Whoever had framed me. When I put it that way there was only one answer. Opal Stone worked for the Consortium, at war with the rockjacks and controlled by Reston Jameson. The room had a vidwall and on a hunch I pointed up Reston's last interview. It was dated yesterday, and his image filled the screen.
'…very upset about this. This man already has a record for smuggling. I have being saying all along that the cost of allowing these fly-by-night singleship operators…'
I muted the audio and pointed texttrans along the bottom of the image so I didn't have to listen to his voice. He mentioned me by name and the thrust of his argument was the same as it always been. The major lines could handle cargo and passengers, the major exploration companies could handle prospecting and mining, and the murder of Opal wouldn't have happened if only…
I switched it off in disgust, unable even to read the text. He was going to use me as an excuse to shut down the singleships. I couldn't believe he was holding my smuggling record as a strike against me. Every pilot smuggled, it was practically expected.
'I smell your tension, Dylan Thurmond.' Bodyguard wrinkled his nose in way that suggested my tension didn't smell very good.
Would Reston Jameson kill one of his own senior directors? It didn't seem likely, but the only other explanation was that I had killed Opal myself and I wasn't willing to accept that one. 'I think I know what's going on.' Who else could have sent her to Jinx?
'Enlighten me.'
'Reston Jameson kills Opal and get me blamed. He uses the public outcry to shut down the independent operators. The immediate target is singleships, but it's the rockjacks he's after, of course.' I shrugged. 'Simple.' Simple to say, probably impossible to prove.
Bodyguard laid one ear flat. 'I am unconvinced.'
'Grant for a second I didn't do it. Can you think of a better motive?'
'Yes.' He wasn't believing me.
'What if she was challenging him for power in the Consortium?'
'Irrelevant. I now have two suspects. Convince me that Reston Jameson is guilty and I will kill him instead of you.'
I watched him for the rippling ears that would show he was joking, but he was dead serious. He wouldn't care that an attempt on Reston Jameson's life would almost certainly end his own. Kzinti were like that. Nor would he hesitate to kill me if he decided he wanted to.
'Help me find the truth and you can act with confidence and honor.'
Bodyguard's lips twitched. 'What do monkeys know of honor?' His claws edged out reflexively. 'It seems our interests are aligned, Dylan Thurmond.'
I took that as agreement. 'Something went badly wrong. I must have anticipated problems when I got back. I would have made some kind of record to protect myself from exactly this circumstance.'
'What sort of record?'
'Elektra's log is the most obvious answer, but perhaps that's too obvious. There are wheels within wheels here. Somewhere only I would look for it.' I thought for moment. 'I wrote her name on my palm. There're a few places on the ship I could think of.'
'Then we should get on the ship, Dylan Thurmond.'
We tubed over to the hangar bay. I could get on my own ship without disturbing the police seals over the airlocks, but when we got there we found not just seals but guards. That was a setback I probably should have expected, the Goldskins were taking no chances. Instead of crawling on board through the drive inspection ports we went up to the Constellation and got a table with a sound damper, and I tapped into the ship on my beltcomp. I wasn't really surprised to see the log empty for the last three weeks, that was expected for this kind of mission. I was slightly more surprised to see the automatically recorded navigation journal also blanked. The same was true of the engine logs. As I tabbed through Elektra's records more and more information was missing. There was only one person who had the access codes to do that. Me.
I tabbed over to Ceres flight control to check their records. They had logged Elektra departing and returning, and had her course plotted by transponder tracking to the edge of the singularity into hyperspace and then back again three weeks later. I was a little surprised at that, with all the secrecy I would've expected to have flown with the transponder off. That would be the course the Goldskins were having the Navy search. They had the radar and computing power required to track a pebble if they knew its start vector. If Opal's body was out there, they would find it sooner or later. They'd be in communication with the authorities on Jinx to get a similar search done there. Neels' promise to find her had teeth in it.
Which wasn't a very warming thought. Why are you worried? You didn't kill her. I wasn't sure I believed that anymore. Her blood was on Elektra, that was proof she'd been there. If someone is on a ship when it leaves and isn't there when it comes back the odds that they will be found alive are zero. A frame by Reston Jameson was enough of a theory to keep Bodyguard from killing me immediately, but it really didn't seem to fit the evidence. He was certainly seizing on the incident to press his agenda, but that wasn't enough of a motive for murder.
I went back to Elektra's systems and systematically went through every log file. Internal and external video, audio, communications log, they were all blank except one, engineering systems. Elektra monitors her own vital signs automatically, and for some reason that data was still intact. Unfortunately it was unlikely to hold any relevant information. I scanned the entries anyway, and saw only the activity you'd expect to see for a three-week round-trip, air pressure nominal, cabin temperature, fuel flow, power flow, gravity levels, coolant temperature and pressure; there was nothing unusual there. Evidence perhaps that the trip had been made, but little else.
Except one thing. There was a small blip upward in cabin pressure right before departure. That was normal, because once I had the locks sealed I valved liquid oxygen inboard to pressurize the cabin and make sure it held steady against any possible leaks. There were the normal slow waverings in pressure as the cabin temperature and other variables changed, and finally there was another blip downward at the end of the three weeks. That was when the ship was back in the bay and I vented the cabin to equalize pressure inside and out. If Opal Stone had gotten out at Jinx, or anywhere, that pattern would have cycled twice, once for each leg of the trip. And if she'd left through the airlock in space there would have been the small but distinctive up/down pressure blip caused by the airlock cycling.
So if she hadn't gotten out at Jinx, and she hadn't gone through the airlock, where had she gone? And how did her blood get all over Elektra? I went over the rest of the life-support data and found another anomaly. The CO2 scrubbers had been working half again as hard as I would have expected them to for two people. Had someone else been aboard, stowed away perhaps? Had that person killed Opal and then vanished along with her body? That made no sense.
'What are you learning?' Bodyguard was growing impatient.
'Nothing.' I pushed the beltcomp away. 'The log is blank. There are some question marks in the system records, but nothing that will lead us anywhere here.' I briefly outlined my findings.
'Hrrr. We need progress, human.'
I leaned back and looked up through the dome at the eternal and indifferent stars. 'We have to speak to Reston Jameson.'
'I remain unconvinced of his involvement.'
'We have to talk to him to find out.'
'Hrrr. This will be difficult.'
I nodded. We sat in silence for a while. The more I thought of it the less likely it seemed Reston Jameson was even involved. Tying him in had been the first half-plausible thing that leapt to mind under threat of having my throat ripped out. The vidwall started showing the news and I watched the moving heads and read the texttrans scrolling beneath them. It was the usual fluff, a flood down on Earth, some struldbrug trapped in a tube capsule for twelve hours, a rockjack killed in a fight with another rockjack. They did the shipping news and then the business section came up. I was bored by then and ready to leave, and then suddenly I was paying attention to the words scrolling across the screen. The Consortium was under investigation for gross financial misconduct. Reston Jameson was under indictment. The information had been provided by his missing chief financial officer, Opal Stone. Suddenly she had a motive to hire a singleship to fly to Jinx and brainblank the pilot. Suddenly Reston Jameson had a motive for murder. On the face of it, it looked like Opal believed he would act on the motivation. My doubts vanished; unfortunately that didn't help my case any. And now she's gone and There Ain't No Justice.
