Golden Fleece

“So what the fuck happened?” he demanded, his voice its usual stentorian bellow. The little man looked out over the group of people he had summoned to his office: Aaron Rossman, standing, hands in pockets; Kirsten Hoogenraad, seated in the chair in front of Aaron, long legs crossed; I-Shin Chang, triple Gorlov’s size, a four-armed mountain of flesh with a chair hidden beneath it. Three others: Donald Mugabe, who was Gorlov’s assistant; Par Lindeland, a psychiatrist; and Pamela Thorogood, who had been Diana’s closest friend.

“Medically, it’s pretty straightforward,” said Kirsten, after waiting to see if anyone else was going to speak first. “She entered the ramfield, which, of course, funnels hydrogen ions into our engines. The ions are moving at nearly the speed of light. She died, instantly I should think, of severe radiation exposure.”

Gorlov nodded. “I saw the report on that. What’s this about the radiation levels being too high?”

Kirsten shrugged. “I’m not sure. She seemed to be exposed to about two orders of magnitude more radioactivity than one might reasonably expect, given the circumstances. Of course, even the normal level of radioactivity would have been enough to kill her.”

“And the excess means?”

She shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

“Great,” said Gorlov. “Anybody else?”

Chang spoke up. “We’re working on that now. I’m assuming it’s an anomaly—a temporary aberration in the fuel flow. JASON is helping my people model it.”

“Does it present a danger to the ship?”

“No. The habitat torus is completely shielded, regardless, and all the diagnostics JASON has run show the Bussard ramjet to be operating exactly to specifications.”

“Okay,” said Gorlov. “What else? I see here that Chandler had a nosebleed.”

“That’s right,” said Kirsten. “A little one.”

“Did she use cocaine? Slash? Any other stimulant that’s inhaled?”

“No. There was no evidence of anything like that in her body.”

“Then why the nosebleed?”

“I’m not sure,” said Kirsten. “There’s no sign of an abrasion or contusion on her face, so it’s not the result of an impact. It could have been induced by stress.”

“Or,” said Chang, “by a drop in pressure. The ionized hydrogen flow would have played havoc with Orpheus’s internal systems. Cabin-pressure control might have been lost, resulting in a sudden shift in pressure.”

“Wouldn’t that have caused an oxygen mask to drop from the ceiling?”

Chang sighed. “It’s not an airplane, Your Honor. Normally, passengers and crew would be wearing their own environmental suits and would have put on their helmets and used tanked air in such a circumstance. A warning bell should have sounded, but the flight recorder was wiped clean— apparently the systems overload triggered a reformatting of the optical platter—so we can’t tell whether it actually did or not.”

“All right,” said Gorlov, “so we know how she died. I’m still waiting for someone to tell me why.”

Par Lindeland had done his best to grow a Freud-like beard, but his follicles just weren’t up to the task. Instead, a blond wispiness ran along the angle of his jaw. Still, he stroked it in good psychiatrist fashion before he replied. “Obviously,” he said at last, “Dr. Chandler committed suicide.”

“Yes, yes,” said Gorlov, irritated with the Swede. “But how could that be permitted to happen?” He looked up at my camera pair mounted on the far wall. “JASON, you should have prevented this.”

I was prepared for such a statement, of course, but feigned surprise. “I beg your pardon, sir?”

“It’s your job to make sure everyone is safe at all times. How could you let this happen?”

“I was deceived,” I said.

“Deceived? How?”

“Diana told me she wanted to look inside one of the landers to get, as she put it, a feel for its cockpit dimensions. I offered to provide her with blueprints, but she said it wasn’t the same thing. She said she was thinking of designing some astrophysical test equipment to be used once we arrived in orbit around Eta Cephei IV. That equipment was to be mounted in a lander cockpit.”

“But the ship was powered up,” Gorlov snapped.

“Of course. I had to turn on the interior lighting so she could see.”

“And then what happened?”

“I wasn’t really paying attention—you’ll recall, sir, that I was engaged in one of our late-night debates and that required my full concentration. I didn’t realize what was happening until she had actually fired the main engines.”

The mayor’s voice was louder than normal. “But the hangar space door is under your control. I’ve checked with Bev Hooks: she tells me even the manual door system runs back through you, so you could have countermanded Dr. Chandler’s instructions.”

“True,” I said. “But I had to make a split-second decision. If I hadn’t opened the door—”

“You initiated the opening of the door? Not her?”