'Someone trying to sabotage the base,' Lewis spoke up. 'A foreign agent.' He looked at Molotov. Take that, Russian finger-pointer. 'Maybe Mickey or somebody stumbled on something strategic.'
'Someone chasing the meteorite for something other than money,' Lena Jindrova suggested. 'Maybe it has evidence of Martian life. Something philosophical. Theological.'
'Hmmm, interesting,' Norse said. 'Dana, you read the Bible. Does life on another planet threaten your view of our world?'
'My beliefs are compatible with science. And I didn't kill anybody.'
'The government playing with our heads,' the postdoc Gina Brindisi suggested. She pointed at the psychologist. 'They sent you down here to watch us all go nuts.'
Norse shrugged to concede the point. 'It's true I'm in shrink nirvana. As George said, we're all balmy and getting nuttier by the minute.' Uneasy laughter again. 'But at this point I'd rather have you sane.'
'Maybe they're faking everything,' spoke up Gerald Follet. 'It's a hoax. They want us to panic, like that radio broadcast of War of the Worlds.'
'Except the bodies are real,' Geller said glumly. 'Take a walk out to Boot Hill if you don't believe that.'
'Opportunity,' Abby suddenly said. 'You've got a score to settle and people are dropping like flies. What better time to murder? It's lost in the crowd.'
'That's good,' Norse nodded. 'I like that one. It could be any of us, taking revenge on anyone.' He scanned their faces. People were looking more confused than ever. More wary and suspicious than ever. Lewis didn't like the way the meeting was going. How was this a help?
'What good are these ideas if they're not testable?' Hiro interrupted as if reading Lewis's mind. 'We can speculate our way into the grave.'
'Good question. Ideas?'
'Somehow figure out who really boinked Gabriella,' Geller suggested. 'Who was lover enough to care, to be jealous.'
'Oh please,' Dana groaned.
'No, really. To eliminate some of us.'
'That doesn't eliminate anybody,' Mendoza said with exasperation. 'Maybe it was someone she wouldn't sleep with. Maybe it was a jealous woman. Maybe it had nothing to do with her love life.'
'Well, then eliminate people who couldn't have been around the victims. Make a spreadsheet of our whereabouts.'
'So where were you, George, when these deaths occurred?'
'I don't know.'
Mendoza threw up his hands in exasperation.
'What about your files?' Abby asked the psychologist quietly. 'Don't you have basic information on all of us? Didn't Rod? Doesn't Nancy? Don't you have suspicions?'
Norse opened his mouth as if to speak and then stopped a moment, as if considering the idea for the first time. 'Not from the files. You all left the box next to 'Are you a murderer?' blank on your application forms. Making someone a murderer on the basis of a psychological screening test is a little reckless, don't you think?' There was a slight edge to his voice as he replied to her, this woman who'd turned him down.
Abby looked unsatisfied. He hadn't denied having a suspicion.
'I don't see that this discussion is getting us anywhere,' Molotov complained. 'I have my suspicion, which I have voiced.' He looked again at Lewis. 'But unless someone wants to confess, we are no closer than before. It is a nice try, Doctor Bob, but you cannot rationalize what makes no sense.'
'You can't rationalize without information,' Norse corrected. Now he looked directly at Lewis. Suddenly he was the teacher, a lesson about to become apparent. 'I've led you through this speculative exercise to demonstrate the dangers of jumping to conclusions, but I've also done a little investigation of my own. Since the shock of finding Gabriella I've considered all the possibilities you just voiced, thought of all the ways a murderer might leave clues. Everything we know is circumstantial, but in our desperate situation maybe that has to be enough. Wade?'
Pulaski stood up. He had positioned himself between Lewis and the door. The cook stood with his legs apart, as if bracing for attack, and looked somber, even sad, his new spear his staff. 'You all know what good little recyclers we are,' the cook began. There were smiles and a few snickers. They were supposed to separate all trash into labeled containers in the cold of the dome. Miscreants who dropped things into the wrong bin brought a regular outburst from Linda Brown, who was in charge of the recycling program. She'd threatened to kill one or two. Hyperbole, of course, but the bins had been one more source of casual tension. 'We have no incinerator at the Pole. We have no dump. Everything that flies into the Pole eventually flies out of it. Every bit of garbage we've generated this winter is still here.'
He paused. They were quiet, waiting.
'The sign around Gabriella's neck was made from letters cut from a magazine. So I looked in the paper bin for its source. What I found at the bottom was this.' He held up a copy of a popular science and environmental journal. 'It has an article on meteorites.' He flipped it open, showing ragged pages. 'And a lot of letters cut out from the middle.'
Norse was looking at Lewis. 'And where's the cover, Wade?' he asked the cook. 'Where's the address label that will tell us whose magazine it was?'
'It was Jed!' Dana gasped. 'I've seen him read that. We all have!'
'From the library…' Lewis objected.
'Torn off and missing,' Pulaski said. He nodded at Dana. 'So I checked Jed's room. Couldn't find a thing except…'
'Yes?'
'There were ashes in the soup can I'd given him the first night to use as a chamber pot. He'd never bothered to give it back.'
Lewis stood up, his head dizzy, dumbfounded by a combination of outrage and fear. He was being set up. 'That's a lie,' he choked. Everyone was looking at him. Even Abby looked confused.
'I've bagged them for lab analysis in the spring,' Pulaski said, holding up a baggie. 'Maybe the lab people can tell if they came from the magazine stock. In the meantime…'
'This is absurd, those ashes could have come from anywhere.'
'I saw you reading it!' Dana yelled.
'The magazine must have been stolen- '
'See! This is what I am telling you!' Molotov shouted. 'Lewis, Lewis, Lewis! Every time it is Jed Lewis!'
'The hell it is!'
'What do you propose we do, Alexi?' Norse asked quietly.
'If there is only one more Spryte, then I agree, I don't want to give it to a murderer. If we cannot send Lewis away, then I do not want him wandering around. We need to lock him up. I don't trust him.'
'Dammit, I'm being framed! That's no proof!'
'There is no proof of your innocence, either.'
'Guilty until proven innocent, right, Alexi?' Lewis said heatedly. 'Like Tyson? Is that how you did it in the gulags?'
The Americans shifted uncomfortably.
'Prove that you did not do it,' the Russian insisted. 'Everyone saw you with Gabriella. No one saw her since.'
'I did not cut up that magazine,' Lewis insisted. 'Wouldn't I hide it? Would I leave the ashes in my own damn room? Think, dammit!'
'This is what we are doing, thinking about what has happened!'
The silence was thick, a congealing presumption of guilt.
'So we put him in the sauna,' Pulaski suddenly summed up. He'd thought this through. 'Just to be safe. It's our thickest box. We can put a crossbeam outside the door. We keep him locked down until this is resolved. He's right, it isn't proof, but we can't prove he didn't do it, either. Or anyone else. So I say safety is priority one. No more wandering around. No one leaves the dome. No one even goes down the archways to the generators or the fuel. We block up the entrances so no one can exit the dome and no one can enter. We search every inch of this aluminum beanie. We watch each other. We enter a state of siege.'
