The wallscreen image changed to show Ripley’s dead face. Fuchs felt Amanda shudder beside him and reached out to hold her hand. Ripley’s eyes were open, his mouth agape, his milk-chocolate skin somehow paler than Fuchs remembered it. This is the face of death, he said silently. He almost shuddered himself.
Cardenas tapped her keyboard again and the image zoomed in on the area just above the bridge of Ripley’s nose.
“See that faint discoloration?” Cardenas asked.
Fuchs saw nothing unusual, but Amanda said, “Yes, just a tiny little circle. It looks… almost as if it had been charred a little.”
Cardenas nodded grimly. “One more piece of the puzzle.” She reached into her desk drawer.
Fuchs saw her pull out a thin strip of tape, not even ten centimeters long.
“This was stuck on Ripley’s right glove when he was found,” Cardenas said, handing the tape to Fuchs.
He stared at it. Hand-lettered on the tape in indelible ink was BUCHANAN.
Coldly, mercilessly, Cardenas said, “Buchanan is a mechanic for Humphries Space Systems. He has access to tools such as hand lasers.”
“A hand laser?” Fuchs asked. “You think a hand laser killed Ripley?”
Cardenas said, “I got one from the HSS warehouse and tried it on my soysteak dinner. One picosecond blast ruptures the cells pretty much the way Ripley’s brain cells were destroyed.”
“Do you mean that this man Buchanan deliberately murdered Ripley?” Amanda asked, her voice faint with shock.
“That’s exactly what I mean,” said Cardenas, as hard and implacable as death itself.
CHAPTER 14
By the time he and Amanda got back to their own quarters, Fuchs was blazing with rage. He went straight to the closet by the minikitchen and started rummaging furiously through it.
“Lars, what are you going to do?”
“Murderers!” Fuchs snarled, pawing through the tools and gadgets stored on the closet shelves. “That’s what he’s brought here. Hired killers!”
“But what are you going to do?”
He pulled out a cordless screwdriver, hefted it in one hand. “It’s not much, but it will have to do. It’s heavy enough to make a reasonable club.”
Amanda reached for him, but he brushed her away. “Where are you going?” she asked, breathless with fear. “To find this man Buchanan.”
“Alone? By yourself?”
“Who else is there? How much time do we have before this Buchanan takes off in one of Humphries’s ships and leaves Ceres altogether?”
“You can’t go after him!” Amanda pleaded. “Let the law handle this!”
Storming to the door, he roared, “The law? What law? We don’t even have a village council. There is no law here!”
“Lars, if he’s really a hired killer, he’ll kill you!” He stopped at the door, tucked the screwdriver into the waistband of his slacks. “I’m not a complete fool, Amanda. I won’t let him kill me, or anyone else.”
“But how can you…”
He grabbed the door, slid it open, and marched out into the tunnel, leaving her standing there. Billows of dust followed his footsteps.
The Pub was crowded when Fuchs got there. He had to push his way to the bar.
The barkeep recognized him, but barely smiled. “Hello, Lars. Gonna call another town meeting?”
“Do you know a man named Buchanan?” Fuchs asked, without preamble.
The barkeep nodded warily.
“Do you know where I can find him?”
The man’s eyes shifted slightly, then came back to lock onto Fuchs’s. “What do you want him for?”
“I need to talk to him,” said Fuchs, struggling to keep his voice even, calm.
“He’s a badass, Lars.”
“I’m not here to start a fight,” Fuchs said. He even felt it was true.
“Well, that’s Buchanan right down there at the end of the bar.”
“Thank you.”
Fuchs accepted a frosted aluminum goblet of beer, then wormed his way through the crowd until he was next to Buchanan. The man was with two friends, talking to a trio of miniskirted young women, their drinks on the bar in front of them. Buchanan was tall, with wide sloping shoulders, and young enough to have a flat midsection. His blond hair was cut short, except for a tiny imitation matador’s twist at the back of his head. His face was lean, unlined, relaxed.
“You are Mr. Buchanan?” Fuchs asked, putting his aluminum goblet on the bar.
Buchanan turned to him, looked Fuchs over and saw a stocky older rock rat in a shapeless gray velour pullover and wrinkled slacks with the build of a weasel and a sour expression on his broad, heavy-featured face. The guy had a tool of some sort tucked in his waistband.
“I’m Buchanan,” he said. “Who the fuck are you?”
Fuchs replied, “I am a friend of the late Niles Ripley.”
He said it quietly, flatly, but it was as if he had shouted the words through a power megaphone. Everything in the Pub stopped. Conversation, laughter, even motion seemed to freeze in place.
Buchanan leaned his right elbow on the bar as he faced Fuchs. “Ripley won’t be blowing his horn around these parts anymore,” he said, grinning. One of the men behind him snickered nervously.
Fuchs said, “Your name tag was found in his dead hand.”
“Oh, so that’s where it got to. I was wondering where I’d lost it.”
“You killed him.”
Buchanan reached slowly behind him and pulled a hand laser from the pouch strapped to his waist. He laid it down carefully on the bar, next to his drink. Its power cord trailed back to his belt; its business end pointed at Fuchs.
“If I did kill him, what’re you going to do about it?”
Fuchs took a breath. The lava-hot rage he had felt only a few minutes earlier had turned to ice now. He felt cold, glacially calm, but not one nanobit less enraged than he had been before.
He replied softly, “I thought you and I could go back to Selene and let the authorities there investigate the murder.”
Buchanan’s jaw dropped open. He gawked at Fuchs, standing like a stubborn little bull in front of him. Then he lifted his head and brayed with laughter. His two friends laughed, also.
No one else did.
Fuchs slapped Buchanan’s laughing face, hard. Shocked, Buchanan touched his bleeding lip, then reached for the laser on the bar. Fuchs was prepared for that. He clamped Buchanan’s hand to the bar with a viselike grip and pulled the screwdriver from his waistband with his right hand.
The laser cracked once. Fuchs’s aluminum goblet went spinning, leaking beer through a tiny hole, while Fuchs thumbed the screwdriver on and jammed it into Buchanan’s chest. Blood geysered and Buchanan looked terribly surprised, then slumped to the floor, gurgling briefly before he went silent forever.
Splashed with Buchanan’s blood, still holding the buzzing screwdriver in his right hand, Fuchs picked up the hand laser. Buchanan’s fall had wrenched the power cord out of the base of its grip.
He glanced down at the dead body, then looked at Buchanan’s two friends. Their eyes were wide, their mouths agape. Unconsciously, they both backed away from Fuchs.
Without another word, Fuchs turned around and strode out of the silent Pub.
