Reasonable belief. She had no idea what the words actually meant. Did they mean the reasonable belief of a thirty-two-year-old female physician hurtling around the world in a closed system at more than twenty-eight thousand kilometers per hour at an altitude of almost five hundred kilometers? Or did they mean the cool judgment of an ethics committee meeting behind the closed doors of a Canadian Medical Association boardroom? Lorraine Renoir did not know.
And then there were the men aboard the station. Lorraine had been warned that Trikon, despite its technological sophistication, would be more like a frontier outpost than a modern research laboratory. That did not bother her; she almost enjoyed the attention she received, although it complicated her position of trust and authority even further.
Even the famous Kurt Jaeckle was beaming his photogenic smile at her. The one man who seemed to avoid her was the station commander. The only times they spoke more than a few words to one another were when she gave him his weekly cardiovascular exam. Even then he was guarded, almost hostile. Lorraine realized that Tighe saw her as an enemy, the woman who could have him fired from his post. In Dan Tighe, all Lorraine’s contradictions and conflicts coalesced into a single whirlpool of turmoil.
It was evening according to the clock. The shuttle had returned to Earth, taking the departing rotation with it. The bulk of the station’s population was in the wardroom or the ex/rec area. Hab 1 was quiet.
Lorraine knocked on the compartment doorjamb. There was a rumble, then the accordion door peeled back. Stereo headphones covered Kurt Jaeckle’s ears and a pair of reading glasses bobbed on his nose.
“Lorraine, what a pleasant coincidence,” he said, smiling. He pulled the headphones down around his neck and folded his glasses into a pocket. The strains of a Mozart piano concerto issued thinly from the headphones.
“I’m afraid I’m not here by coincidence or for pleasant conversation,” said Lorraine. “I need to talk to you about Russell Cramer. He’s been behaving strangely.”
Jaeckle’s smile vanished. “We had best talk in here,” he said, sliding the door shut behind her. “We’ve all been out of sorts lately. That power outage two days ago on top of six months in space is not conducive to good humor.”
“His behavior goes beyond just being out of sorts. Did you know that he consulted me about a problem?”
“I didn’t,” said Jaeckle. “When was that?”
“Four weeks ago. His complaint was that he couldn’t sleep.”
“Was our regimen the reason?”
“Actually, no. He said the trouble began with a dream of the station falling from the sky. He described the dream quite vividly. The dominant images were the modules glowing red from atmospheric friction and the screams of the people inside. He said he could identify each person from their cries.”
“What action did you take?” Jaeckle asked.
“I’m hesitant to prescribe drugs unless absolutely necessary. So I suggested that he not exercise within three hours of his normal sleep time.”
“I noticed that he altered his exercise schedule,” said Jaeckle.
“It seemed to work until yesterday. He came to me with the same complaint. I’d never seen him so agitated, so I gave him a placebo and told him I wanted to see him at sixteen hundred hours today. But he never appeared. When I found him in the wardroom this evening, he said that he was unable to keep the appointment because he had been involved in an experiment.”
“I can vouch for that,” said Jaeckle. “When exactly did you say his trouble sleeping began?”
“Four weeks ago,” said Lorraine.
Jaeckle removed a clipboard thick with papers from behind a bungee cord. He released one of the two clips attached to the board and the papers spread out like a fan.
“Cramer is our chief biochemist,” he said. “He’s been working with soil samples that one of the Martian landers brought back. Four weeks ago, he obtained a result in an experiment that he swears indicates the presence of microorganisms in the Martian soil. The evidence was fleeting at best, and had completely disappeared by the time I reached his workstation. He begged and pleaded with me to issue a media release, but I refused to do so unless he could duplicate the experiment. He’s been trying ever since.”