day,” said O’Donnell.

“You know, I hate those guys,” Dan said with sudden intensity. His sky-blue eyes were focused on a point in his own past. “They come into your life, wreck it, and then go back to their offices to count their money. And what the hell are you left with? A mess. A big goddamn mess they made for you because they were charging by the hour.”

“They don’t always go back to their offices,” said O’Donnell. “Sometimes they stay around and finish you off.”

O’Donnell threw his last dart and slipped his feet from the loops. Dan took his place and fired three quick shots. None hit their marks.

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

O’Donnell floated slowly toward the board to retrieve his darts. He realized he shouldn’t talk about his past, but sometimes he just couldn’t keep it bottled up. Dr. Renoir was a woman. He could put his brain in neutral, disengage his mouth, and rap with her as he had rapped with chicks in bars. Dan Tighe was different. He might actually understand.

“My lawyer sold me out,” said O’Donnell. “He charged me fifty grand for a settlement that I could have gotten myself when the case began. I had only twenty grand left, so he took my lady.”

Dan grimaced.

“I guess she was worth thirty grand. I don’t know anymore.”

“Doesn’t sound like the normal divorce case to me.”

“It wasn’t,” said O’Donnell. A smile creased his face. Telling this story would be fun, as long as he avoided specifics. “You are looking at the first man to be completely and utterly rifkin-ized.”

“Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that a bunch of know-nothings brought me and my company into court and obtained an injunction removing EPA approval of several genetically engineered microbes I designed for agricultural use. Of course, it happened just before my company was about to go public. The investors evaporated, the company tanked, and my lawyer waltzed off with my last dollar and my girlfriend.”

“When was that?”

“A few years back. Lots of it is a blur, for one reason or another.”

“How did you end up here?”

“I eventually went to work for a company large enough and established enough to have a high-powered set of lawyers of their own. The board voted to join Trikon NA. So here I am, property of Trikon.”

They tossed several rounds of darts in silence. Ramsanjawi chattered happily as he chased Oyamo’s king across the board and eventually proclaimed checkmate. Oyamo sulked and asked for another game.

Dan mulled over what O’Donnell had told him. The scientist seemed candid about career and women, the two most important aspects of a young man’s life. But something was missing. Dan felt it in the vagueness of the dates and the blur O’Donnell said his life once had been.

“Tell me something,” O’Donnell said.

“What?”

O’Donnell aimed and fired another bull’s-eye. “The orientation manual says you grow taller in microgravity; your spine unbends when you’re weightless.”

“That’s right,” said Tighe. “That’s why they make your flight suits extra long for your size.”

“But I don’t seem to be any taller, really.”

Tighe chuckled. “If you had a full-length mirror you’d see why.”

O’Donnell hiked his eyebrows questioningly.

“Well, look at me,” Tighe said. Standing in the foot restraints, he knew he was bent over in the semi-question-mark posture known as the microgravity crouch.

“Am I doing that?” O’Donnell asked.

“Sure. Straighten yourself up. Go on, try it.”

O’Donnell strained for a moment. His back straightened, his shoulders squared. But with a puff of held-back breath he quickly relaxed and went back to the more comfortable crouch.

“In micro-gee,” Dan explained, “the spine does unbend. But the muscles tend to pull you into a sort of fetal crouch.”

“O’Donnell the ape-man.” Hugh grinned at himself and scratched under his armpit.

Tighe laughed. He was starting to like O’Donnell. Then he caught himself with the memory of who he was and what his responsibilities were.

“Play you for a drink,” he said.

“There’s liquor on board?” O’Donnell looked startled.

“No, but the loser can pay Earthside.”

“Let’s play for a soda,” said O’Donnell.

Tighe nodded. Inwardly, he realized that he had expected just such a response from Hugh O’Donnell.

Freddy Aviles moved silently through Hab 1. Most of the sleep compartments were darkened. A few leaked pinpricks of light through the seals of their accordion doors. As Freddy drifted toward the rear of the module, he became aware of a dull, rhythmic vibration. The sound strengthened and finally resolved into music as Freddy steadied himself outside Stu Roberts’s compartment. Freddy recognized the exquisitely clear electric guitar riffs that seemed to curl in arabesques against a heavy Latin backbeat. He had heard this music on boom boxes all over the South Bronx. Carlos Santana. Still a rock icon after thirty years.

Freddy slipped into the Whit, which abutted Roberts’s compartment. He removed a tiny sound amplifier from a sleeve pouch and pressed its suction end against the wall. The music was so loud that Carlos Santana seemed to be picking guitar strings inside the convolutions of Freddy’s brain. Freddy adjusted the amplifier to mute as much of the music as possible.

“This doesn’t look like the same stuff.”

“It is.”

“But it looks jagged.”

“The man downstairs didn’t put any gelatin capsules in the last shipment. That’s why it looks like a rock.”

“It’s yellower, too.”

“Hey, take your business elsewhere if you don’t like it.”

“Sorry. It’s all right. It’s just that—”

“Goddammit, it’s the same stuff. Take my word for it. Do you want the shit, or not?”

“Yeah, I want it.”

Someone turned the music louder and drowned out the voices. Freddy coiled his amplifier into a tiny bundle and slipped out of Hab 1. Better run that relay test quickly, he thought. Otherwise, Lance might become suspicious.