William F. Temple - Shoot at the Moon, page 16
It all rang true enough. Pettigue couldn’t possibly have invented that hysterical duologue.
I said, “Yes, I can understand how you felt, Pet. Tell me, did you notice where Miss Marley happened to be at the moment when Thomson was struck?”
“No. I didn’t even know when that moment was.”
“Of course, of course. Your radio was off.”
“Apart from that, Captain, her digging and mine were on diametrically opposite sides of the ship. Therefore, the ship would block my view, anyway. And hers, of course. I didn’t know that she had returned to the ship until I went past the cairn and saw her and Dr. Thomson there.”
I chewed on that and a fingernail for a while. If what he said were true, then he didn’t, after all, arrive at the ship at the same time as Thomson but a fair time after the doctor was dead.
Then, “Right, thank you, Pet. I didn’t know you had it in you to be so explicit. It’s one hell of a situation. I don’t know how I’m going to break the news to them back at G.H.Q. This has grown into a really classic case of a disastrous expedition.”
“I’m the Jonah,” said Pettigue softly, unhappily. “Every expedition I join ends in disaster. This is the last one. If I ever get back alive, I shall retire.”
I gnawed some more nail, regarding him.
“Do you have any reason to suppose you may not get back alive, Pet?”
“Well, when you consider that two of us have been killed violently and mysteriously, in so short a space, there seems no reason to assume that that’s the end of it. I don’t know what’s behind these events, but I’m very frightened of it. I can’t help it, although I try to. The fact remains that by nature I’m neither courageous nor optimistic. Any one of us may be struck down next.”
I was reminded of Thomson himself saying much the same.
“Any one of us—except the murderer,” I amended for him.
He turned away, and I saw him shiver.
chapter eleven
The two unpleasant tasks were done.
I had reported Thomson’s death. And we had buried him.
The dismay and confusion at Space Service G.H.Q. were deep and wide. I had to give the chiefs time both to absorb and confer on the facts. (The facts were of my selection. I didn’t include L. A. Marley’s radio performance, but I did mention that Thomson had seemed overwrought.)
The interment was carried out during the interval between the calling of the conference and the transmission of its conclusions.
I can’t say that I had come to like Thomson, precisely, before the end. But I had come to feel sorry for him and (maybe because I was prone to feel sorry for myself) to regard him as a kind of fellow sufferer: we both had Lou trouble. Anyhow, I felt no inclination to dance at his funeral.
If Pettigue did, he conquered the impulse. He appeared quite unmoved.
L. A. Marley showed some concern, though, about her ex-husband. She was concerned that he shouldn’t be buried anywhere near her father and so spoil the splendid isolation of the great man’s monument.
She talked as though we were burying a dog.
And she waited impatiently as I stumbled through the service; she was studying the properties of Marlionum and was anxious to get back to work. Pettigue had mentioned something to her about his study of the stuff, and this had persuaded her to resume their joint examination and postpone further prospecting in the area.
Thomson’s shroud was his space suit. Unlike the Marley case, there was small point to taking it back as an exhibit. A pulverized face plate was a pulverized face plate; that was all there was to it.
L. A. Marley, who seemed to have the pyramids of Cairo in mind, held that Thomson’s memorial cairn should not, out of respect, be so high as Colonel Marley’s, but rather be like the Second Pyramid in relation to Cheops’.
I had to remind myself that L. A. Marley was only an embodied symptom of mental illness and not responsible for all she said. All the same, this idiocy was hard for me to take.
I limited myself to a single comment: “As the man said, death levels all things.”
And—minus feminine help—built Thomson’s pyramid every bit as tall as Marley’s.
G.H.Q. came through, at last, with the results of their deliberations.
First, I was censured for poor judgment, for lack of control over my crew, and for my carelessness in letting them get killed, maybe murdered.
I passed the buck back like a hand grenade.
I replied that they had selected, or at least condoned the choice of, my ill-assorted and willful crew. That they had selected me also; I certainly hadn’t volunteered. That the causes of the deaths were still unknown, but if they had any solutions to offer they would be preferable to blind censure.
Second, I was ordered to confine Pettigue and Miss Marley to their cabins—for their own safety, they added ambiguously.
“What do you mean by ‘confine’?” I asked.
Lock them in, they said.
I was reminded that Thomson had once advised me to lock Pettigue in his cabin. Even I didn’t think to point out at the time that this was impossible. We tend to assume usual conditions and not notice what’s under our noses.
I told G.H.Q. that if they cared to acquaint themselves with the plans of their ship, they would see that Miss Marley’s cabin was the only room on board which had been fitted with a lock— presumably for her own safety, I added, sardonically and with lamentable taste.
Oh, they said.
“Shall I lock them both in Miss Marley’s cabin?” I pursued.
No, they said.
“Then which of them shall I lock up?”
“That must be left to your own judgment, Captain.”
“But you’ve just told me that my judgment is poor.”
Do as you’re told, they said. And by the way, they added, wrap up the expedition and return to earth as soon as you can. Too bad that you let things get out of hand after you reached the moon. But at least you did reach it and so prove that the future lies with atomic spaceships like the Endeavor. It showed that we could still lead the world.
“Thank you, gentlemen. You’ve made me feel proud and happy, and more than a little suspicious,” I said, and signed off.
I suspected they wanted to coax me back to London and give me a fair trial. Maybe the time had come for me to don my deerstalker cap and try to track down some kind of evidence which pointed in a direction definitely away from me. I didn’t dwell on any fancies about which direction that might turn out to be.
I took a spare helmet from the space-suit bay out to the spot where Thomson had died. Then I began experimenting.
I set the helmet on the ground and lifted a large piece of rock from Marley’s cairn. On earth I should have strained over its dead weight. Here it was but a fraction of that weight. Either L. A. Marley or little Pettigue could have lifted it quite easily.
I raised it above my head with both hands, then hurled it with all my strength at the helmet’s face plate. My aim was pretty good. The rock smashed silently against the plate, dropped, and lay still.
It had remained intact. So had the face plate.
Clearplast was tough stuff all right. If I were to repeat this test on earth, with the rock’s weight increased sixfold, the face plate would still survive. For it would, in effect, be an identical test. The weight ratio was irrelevant; it was the inertia of the rock which counted, the force of impact. And the inertia, which caused the damage, would be the same on earth as on its satellite.
Just to clinch it, I tried again a few times with other rocks thrown from different angles. Never a crack appeared in the clear-plast.
Right; it hadn’t been done that way.
I had brought with me a geologist’s hammer similar to the type carried by Pettigue and L. A. Marley. It wasn’t all that big, of course, but there was a chance that, if swung ferociously, it would break the face plate.
But again clearplast withstood my attack. And while no one was likely to mistake me for Hercules, I doubted if my muscles were punier than those of my brace of suspects.
Correction: brace of former suspects.
For I could not see how either could have killed Thomson; the only weapons they had on hand were proven ineffectual.
Where did Sherlock Holmes go from here?
I gazed literally into space, the illimitable reaches of it beyond the horizon. At that moment it looked an inviting sort of place to go and get lost in. For I didn’t relish going back to earth to face the music. Not so much for my sake as for Lou’s. The pro tecs there might find a way to pin murder on her where I had failed.
If they did, the verdict could only be “Guilty but insane.”
And that would end any hope of Lou returning to me and of our sharing our lives.
For a few mad moments I considered kidnaping her, turning my back on earth and driving the Endeavor onward, seeking an improbable sanctuary in some comer of the solar system. If we survived, we should be beyond the reach of the law for many years: there was only one Endeavor.
Pettigue would be a complication, though. Maybe if we took him along we could train him to be our butler. On the other hand, if I could prove that he was the killer, it wouldn’t matter; we could just leave him behind.
This nonsense streaming through my mind was the product of defeat and despair. Neither I nor anyone else was getting anywhere. L. A. Marley remained L. A. Marley. Pettigue remained an enigma. And Colonel Marley and Dr. Thomson remained dead—and I still didn’t know the reason why.
I pulled myself together and examined that obstinate face plate again. So far as I could see, it wasn’t even scratched. I reflected that it would take a pneumatic drill to break through it.
Drill! My thoughts froze on the word, then moved slowly on.
When I had caught up with the pair beside Thomson’s body, Pettigue was carrying a drill, but L. A. Marley was not. She said she’d left hers back at her digging.
Those drills packed a lot of power. They derived it from the new-type Pyke battery—a super job, fitting into the handle. The drill itself didn’t rotate; it vibrated at a terrific rate, battering its way through material.
It could very well be the murder weapon in the Thomson case.
So far as I knew, L. A. Marley hadn’t returned to that spot where she had been prospecting. Since I questioned her, there had been only one occasion on which she’d been outside the ship: her reluctant attendance of Thomson’s burial.
She seemed to have lost interest in her original survey plan —maybe because there was no fetch-and-carry man now. Instead, she and Pettigue had become absorbed in further work on Marl-onum in the lab.
I left the helmet lying there and walked out to her abandoned digging. Sure enough, a drill lay there at the edge of it. Her statement looked to be true.
I picked up the drill and went back. I knelt by the helmet and leveled the drill. At which moment a movement caught my eye. The door of the ship’s secondary air lock was opening.
Then down the ladder, stepping precisely, came the space-suited figure of L. A. Marley. I stayed my hand, watched, and again wondered how Lou projected sex through a space suit and why L. A. Marley signally failed to.
Maybe it was merely a matter of intention.
She came and stood over me, like a critical foreman.
“Exactly what are you doing here, Captain Brunei?”
Her voice was like having icicles stuck into my ears.
“Exactly what are you doing here, Miss Marley? I thought your research on Marlionum was highly important and pressing.”
“So it is. But we have treated all the sheets now except one, which Mr. Pettigue is still working on. We need to restock— urgently.”
“Sorry, but I’m fresh out of Marlionum.”
“Is that totally senseless observation intended to be humor, Captain?”
“It’s no more senseless than your making a personal appearance to tell me you’re out of Marlionum. You could have contacted me by radio more easily from the ship, Miss Marley.”
I was attempting to disconcert her, to fracture that glacial composure. I guessed she’d witnessed my rock-throwing experiments; the porthole of the lab overlooked this spot. Why had she hastened out to investigate? L. A. Marley wasn’t given to idle curiosity. She must have some motive.
Was she afraid I might stumble on the murder method? Was she therefore trying to divert my attention and head me away to the Marlionum deposit?
She said expressionlessly, “There is no need for me to tell you anything or to request anything from you. As a matter of fact, I was on my way to get the Marlionum myself and pick up my rock drill en route. But I see that you have already collected the drill. Please return it to me.”
She held out her gauntleted hand.
The old uneasy suspicions came creeping back just when I was beginning to dispel them. And the old sickness of heart came with them.
“Presently,” I said. “Look, Miss Marley, I regret it, but I’m having difficulty in believing you. Why should you walk all that way when the runabout is available? Remember, you found that walk more than a little exhausting the last time. Don’t tell me you’re just observing the old tradition of making the trail on foot. The trail has already been broken. Besides, you say the replenishment is needed urgently. So why waste all that time? It’s not like you to waste time, Miss Marley.”
Her hand dropped to her side and she made no reply. At last I’d breached her defenses, but I wasn’t cheering myself because of it.
“You wanted to know what I’m doing here,” I went on. “Very well, I’ll show you.”
I started the drill and applied it to the face plate of the spare helmet. I’ve forgotten how many times the point of that drill vibrated per second, but a mere three seconds’ worth of vibrations were sufficient. The plate first starred, then split into sharp shards which fell away.
I got slowly to my feet, seeing a vision. There’s Pettigue, goaded at last by Thomson’s malice to the point of frenzy, waiting behind the cairn. As Thomson reaches it, he steps out and lunges with his deadly drill. Thomson barely has time to cry out, then it’s over. Pettigue, still possessed by maniacal fury, smashes at his persecutor’s face, either with the drill or his hammer.
He is avenged. He is a man who has proved to himself that he can hit back at the bully and even destroy him.
Pettigue, I knew, had a desperate need to prove something of the kind.
I looked at L. A. Marley. She was certainly disconcerted now. Indeed, she seemed dazed. I couldn’t guess what was passing through her mind and I didn’t ask. Any comments just now could be dangerous, for they would be broadcast. While there was no radio in the lab, Pettigue could have been watching me from there and gone along to the signals room to eavesdrop. Therefore I must be cautious.
“Let’s go back in now, Miss Marley. We’ll go into the Marlionum question with Pettigue. Then, if I judge the need absolutely necessary, I’ll take the runabout out to the deposit.”
Still unnaturally quiet and subdued, she followed me into the ship.
Pettigue was in the lab. Maybe he’d been there all the time. Maybe he’d just stolen back there. Anyhow, there he was, peering through a binocular microscope at a shred of Marlionum with a convincing appearance of concentration.
“Pettigue,” I said, and he started.
He looked up at us. “Oh… Yes, Captain?”
“Miss Marley tells me that you want some more of that stuff. When I discussed it with you once before, you didn’t seem to think it of much value.”
“I think I said it had no obvious monetary value, Captain. I had no reason then to suspect it had any particular value, scientifically speaking, either, except that its unusual structure might contribute something to atomics. But the more Miss Marley and I have examined it, the more we’re persuaded that this structure contains something analogous to the organic pattern Miss Marley had detected in certain carbonaceous meteorites.”
“That’s important?”
He nodded.
“Very. Its implications are tremendous. It’s vital that we take back with us a fresh supply of this element—virgin sheets, as it were—for thorough examination in properly equipped laboratories. This small one has obvious limitations. We just haven’t the tools. We’re groping, and our guesses can’t be verified. One needs an electron microscope, for one tiling.”
Miss Marley added nothing to this. She was watching me, not Pettigue. Her eyes held unspoken questions and it seemed to me that I caught a fugitive glimpse of the early, troubled Lou in them. Or maybe I was just making myself see what I was looking for.
I said to Pettigue, “You’ve gone about as far as you can go then?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“It’s just as well,” I said, “for you won’t be able to do any further work in here, anyway. I’m sorry, Pet, but G.H.Q. has ordered me to confine you to your cabin. Which in practice means you’ll have to change cabins with Miss Marley, since hers has a lock.”
This time I was sure Lou, startled, peeped from behind the mask. But L. A. Marley still held her tongue.
Pettigue didn’t. He burst out, “This is plain damn silly, you know. What grounds did they give?”
I shrugged. “What does it matter? I have to do it, and you’ll have to accept it. The arguing of whys and wherefores can only be done back at G.H.Q. So let it wait. Miss Marley, would you mind removing your personal belongings from your cabin and transferring them to Mr. Pettigue’s?”
She went without a word.
I said, “The same, but in reverse, goes for you, Pet.”
“Don’t call me ‘Pet,’ ” he snapped, still angry. “You’re no friend of mine. For a time you fooled me—I thought you weren’t wholly unsympathetic. I began to trust you. But obviously you were only angling for confidences and trying to trip me up. G.H.Q. would never have issued an order like that if you hadn’t persuaded them to. They know nothing hut what you’ve reported to them. Heaven knows what nonsense you’ve told them, but this time I’m not taking it lying down. I’ll not have any more mud flung at my name. You’re no better than Thomson—in fact, worse. At least he accused me to my face.”
