Chapter Text
Oh, a right wee space-detective.
– Jamie McCrimmon
It all started when we found ourselves waiting together for one of the grav-tubes. I'd seen her around now and then, and each time I thought she looked vaguely familiar. On the spur of the moment, I decided to ask her.
"Excuse me," I said. "Are you Zoë Heriot?"
She turned her full attention on me. Her cool, grey, enquiring eyes looked me up and down. I felt rather as if I was being scanned by a security camera.
"Yes," she said.
"We were at school together. I don't know if you'd remember me..."
She gave me another stare, and I could imagine an LED coming on somewhere behind her eyes. "Lily Carson?"
"That's right. You haven't changed a bit."
"Considering I was eleven the last time we met, I'm not sure whether that's a good thing," she said.
I wasn't sure if she was joking. It threw me a bit, and before I could come up with anything coherent the grav-tube she'd been waiting for chimed and the doors opened.
"Sorry," she said. "I've got to go now."
"Let's meet later and have a chat," I suggested.
"OK." Zoë closed her eyes briefly. "How about twenty-fifteen at the main bar?"
"Fine."
"See you then."
*
Normally, I wouldn't have bothered talking to Zoë; we had been at school together, but not in the same year, and we hadn't had any interests in common. But three days into my holiday, with no-one to talk to, I was glad to see any halfway friendly face.
When I'd originally booked into the Deep Space Recreation and Relaxation Complex, the idea had been to have a romantic holiday with my boyfriend. Within days of the tickets arriving, we'd broken up – very loudly, and very finally. Since I'd paid for the tickets, I hung on to them, and decided to take the holiday anyway, more out of cussedness than anything. I'd been regretting that decision ever since the shuttle lifted off. Mind you, if I'd decided against going, I'd probably have been regretting that too.
The brochures I'd read had made the Complex out to be the height of luxury and sophistication, with all sorts of facilities you couldn't get on Earth. Maybe it was the mood I was in, but it seemed to me that in their haste to install low-gravity waterchutes and helical triathlon courses, they'd rather glossed over the parts you could get on Earth. I suppose if you'd just come off a fifty-week tour of duty in a space station the Complex would have seemed like luxury, but for a normal Earthwoman, it was a bit on the spartan side. And the local day was only twenty-two-and-a-bit hours long. The asteroid where the Complex is takes just under seven and a half hours to spin, so they took three spins and called it a day. Which meant I woke up tired and cross each morning.
When I met Zoë in the bar, I ended up telling her all this at great length. Once I'd got it all off my chest, I felt a bit better and asked her how she was finding things.
"Bluntly, I'm bored," she said. "Bored, bored, bored. When you bumped into me this afternoon, I was on my way to play zero-G tennis. Just taking an existing game and playing it in weightless conditions doesn't automatically make it thrilling, in my opinion. And all the young men insisted their girlfriends did it wearing skirts. Well, you can imagine. It nearly put me off my dinner. Sorry, have I upset you?"
I was still a bit sensitive to any mentions of young men and girlfriends, but I tried not to show it. On the other hand, I could just picture Tim holding up something borderline indecent and demanding I play tennis in it. His new girl was welcome to him.
"How do you come to be here?" I asked.
"I won an award at work. You know the sort of thing. If someone's saved the company half-a-million credits, or improved the efficiency of the Bernalium cycle, they get a pat on the back and a choice of prizes from some company that packages and sells fun by the metre. Oh, and a hideous chrome-plated thing with their name engraved on it. On a stick."
"You're getting cynical in your old age."
Zoë put her head in her hands. "People keep saying that."
"And you chose to come here?"
"Yes. Most of the other options seemed to be cookery courses run by second-rate celebrity chefs. Who cooks these days?"
"I suppose people go to meet the chefs."
"Not my idea of fun." Zoë shook her head. "Whereas, in theory, this place could be. It's just... all these sports seem so unadventurous. There's no element of risk."
"I'd have thought you'd had enough risk to last you a lifetime," I said. She hadn't wanted to talk much about whatever it was happened to her on that space station. I'd seen it on the news at the time, of course. Life-support failure and six or seven people killed. If the alternative to boredom was that sort of thing I was ready to put up with boredom.
Zoë seemed to be thinking along the same lines. "You'd think so, wouldn't you? That's the logical approach. But there's something in here" – she tapped her head – "that seems to work better if I'm in danger."
"And you haven't found any here?"
"Have you?"
I shrugged. "Well, I wasn't looking for it. But I take your point. Have you done the moon buggy racing yet?"
"I do that tomorrow, I think. I don't hold out any great hopes for it."
That took the conversation onto the various activities the Complex offered, and that kept us busy for a while. After that we got on to trying to embarrass each other with stupid things we'd done at school, and that lasted the rest of the evening.
*
When the bar closed, we went back to my suite. I don't know how long Zoë would have stayed, but before I'd even managed to offer her a nightcap the comms panel buzzed. It turned out to be a call for Zoë – everyone staying at the Complex wears locator bracelets, so they can track you down wherever you are – and I went into the bedroom to give her some privacy. The call was quite a long one, and after she'd hung up she followed me into the bedroom and sat on the bed beside me, looking very serious. In the bar, with a few drinks inside her, she'd shown a bit of animation, but whatever she'd heard seemed to have sobered her completely.
"You know what I was saying earlier?" she said. "About wanting to take risks?"
I nodded.
"How do you feel about taking some now?"
I wasn't sure how I felt, so I stalled. "Whatever do you mean?"
Zoë leaned forward and lowered her voice. "Lily, will you swear not to tell anybody this?"
"Are you serious?"
"Of course I am."
She was, too. I havered for a bit, but ended up promising to keep whatever she told me secret.
"There's been a death here. Some time today. And there are people– well, I can't tell you who they are, but they seem to think it's murder."
"I think you'd better explain," I said. "Who's been murdered?"
Zoë was still sitting on the bed, and when she spoke she sounded as cool as a cucumber. I'd noticed earlier, when we were chatting in the bar, that nothing seemed to faze her. It was as if her mind had a scratch-resistant plastic coating.
"I'll start at the beginning," she said. "A while ago, I found myself doing a temporary job for an agency. Except the agency turned out to be a front for– well, let's say a security organisation. And after I'd finished, they made it very clear that they were keeping my contact details on file.
"Just now they rang me up. They had an agent somewhere here, and he didn't report in when he was supposed to. A search was made and he was found dead in his room. Maybe it was just natural causes, but they're suspicious people and they can't rule out the possibility of foul play. They won't be able to get another operative out here for a couple of days, so they looked down the guest list, and found me. Obviously I'm an amateur, but rather me than nothing."
"So they want you to play detective?"
"That's it."
"But what can you hope to find in two days? Why can't you leave it until the real detective arrives?"
"Think it through," Zoë said. "You're up to no good. You find there's a secret agent nosing around, and he's discovered what you're doing. You kill him – we'll come back to that. Are you with me so far?"
"Yes."
"Good. Now, you know it'll take two days to send out a replacement. What do you do?"
I thought. "I try to get away."
"You can't. The space terminal's been shut down. That has happened, by the way. I saw the notice in reception this evening. They say it's a technical fault."
"Then I spend the time covering my tracks, so when the new detective comes he can't find any evidence against me."
Zoë shook her head. "That wasn't what I was thinking. Assume the man was murdered, and it was premeditated. The murderer knows that in two to three days he'll be up to his neck in detectives. But he goes ahead with the murder. Why?"
I had to think for quite a bit before I saw what she was driving at.
"Whatever he's up to, he's still doing it. And he thinks he can finish it before the detectives get here."
"There you are, then," Zoë said, looking very pleased with herself.
"But what does he do after that?"
"Well, he still can't get away, but perhaps it doesn't matter so much by then. Completing his mission might be more important to him than escaping."
"But hang on. If you're right about all this, and the murderer finds out you're investigating, he'll try to kill you too."
"That's right. I told you this was risky. Can you do something for me?"
"What?"
"Have you got a pen and paper?"
"In the dressing table. Middle drawer."
She crossed to the dressing table, found a notepad and pen, tore off a sheet of paper, scribbled a few lines on it, folded it in half, and gave it to me.
"If anything happens to me, read this and do what it says," she said. "And now I think I ought to get some sleep. Good night, and thank you for an enjoyable evening."
All I could manage was a strangled "But...". I don't know what I'd been expecting Zoë to do, but certainly not that she'd go meekly off to bed like that. "Is that safe?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. What else would you suggest?"
"You could sleep here," I suggested. "We wouldn't have to share the bed or anything. I could sleep on the floor, or in a chair."
"That's very kind of you." She bent down and examined the bed, her mind temporarily focused on this new problem. "Actually, I think this bed's modular. If you undid the right bolts it would probably come in two and we'd have half each."
"Oh, then–"
"But I still don't think it's a good idea. I've been told I'm not a good roommate. Apparently I talk in my sleep. Good night."
This time, she really did go. I don't know how badly I'd have slept if she had stayed, but it could hardly have been much worse than I managed on my own.