“But the implications—”
“Look, Bigley or Quigley or whatever the hell your name is. The victim is an American, the suspect is an American, the death occurred in the American lab module, and the body was hidden in an American scientific-supply canister. It’s an American problem, okay?”
Quigley’s jaw hung slack.
“I want to talk to Tom,” said Dan.
The lawyer’s face slid from the screen.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Dan,” said Henderson.
“I wish you’d stop saying that to me. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m doing what I think is best for this station.” Dan hoped no one overheard him. Admitting that he was treed could be a station commander’s fatal mistake. “And that includes safeguarding all personnel, allowing them to continue with their work, and preserving evidence for the proper authorities. In that order. Now when can you get someone up here?”
“Days,” said Henderson. “One aerospace plane is in for overhaul. The others are committed to a series of suborbital flights. That leaves Constellation.”
“What about Trikon’s retainer contract with NASA?”
“That only covers resupply emergencies. I could ask ESA about Hermes, but they’ve only had one orbital flight with the little bugger so far. I don’t think we ought to risk a rendezvous with the station, even if the French would okay the mission. Besides, it would take weeks for them to make up their minds.” Henderson spread his hands in a helpless gesture.
“Okay. Then here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to tell everyone on board that the investigation is over. They can go back to work. Did you announce Weiss’s death yet?”
“Not yet. We haven’t had time.”
“Good. Don’t mention it was murder. We’ll let the investigators handle that whenever they get here. Meanwhile, I’m going to continue the blackout of all comm channels. You’ll probably get complaints about that.”
“We’ll handle them,” said Henderson. “What about your suspect?”
“I’ll keep him segregated until your boys get here.”
Freddy Aviles could hear angry voices erupting from the rumpus room as he flew down the connecting tunnel. He didn’t know how long Tighe would talk to ground control and it was obvious that the scientists were on the verge of mutiny, despite Bianco’s assurances. He had to work quickly.
His first stop was O’Donnell’s compartment. Before entering, he snapped on a pair of latex gloves. He had searched the compartment on a few occasions and knew exactly how O’Donnell arranged his meager belongings. His movements were swift and sure. The search uncovered nothing that could even be adapted into drug paraphernalia. He latched the accordion door and stretched two strands of duct tape in a giant X across the frame.
Weiss’s compartment, located a few doors down, took slightly longer to search. Time prevented Freddy from rifling all the storage compartments, so he concentrated on the laptop computer attached to the fold-away desk. He copied the entire contents of the hard disk onto a floppy. He would sort through the files later.
Freddy zoomed into The Bakery. He knew the exact nature of the work O’Donnell had been conducting in the tiny lab, and until this morning he had no reason to inspect the project for himself. It was now essential that he get inside. Bracing himself with one arm, he pressed his ear against the padlock and turned the four number circles. One by one, he heard the tumblers click into place. The lock sprang open.
Under perfect circumstances, Freddy would have taken samples from each of the vials that lined one wall. He would have taken clippings from each of the plants. Conditions were far less than perfect. He booted up O’Donnell’s laptop and frantically scrolled through the directory. O’Donnell had created many files on the hard disk. Since few ran more than one or two kilobytes in length, Freddy assumed that each contained the structure of a different genetically engineered microbe.
Freddy inserted a floppy into the disk drive and copied all of O’Donnell’s data. Then he crashed the system. No one else would ever see what O’Donnell had been doing.