Home: Murder By Earthlight -- 7/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
"Aha," Lori said softly.
"Yeah," Zeb said. He shook his head. "Are you sure *you* aren't psychic, Grandma?"
"I don't think so," Lori said. "So did you tell your friend what we suspect?"
"No. He'd probably have thought I was nuts. I figured I could tell the cops later, when we've got a little more to go on. I did point out the nano-circuit to him. He said he'd report it."
"Maybe they'll pick up on it," Clark said. "Eclipse or Superman can go by later and tell them what we think, if we find anything more concrete." He handed the disk containing the police report to his wife. "We can look at it later, since Zeb has already seen it," he added. "What I want to do is get a look at the place where the 'accident' happened."
"Me too," Lori said.
"If you like," Zeb suggested, "we can go after dinner, if Grandma's up to it."
Lori tucked the disk into her computer disk case. "In spite of being your creaky and ancient grandmother," she said, "I'm definitely up to it, sonny boy."
Clark smothered a grin.
And now, Part 7:
**********
"Hello, Dr. Kent. How are you today?" The Airlock Monitor was a short, thin little man with a receding hairline. He grinned cheerfully at Zeb, who looked bulky and even larger than his usual self in the white pressure suit.
"I'm fine," Zeb told him, his voice sounding a little tinny through his suit's speaker. "How are you doing these days, Morrie?"
Morrie's grin widened. "I'm fine. I'm up for a promotion to Lock Supervisor."
"I'd say it's about time." Zeb gestured to his companions. "This is my cousin Clark and his wife, Lori. They're here for the journalists' convention at the Luna Hilton and I promised to take them out on the surface, since they don't get to Luna City very often."
"Nice to meet you," Morrie said. "You've got yourself a good guide with Dr. Kent. He goes out there all the time with his students. Never had an accident yet."
"That's good to know," Lori said. She shifted her weight in the bulky suit, feeling a little claustrophobic.
"I'm going to need to check out the crawler," Zeb told Morrie.
"Sure thing," Morrie said. "Right over there."
While Zeb dealt with the business of signing out the surface crawler, Lori checked out the internal readouts of her pressure suit, making sure she knew exactly what every gauge and measuring device inside her helmet meant. If she was going to trust her life with this thing, she was darned well going to be sure she knew what she was doing. The suit was heavy and, as she had remarked when she had seen the advertisement for tours of the Moon's surface, she didn't look anything like the model while wearing it. It was white in color and shapeless as well. Visions of the old pictures of the first men to walk on the Moon's surface came to mind. Even the helmet wasn't anything like the one the model had worn. It wasn't a fishbowl at all, but a white hood-like garment with a faceplate that turned silver in the sunlight. Clark wore one exactly like hers, only larger. He turned his faceplate in her direction, and she could see a distorted image of herself reflected in the curved silver surface. Only the little stick-on nametag identified him as her husband.
"How are you doing, honey?" he asked.
She was darned if she'd admit to the slight claustrophobia. Besides, Clark was a worse claustrophobe than she was. If he could handle it, she sure wasn't going to complain. "Okay."
"If you have any trouble, tell me right away, all right?"
"Sure."
When she and Clark had shown up in the hotel's bar with Zeb in tow, he had drawn the immediate attention of a number of their colleagues. Several of the female journalists present had approached within minutes and had pretty much demanded an introduction, Lori had noted with amusement, which was more or less expected. Zeb Kent towered even over Clark, and his powerful figure and dark, exotic good looks drew the female eye like a magnet. The disappointment had been palpable when each woman had noted his wedding ring. A number of them, however, apparently were not deterred by this indication of his marital status, but Lori figured that Zeb knew how to deal with the situation and didn't try to interfere -- which subsequently proved to be true.
Stephanie Brook was not among the women in question. She was sitting at a corner table with two other women and Lori had seen the dagger look that the woman shot at her. She ignored it, but the fact stayed with her. Stephanie, Lori thought, hadn't given up. For some reason, she had targeted Clark -- perhaps because he had had the temerity to turn her down, or perhaps for some other reason. In any case, she seemed unhealthily fixated on Lori's husband, and that set Lori on her guard. Clark might dismiss her as nothing more than a nuisance but Lori resolved privately to keep an eye on Stephanie. She didn't trust her for a moment.
Vane Williams had talked to Zeb for some time before they actually went in to dinner -- it appeared that he, himself, was a mineral collector and when he discovered Zeb's specialty, he had engaged Clark's cousin in a conversation that drifted fairly quickly away from any English that Lori recognized. Pete Swanson, who had joined the group had grinned philosophically and shifted his attention to Lori and Clark.
"So, where were you for the afternoon session?" he inquired. "Touring the city?"
"Not exactly," Clark said. "We had something to check out for our editor."
"Oh? An investigation?"
"Kind of," Lori said. "A tourist was killed in an accident a few hours ago, and since he worked at Genie Electronics in Metropolis, in the same department with John Olsen's wife, we thought we should cover it."
"Oh." Pete nodded. "That's too bad. What happened?"
"He apparently stepped over the safety rail, walked into the Luna City solar collector's beam and was incinerated," Clark said.
"Wow," Pete said. "Just goes to show you that when they put up warnings, there's usually a good reason."
"Yeah," Lori agreed, striving to keep her expression casual. The thought had occurred to her earlier that Edgar Johnson's probable co-conspirator was most likely from Earth and might have arrived in the last couple of days, just as Johnson had. Now, for the first time, she realized that all the journalists at the convention fitted that description. Edgar Johnson had chosen the Luna Hilton to stay for the period before he put his plan into operation. Was there a reason for that, or was it simply that it was one of the major hotels on Luna? Could it be possible that one of their colleagues here in this room was that individual? Such a person would have a perfectly legitimate reason to come to Luna City, so his -- or her -- presence didn't need an explanation. It probably wasn't so, she told herself. Tourists visited the Moon all the time ... but the possibility was there, all the same. Was there any way to check to see who might not have been at the presentations of the day? If one of the journalists here had been involved in planting the suited-up robot, and in the retrieval of Edgar Johnson from the surface, he might have been forced to miss part of the presentations. Since Pete had noticed their absence, that probably ruled him out, but that left quite a few others in the suspect category.
There probably wasn't any way to find out, she acknowledged, but it would have been nice to eliminate their colleagues as suspects. Anyway, if it had to be anyone, she thought dryly, she would prefer it to be Stephanie. Unfortunately, such a coincidence wasn't very likely.
A short time later, they went in to dinner. Vane and Pete had accompanied them, so there hadn't been much chance to talk about their investigation. She had seen Joanna Prescott, sitting at the table with Talbot Grey and someone else whose name she didn't recall, but whom she recognized as another of their colleagues. At least Joanna probably wasn't their suspect, either, she thought. Joanna had been here when Clark and Lori had returned from lunch and had made their recording for them while she and Clark had been otherwise occupied. Well, that was one more that they could most likely eliminate. Two down, five or six hundred to go.
Joanna raised a hand to wave and Lori and Clark waved back.
After dinner they had departed quickly, before anyone could snare them into a conversation, and gone to the storage room at the university where Zeb kept the equipment that he and his students used when he took them out for mineral-foraging trips on the Moon's surface. A short time later, they arrived at the nearest airlock, where Zeb claimed the surface crawler that he used on such expeditions.
Morrie opened the big airlock door and Zeb piloted the crawler through, into the lock. Then they waited. The inner door clanged shut behind them and Lori heard the faint hissing sound that meant that air was being evacuated from the chamber, but after a few seconds it faded away and disappeared. It was almost a surprise, less than a minute later, when the outer doors popped open and Zeb piloted the little Moon crawler out onto the surface.
"The solar collector is only about half a mile from here," Zeb remarked. He guided the crawler straight away from the lock until he was able to find a ridge of rock behind which he could conceal it. "We can fly over to it in a few seconds," he told them. "I figure right now is a good time to look at it. It's just about time for the shift change."
He killed the motor and pressed the control that evacuated the small amount of air that remained within the vehicle's cab. The top popped open silently. Lori climbed carefully out and Clark held out an arm. A moment later they lifted in eerie silence into the vacuum that engulfed the Moon's surface and sailed after Zeb toward the solar collector. Lori tried to look in all directions at once.
The surface of the Moon wasn't smooth, contrary to what she had unconsciously expected. From overhead, the unshielded glare of the sun illuminated the grey rock that flowed by beneath, covered with the powdery, greyish dust that seemed to be everywhere. Here and there, jagged formations thrust upward starkly from the barren surface, and the rocks seemed to be twisted and contorted into every shape imaginable. Sharp, too, she thought, which made sense, since there was no wind or water here to erode them into the smooth, rounded boulders and stones that one saw on Earth. Black patches in the greyish dust marked cracks and chasms in the rocky surface between relatively flat areas. The whole effect was incredibly alien, and far different from the image of the Moon, as seen from Earth, sailing white and pristine in the night sky.
From their height above the surface, the gigantic solar collector site was soon visible in the harsh sunlight--half a dozen concentric circles of huge rectangular mirrors made of polished metal, set on some kind of metal frames. Here and there, tiny human figures in the shapeless pressure suits moved around it. Fortunately, she realized, even if someone looked up, they were unlikely to be seen against the black of the sky. From nearly overhead, the sun blazed down fiercely, un-muted by layers of air, and, halfway between zenith and the horizon, the brilliant blue, brown, green and white globe of Earth floated like a fantastic balloon, glowing bright with reflected sunlight. As they drew closer to the solar collector, she could see that the metal arrangement that held the mirrors allowed their positions to be adjusted relative to the sun. In the center of the concentric circles, slightly elevated by the rock in which it was embedded, was a disk of dull black, set flush with the ground. Between the mirrors she could see the narrow paths that must be for the men and women who worked here, that they might safely negotiate the structure without mishap. A low guardrail surrounded the center disk, and she could see the red warning signs cautioning visitors of the danger that they would encounter venturing onto the collection surface. At some distance, she could see the low, dome-like structure that must be for the crew on duty to maintenance and monitor the collector, and nearer, she saw a level, metal-paved walk that the tourists must have traversed.
"That's it?" she asked. "What does it do with the energy it collects?"
"The central disk absorbs the solar energy and channels it to the storage cells underground," Zeb told her. "The dark phase doesn't last very long, and the cells power the entire city during that interval. The rest of the energy is free power for the city during the light period."
"Wow," Lori said. "Do you happen to know where the accident happened?"
"Over there," Zeb told her, pointing to a somewhat wider rectangular space clearly marked "Observation". "That's where the tour group stood. Johnson, or the robot, had to have stepped over the railing and walked directly into the solar beam. You can't see the beam from here, since there's no atmosphere to refract the light, but it's there. He'd have been incinerated instantly."
Lori shuddered. "Now what?"
"Now we backtrack," Clark said.
Together, he and Zeb began to circle the site of the accident, and Lori looked down, quite sure that if anything was to be seen, both the supermen would see it before she did.
"There's the tracks where the tour group walked," Zeb's voice said in her earphones. His suited figure swept an arm, indicating a section of the fine Moon dust. "Let's go down to get a closer look."
Peripherally, Lori wondered if the tiny suited figures far below and behind them could hear the conversation, but decided that they were probably on a different frequency -- possibly one designated for tourists or something. Whatever the reason, Zeb didn't seem concerned about being overheard.
She had to remind herself to breathe as they swept closer, until they were flying only a few yards above the Moon's surface. The powdery dust, that coated every flat area, was undisturbed by wind or water. Illuminated by the direct glare of the sun, a jumble of footprints leading away from the solar collector told the story of the tour group that had come through here some hours earlier. Zeb and Clark flew slowly above that telltale track, retracing the path of the tourists.
"There," Clark said suddenly.
"What?" Lori asked.
"Someone joined the tour." His finger indicated the solitary set of prints that blended with the others on the tourist trail, emerging from a jumble of boulders a little to the left of the tour path. Both supermen slowed, floating almost unmoving above the trail, tracing that line of prints.
Amid the rocks, barely ten feet distant from the path and just out of sight of anyone walking there, the footprints ended abruptly in a jumble of scuffed Moon dust. A wide tooth of rock thrust upward from the powdery soil and uneven rock at the spot and at its base one of the jagged caves, with which the Moon's surface was plentifully supplied, gaped, black and forbidding. From a spot at the foot of the crag, crawler tracks approached and retreated.
"I think we've got it," Zeb's voice said. Together the two men and Lori floated some ten feet above the unmistakable marks of human presence.
Clark squinted his eyes, obviously scanning the dust minutely.
"The robot must have been stored in the cave," he said finally.
"Can we get lower?" Lori asked. "I'd like to see inside."
"Sure." Obediently, Clark dropped lower, floating a bare meter above the ground, in front of the cave.
The blackness inside the hole was absolute, since there was no atmosphere to refract the sunlight and lessen the darkness inside. Clark unsnapped the hand light from the belt of his pressure suit and shone it into the cave.
The shaft of light, sharp and clearly defined, illuminated the inner floor, showing it to be relatively flat and clear. Clark flashed the beam around, successively revealing rough, bare rock walls.
What was *that*? The light brushed something white that lay against the base of the rock wall to their right -- something that Lori was sure shouldn't be there. "Move the light to the right," she directed sharply, aware that the pulse had begun to beat light and fast in her throat and that she felt quite suddenly short of oxygen, in spite of the fact that the gauge inside her helmet showed that she had plenty of air left.
Clark did so, and all three of them floated silently, staring at what the light revealed.
A pressure suit lay there -- and it most certainly had an occupant. But the suit couldn't have protected him from the vacuum, for one arm of the suit had been slashed from elbow to wrist.
"Oh oh," Zeb's voice said softly.
Moving carefully, Clark floated forward, holding Lori against his side, until he could shine his hand light directly upon the face of the dead man.
"Do you recognize him?" Zeb asked. Clark's grandson was floating just above them, Lori realized abruptly, also looking down at the murdered man. In the illumination of the hand light, much dimmer than the naked sunlight outside, the faceplate was clear and the face inside was plainly visible.
"Yeah," Lori said. She turned her head and looked determinedly away. "It's Edgar Johnson. And this time he really is dead."
**********
tbc
