XXII.

The crew put up with the loud shrieking fairly well, but there were a few bleary eyes from people who had been unable to sleep over the next few days, despite the Captain’s caution to print some ear plugs for themselves. It was a great relief to everyone when the Captain eventually announced  a few days later that the dampeners had been repaired and they would not be disturbed by twenty minutes of metallic cacophony every few hours.

Everyone began to settle into regular routines as their last few stops before reaching Earth proceeded. The last few stops included a handful of low-g mining colonies, two space stations, and a military training base. The crew of the Pater Noster did not have to directly interact with anyone during these stops however. All they had to do was exchange sealed-up cargo crates.

Burnstyle completed his second round of checkups on everybody and reported nothing out of the ordinary.

Alberts unfortunately had a bit of a lover’s quarrel with Havisham and the rest of the crew had to listen to it, as their raised but muffled voices carried through the ship’s walls.

Dale sat in his chair in the CIC rubbing his forehead and grunting as the sound of the quarrel continued. In front of him, Oliphant and Maybelline exchanged uncomfortable glances at each other. At the back, Feorn started looking around at everyone else expecting someone to comment on what they were overhearing, but Franklyn got his attention and pointed at the charts he was hunched over, inviting his apprentice to get back to work.

The muffled sound of Havisham shouting reached them. “Oh! So you think you know better than me!”

“I never said that!” Alberts shouted back. “Just tell me what you want!”

“What I want? What I want is to not have to guess what you want! I want—”

When the argument was finally over and both sides had apparently left each other in a huff, Alberts stomped into the CIC and sat down at his workstation. Looking around, he noticed that nearly everyone was giving him side-eye—including the Captain, who was resting his head on his splayed fingers. “Problem?” Alberts asked, pointedly.

“No problem,” Dale replied, turning away.

“Has any noticed that the smell of cleaning fluids hasn’t really gone away since we left Skapstoti?” Alberts asked, drawing attention away from the elephant in the room. “It started to go away, but then it came back again, really strong.”

Dale had to say that he had not noticed, but Maybelline and Oliphant nodded. Feorn shrugged, and Franklyn remained silent.

“I guess you guys don’t get out of the CIC as much as I do,” Alberts commented. “I think someone’s got the cleaning bug.”

“Not a problem as far as I’m concerned,” Dale observed, staring forward.

Everyone turned back to what they were doing, and they worked in silence for a while, but then sounds of disappointment and frustration started coming from the navigation area. Dale spoke up, “You guys got a problem?”

Franklyn straightened up. “We’re having difficulty connecting to SolNav—we’ve missed the last few updates.”

Dale’s eyes flickered back and forth a few times. “That’s… not a serious problem, though, right?”

Franklyn shook his head. “No. It’s not ideal though.”

Oliphant called out, incredulously. “No SolNav? That’ll be a real pain for me!”

Remembering something, Alberts spoke up. “Yeah, Captain, connectivity’s been spotty lately. Something to do with the InstaCom system, I think.”

Dale clicked his tongue. “Would that be on our end or Sol’s end?” He gestured vaguely forward towards their destination.

Franklyn and Alberts shrugged.

“Well, I haven’t had connectivity problems,” Dale said. “What wouldn’t come through for you guys?”

Alberts exhaled sharply through his nose. “Couldn’t watch muh soaps.”

“Me too!” Maybelline called out from the copilot’s workstation. 

Dale eyed the foreman for a moment and realized it must have been a facetious comment. Maybelline had been completely earnest though.

“I’m suddenly wishing I had a lot more techs,” Dale said. Usually the Pater Noster got by with just one. For a moment, he considered getting Marala to look into the issue, but decided against it. Alberts had some technical experience, though. “Alberts, can you… take a look at the InstaCom box?”

The foreman blew through his nose. “That’s some sophisticated equipment, Captain. I can open the lid and check for loose wires, but that’s about it.”

Dale understood. “It’s better than nothing. You know about the special gloves and the… the…” Dale hesitated, trying to remember the word for the other special equipment you’re supposed to use when working with an InstaCom box.

“Yeah, yeah…” Alberts got up. “You sure you don’t want Marala to do it?”

“If it’s broken, it’s broken,” Dale said. “Marala won’t be able to fix it. We’ll have to buy a new one when we get home. Marala’s pretty  swamped right now, anyway, checking every single security node on the ship.”

“Is it true the security cameras are down, Captain?” Oliphant asked.  Dale nodded at him, and Oliphant  looked mischievously over at Maybelline. “Guess that means we can get up to all sorts of nefarious activities.”

Dale rolled his eyes. “No, no, no. The cameras are still on. The footage just isn’t getting collated, so we can’t access it yet. Once Marala unblocks it, everything will upload, and we’ll see what everyone’s been up to.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Oliphant said, grinning at Maybelline. “I had so many nefarious activities planned!”

Oliphant only had eyes only for Maybelline, who was grinning back at him, so he missed the pained expression that crossed over the Captain’s face.  Inwardly, Dale was thinking that he was probably going to have to hire a new derrick operator by the time they reached Earth, and possibly a new rear pilot shortly after that.

At that moment, a loud, mechanical screeching assaulted their ears. It sounded identical to the un-dampened engine purge noise that Marala had supposedly dealt with already.

No one in the CIC reacted immediately, or even moved. They just stared at each other. Then Dale stood slowly, took out a pair of earplugs he still had in his shirt pocket, and stuffed them into his ears. Then he walked slowly out of the CIC to see what was going on. He walked slowly to the engine room where Marala had been working earlier and swung open the doors. The sound did not get appreciably louder, however. There was no sign of the tech girl, either. Feeling a vibration, he pulled out his data pad and saw that he had received a text message from her. It read, Other engine.

Dale immediately knew what it meant. The Pater Noster had twin engine arrays running part way along its length. The dampening system that Marala had already repaired was on the port side engine. It seemed that the dampening system on the starboard side had now failed as well.

Dale walked around to the other side of the ship and found another engine room, an exact mirror image of the first . He found Marala there with a blow torch, looking at the engine. He thumped the wall to get her attention, hoping she would feel the vibration. She turned to him.

“Same problem,” she mouthed.

Dale made a few hand gestures and head movements meant to communicate general exasperation with this new development, gave her a smile that was actually more of a grimace, and pointed at the engine, knowing that she would understand that she should of course set about repairing this one as well.

The Captain trudged slowly out of the engine room and caught one final glimpse of the girl lighting the blowtorch before turning a corner. Catching himself, Dale took a step backwards and peered through the doorway again to see what was about to happen next. With a single motion, Marala reached down with one hand, pried open the engine cover, climbed onto a crate, pushed the engine cover up against the ceiling with one hand, then used the blowtorch to weld it there.

Dale was impressed. An ordinary woman, particularly one of her diminutive size, would not have had the strength to do what Marala had just done.

Marala put down the blowtorch, then tested the strength of the weld she had just made by jumping up, grasping the engine cover and hanging from it to see if it would support her weight—which it did. Then she hopped down and began examining the exposed engine.

Dale left her to it. Part way back to the CIC, the shrieking stopped, and Dale casually removed the earplugs. Then he froze, unsure of what he was hearing. It sounded like screaming—human screaming, the scream of a man, muffled, penetrating through the walls of the ship—a horrible sound. He started running, he could only hope in the right direction. The screaming continued.

Running into some crewmen, who seemed as alarmed as he did, Dale called out, “Where?!”

No one knew where the screams were coming from, however. They shook their heads, and Dale continued running.

Then suddenly the screaming stopped. A moment later it was replaced by a cacophony of angry and alarmed shouts.

Running out onto the loading deck, Dale looked up and saw a group of agitated-looking men up on one of the gangways above him, crowded around the entrance to a cross-corridor that led away from the loading deck. He leapt up the stair to the gangway, pushed his way through the crowd and into the corridor, pushed his way through another crowd of crewmen, then shimmied through a door into the lunch room that overlooked the loading deck. A few men stood around the edges of the room, staring down at a man lying face-down in an enormous pool of blood in the middle of the room.

Onobwe was crouching next to the body and was checking the man’s pulse with two fingers pressed to his neck. There was blood on Onobwe’s shoes and pants. He shook his head. Looking up, he caught sight of the Captain and said, “It’s Keir.”

“Did… did you kill him?” Dale demanded.

Onobwe made a face, then looked down at the blood on his clothes and hands. “No, Cap,” he said. “Everyone here saw me come in. We all found him like this.”

Onobwe rolled the crewman over. Using a pen, he peeled back the dead man’s shirt, which was ripped in multiple places, and examined the bloody mess. “He’s been stabbed multiple times,” he said. “Looks like a sailor’s knife.”

Onobwe had seen men hacked to death with machetes before, during his time on PAC-controlled worlds. Consequently, it seemed like he might be the only member of the crew who had his wits about him at the moment.

A lot of the crewmen standing around were in shock, unable to think or move. This was unlike anything most of them had ever encountered before. Onobwe looked around at them, but eventually his gaze was drawing back to the Captain. He remained crouching next to the body.

Dale looked around. “Who… Who found the body?”

Eventually a very shaken-looking crewman named Sanders raised his hand. “That would be me.”

Dale eyed him up and down. There were blood spatters on his shirt, and the side of his pants were stained red. “Why are you covered in blood?” he asked.

Sanders looked down at himself and gave a start when he saw the condition of his clothes. Other crewmen, also suddenly noticing the mess, backed away from the man and half-drew their sailor’s knives. Sanders held up his hands in protest, which did not really help as they were stained red as well, and exclaimed, “I slipped when I came in—and Keir was still… spurting!”

“Show us your knife,” Onobwe said.

After a moment of hesitation, Sanders reached down with two fingers and carefully pulled out his sailor’s knife. The blade was clean.

Dale himself was in shock, but he pulled himself together and waved down the suspicious crewmen flanking Sanders. “Did you see anything?” he asked.

“No. I was downstairs. I heard Keir shouting and rushed up here. Found him like that. Then I slipped.”

The Captain looked around. “Did anyone see anything?” he said, then he repeated himself more loudly so that anyone outside in the corridor could hear as well.

There was a cacophony of replies but none of them sounded affirmative.

Noticing the bobbing heads and staring eyes of people outside in the corridor trying to get a glimpse inside, Dale momentarily lost his temper. “Would you idiots stop trying to crowd in here! There’s been a murder. Back away!”

Dale’s data pad had been buzzing continuously for a while at this point, trying to get his attention, but he had not noticed it until now. Pulling it out, he saw that Alberts was trying to call him. The foreman had probably heard the commotion and was trying to find out what was going on.

Dale was about to answer the call, but then Alberts himself burst into the room, saw the dead man, and shouted an expletive, his eyes growing wide.

“We need to…” Dale began to speak, then stood up and began pushing his way out of the lunch room and back out onto the gangways. In his mind he had a vision of Marala all alone in the bowels of the ship. Still clasping his data pad, he began to put a call through to the new girl, but then he looked down at the loading deck below him and saw her staring up at him from a group of crewmen that had congregated there. She must have heard the screaming and commotion and come to investigate as well.

Dale was surprised by the physical sensation of relief that suddenly swept over him. He thought for a moment, then shouted back in the direction of the lunch room, “Alberts! Who’s in the CIC?”

The foreman shouted back, “Franklyn, Feorn, Oliphant, Maybelline—the usual crowd.”

Dale tapped into the shipwide Intercom through his data pad and made an announcement. “Now hear this. This is the Captain. There is an immediate emergency meeting on the loading deck. Use your data pad to log your precise location at this very moment, then come to the loading deck immediately. This excludes CIC crew.”

The Captain put his data pad away. Looking around, he saw that none of the crewmen around him were moving, or pulling out their data pads. “Alberts!” he shouted. “ Can you—!”

“Yeah!” Alberts called. “Everybody! Log your location immediately, then move on down to the loading deck!”

Dale stepped aside to let the men pass. He stopped what seemed to be the last four of them coming out onto the gangway. “You four, stay up here. Watch the body.” He directed two of them to each end of the corridor that led past the lunchroom.

Dale came down the stairs onto the loading deck, then noticed a string of latecomers trickling in through various entrances. “Latecomers! Group over there! Under the derrick!” Some of them were bleary eyed or in various states of undress, probably disturbed from their sleep shift.

“Latecomers! Under the derrick!” Alberts repeated.

Catching sight of Pullman sitting on a crate near the edge of the room and smoking a cigarette, Alberts pointed at him. “Pullman! What are you doing? Come here! Come here!”

Pullman hopped down off the crate and began to protest. “What the hay is going on?!”

Alberts yanked the cigarette out of Pullman’s mouth and sniffed it. “Are you high?” he said, incredulously. He threw the cigarette down and crushed it.

“Hey!” Pullman exclaimed, but he did not resist when Alberts pushed him towards the main group in the centre of the room.

When the trickle of latecomers petered out, Dale climbed half-way back up the stairs and looked out over the assembled crewmen. “This is not everybody,” Dale said.

Alberts, who was standing below him on the loading deck, agreed.

“Call the roll,” the Captain told him.

Alberts took out his data pad and opened up a list of the Pater Noster’s crew. “Chester! Sound off!” he shouted.

A call came back from somewhere in the room, “Here!”

“Grady!”

“Here!”

“Gantzfeld!”

“Here!”

“Gurney!”

“Here!”

“Hamish!”

“Here!”

“Jones!”

“Here!”

The name-calling continued. Partway through calling the roll, a second group of latecomers came trickling in, looking sheepish. Lovecraft was among them.

“You guys!” Dale shouted. “Over here!” He pointed down to a spot on the loading deck beneath him.

This second group of latecomers walked over, awkwardly eyeing everyone around them. Evidently none of them knew what was going on.

Pausing from calling out names, Alberts turned to them. “Where were you guys?” he demanded.

Lovecraft answered slowly. “Gambling?” It had a quizzical, upward lilt at the end, as if he was uncertain this was an acceptable answer.

Alberts shook his head and motioned for them to remain where they were. Then he continued calling the roll. When he was finished with crewmen—of which there appeared to be two who could not be accounted for (named Lombard and Osman), he started calling out for officers and specialists. “Burnstyle!”

There was no response.

“Anyone seen Burnstyle?” Dale shouted.

There were various calls of no and don’t think so from around the room.

Alberts shook his head. “‘No’ is not helpful! If anyone’s seen him, say ‘Yes’!”

No one responded.

Alerts looked up at the Captain. Thinking of something, Dale pulled out his data pad and checked his notifications.  Scrolling through them, he eventually found one from Dr. Burnstyle that had come in a few minutes before. It read, “In infirmary with Lombard. Can’t leave him. He’s got kidney stones.”

“Burnstyle’s with Lombard in the MQ,” Dale called down to Alberts. 

The foreman nodded and continued. When he was done reading out names, the only two still left unaccounted for were Osman and Dr. Marlowe.

“Osman’s probably stone drunk,” somebody called. There were various sounds of affirmation from around the room, from various crewmen who evidently knew the man. He had a reputation.

Alberts looked up at the Captain and gave a vague gesture that the Captain understood to mean whether Alberts should send a few crewmen to go looking for Osman. Dale nodded and Alberts called out the names of a few people and told them to go check Osman’s cabin.

As they were leaving, Marlowe stepped out onto a gangway above them all. Seeing the assembly below him, all of them staring up at him silently, drawn by the sound of his stomping boots, he called out, “What all this, then?”

“Marlowe!” Dale shouted, angrily. “Where have you been?”

“I was in bed.”

“This is an emergency meeting!”

“Is that supposed to mean me?”

“Yes! That means you, you retard! Get down here!”

Marlowe frowned and began sauntering his way down the nearest stair. “What’s going on?” he asked, loudly.

Dale took a deep breath. “There’s been a murder, Marlowe.”

The professor started slightly. His demeanor changed a bit as well. “What? Who died?”

Dale paused before replying, “Keir.”

Marlowe continued on down the stairs. “Who’s that?”

Dale looked away from the descending man. “One of my loaders.”

Marlowe stepped down on the deck. “Well, I’m… very sorry to hear that.” He looked around at the sea of somber faces around him, then went to stand next to the foreman.

Dale got Albert’s attention. “Put a video call through to Burnstyle. I want eyes on him and Lombard.”

Alberts nodded and pulled out his data pad.

“All of you!” the Captain shouted. “As you all know now, it looks like Keir was murdered, only a short while ago. Now, we don’t have any police or private investigators here to figure this out. This is on us. We have to remain calm and orderly. We have to follow instructions.”

Below him, Alberts held up his data pad in his direction to show him the video of Burnstyle and Lombard in the MQ. Dale squinted at it for a moment, then nodded. Alberts set the data pad down on a crate next to him, with the call still active. Then the foreman turned back to the crew. “That’s right!” he shouted. He did not know precisely what the Captain intended to do, but he knew it was probably important. “ It’s absolutely imperative you follow orders! Do what the Captain says immediately and without hesitation!”

“Thank you, Alberts.” Dale had quickly formulated a plan for how to find the killer, if it was a member of the crew. It had to be done quickly.“Everybody! Form up in two two rows facing each other!”

Surprisingly, everyone was able to obey the command fairly quickly.

Dale continued. “I want everyone who has blood on you identified! I know some of you have it on your shoes and pants because you crowded into the room where he died. I did too. That’s fine. Just put your hand up if there’s blood on you! Check your neighbours. Keep those hands up! Sanders, I know you’re clear, but put that hand up too!”

A large number of people from the group in the centre of the room put their hands up. Presumably, many of them had stepped into the room where Keir lay. No one from the two groups of latecomers put their hands up, however, though they all made a great show of examining each other. Some of them even began turning in circles to show they were not hiding anything.

“All right! Now, everybody stay cool!” Dale shouted. “Anyone who does not stay cool, I will personally throw you out an airlock! Take a look at the people who have their hands up. If there are any whom you do not remember seeing in the lunchroom just now, point them out.”

There was silence for a few moments, then a few names were called out, followed shortly by the sound of angry retorts, which started to escalate. Even before the first name was called out, however, Dale had started to realize how stupid this approach was. He could not reasonably expect them all to remember properly.

“Alright! Shut up!” Dale shouted. “That was a stupid question!”

Alberts had to add his own voice to the Captain to get everyone to quiet down.

“Next question!” Dale shouted. “Everybody take out your sailor’s knife and lay it on the floor in front of you.”

Alberts began nodding as he heard the sound of clinking blades hitting the floor as most of the crew complied. He looked around the room. There was no cry of alarm as a blood stained blade was produced, however. 

A voice called out from somewhere. “There’s a lot of missing knives, Captain!”

Dale swore. “All right! How many missing knives? Put your hand up if you don’t have your knife with you!”

Nearly a third of the crew put their hands up.

Dale winced. “Everybody! Check your neighbours! Any hidden knives?”

Alberts pursed his lips and grimaced. The entire room was full of men and women patting themselves and spinning in circles to allow themselves to be examined. He looked up at the Captain and got his attention. “I don’t think this grade-school crap is gonna work, sir!”

Returning the foreman’s grimace, Dale nodded back at him. Noticing that some of the lines he had ordered the crew to form into were beginning to deteriorate, he angrily shouted, “Get back in line, you retards! Back in line!”

Alberts had to run about and forcefully shove a few people to get the lines to take shape again. As he was finishing, the men he had sent off to find Osman returned, half-carrying the man, who was indeed quite inebriated.

“Alberts!” Dale called. “Check those guys, would you? I have to think.”

“Everyone, stay where you are!” Alberts called, walking over to the drunken man and his entourage.

Dale tried to think of something for a few moments, then jogged up the stairs and back towards the scene of the crime. He examined the four men he had left up there, and got them to show him their knives, then he came back out onto the gangway. Looking down at the assembled crewmen beneath him, he realized how remarkable it was how calm they all were. They were all looking to him to solve this problem, just as he always did. Somewhere below him, in that sea of faces, the killer almost certainly lurked. Looking around, he caught sight of a security camera high above him on the ceiling of the loading deck.

Pushing himself away from the railing, Dale rushed halfway down the corridor and peered into the lunchroom. There was no security camera there. Then he exited the lunchroom and hurried to the far end of the corridor to look around. There was another security camera not too far down another corridor that intersected with this one. Both ends of the hallway that led to the lunchroom were covered then. The killer would have to be visible either on this camera or the one on the ceiling of the loading deck. He ran back out onto the gangway.

“Marala! Come up here!”

“The girl broke away from her group and hurried up to him.

Dale pointed at the security camera covering the loading deck. “Can you extract video from an individual security node without repairing the whole system?”

She nodded. “It’ll be encrypted, but I should be able to extract the video. I can’t promise anything, but I think it’s likely.

Dale nodded, then called out to the crowd below him. “Lovecraft! Pullman! Get me some ladders! I’ll need a long one and a short one.”