Metal Boxes (13 page)

Stone watched Watkins punching numbers for a while. He slaved a display to Watkins’ display and watched numbers scrolling past as the
petty officer called a shipping container from the in-coming slot and routed it along the anti-gravity conveyer rails to the processing room. The processing room was adjacent to the main duty room and was separated by a series of plexi-glass windows. Watkins could have stood and visually compared the container numbers to the shipping bill of lading on his monitor. However, the processing room’s scanners read the identification tags on the container and verified a match. The processing room also verified the height, length, depth and weight of the items so the container could be stored in a space that matched maximum warehouse space utilization. Watkins then routed the container to the designated area suggested by the computer.

Stone checked in on every crewman on duty. He watched them pushing boxes from one spot to another, but his mind was on who, if any one, from his crew had been involved in an assault on him. He wondered briefly if he should call security and report the incident. He was embarrassed enough at being beaten without even fighting back that he decided not to
file a report.

He did
not know who had attacked him or even how many there had been. He was sure whoever had attacked him must have been smart enough to shut off their personal assistants so they had no recording of the beating. The room he had been dragged into was so dark that his p.a. should not have picked up any picture.

He pulled his
p.a. out and scanned back through the attack, but he was right. The recording did not show anything. He could hear the voices but the room was too dark to give him a picture. His attackers had stayed out of range of his p.a. video pickup when they had grabbed him in the corridor.

“Stop!” Stone suddenly shouted at Watkins. “Petty Officer Watkins, bring that container back to the processing room, now
.”

Watkins turned in his chair and said, “Which container, Mister Stone? I have looked at a hundred or so.”

“That one.” Stone pointed, knowing that it was useless to point. He hit the back button on his monitor until he found the container he had seen flying past P.O. Watkins’ station. He manually typed in the numbers of the container and called it back.

“P
.O. Watkins, put that container in the processing room back where it came from. Clear that room for manual inspection.”

“Are you nuts?” Watkins shouted. “We don’t do visual inspections. Look at this display. This is a load of munitions for the missile room. This was visually inspected and approved at the time they put the stuff in the container. And it was inspected again when it was received on the docks at Paramount Station. You can see the sign offs right on the display. Look, you can see
Lieutenant Vaarhoo signed off on this load personally.”

Stone stood and moved to stand next to Watkins’ console. He spoke as calmly as he could. “Petty Officer,
let’s forget for a moment that you have forgotten to address me by my rank, that you shouted at an officer and that you accused an officer of being mentally unstable, do you know of any regulation that prohibits me from visually inspecting any container that I want to have visually inspected?”

“Mister Stone-” Watkins began.

“So far, so good P.O.” He made sure his p.a. was synced up to the video feed for his duty crew. “Let me be very clear to all of third watch. This is a direct order: halt the movement of all containers. Do so now. Clear this processing room for a visual inspection.” He pointed at the shipping container sliding into the processing room on the conveyer rails. “I intend to personally and fully visually inspect that container.”

He stepped back to his own console and with a flick of a toggle he shut down all of the outgoing and incoming communications calls for his duty area. As he did so he realized he had shut off two on-going personal calls to the enlisted area and three incoming
feeds from entertainment channels.

“Spacer Ramirez, please seal the anti-grav rails coming into the processing area and lock down all hatches
,” Stone ordered. He shot a warning look at Watkins. “P.O. Watkins, please vent atmosphere into the processing area. All of third watch is to lock their consoles now.” He waited for a few seconds and then slaved every console to his p.a.

“Petty Officer Watkins, open both hatches between here and the processing room. Everyone in this duty center is going in there with us to visually inspect this container.”

Stone felt like he was being paranoid, but he had been attacked once today. He was not going into the processing room alone. He was not going to make it easy on anyone in his crew to hurt him ‘in an accident’. He did not see how his crew could hurt him if they were in there with him.

Spacer Ramirez raised a hand to get his attention. “Mister Stone, may I ask a question?”

Stone nodded, “Certainly Spacer, as long as it is applicable to the situation at hand.”

“Why this container, Mister Stone? I mean, between us we have moved a bunch so far today
,” Ramirez asked.

Stone replied, “That is a very good question, Spacer. I stopped this one because of a min
or discrepancy. It is very small and very insignificant. The display of the data on this container shows that this is for missile parts needed by the Periodontitis munitions department for a retro-fit project on the TADD16XLs. This display shows this container plus all internal items weighed 45,197.2 kilograms at the time the procurement department purchased these parts. It weighted 45,197.2 kilograms on the docks at Paramount Station. It weighed the same when it was put into the incoming goods storage. Why doesn’t it weigh that now?”

Ramirez looked at Watkins and shrugged.

Watkins looked up at Stone and shrugged.

Ramirez said, “It isn’t that much off, Mister Stone; only about a hundred kilos or so. Couldn’t we just tag it for
first shift and they can have Lieutenant Vaarhoo come down and re-inspect it. I mean, he did it the first time, right?”

“If this were ice cream I would say that perhaps it evaporated or someone snatched a few tubs for lunch
,” Stone said. “But these are missile parts and that is why we are going to look. I would call Lieutenant Vaarhoo now if I felt that it was necessary to have him down here. I don’t imagine that you want to wake him up for this, do you Spacer Ramirez?” He looked pointedly at Watkins. “Do you want to call the lieutenant and have him come down to re-inspect this container?

Watkins shook his head and said, “Mister Stone, inspecting a container is your call, but isn’t it a safety violation to open both hatch
es at the same time?”

“Not if you trust your crew buddies to have really locked down the rails and frozen all incoming hatches.
Are you nervous, P.O. Watkins?” Stone said.

“That I am, Mister Stone
,” Watkins nodded. “I tried to verify it was safe to open both hatches, but you have my console locked out.”

Stone smiled for the first time in what seemed like hours. “If you are nervous Petty Officer, then please review the data on my console’s display. It is locked out as well, but you can see the processing room is safe to enter.”

Watkins checked and nodded. “Yes sir. It is safe.”

“I am not a ‘sir’
, Petty Officer. I have already asked you to open those hatches. Do I need to order you to comply?” Stone asked quietly.

Watkins rushed to the hatches and punched in the open codes and said, “No
, Mister Stone. I mean, aye, aye, Mister Stone. Hatches open as requested. Who do you want to inspect with you?”

Stone waved at the spacers in the room. “Everybody in here goes with us and I want everybody not in the main control room to just sit tight and keep their hands off their consoles. We are on lock down until I deem this inspection complete.” He pointed at a storage
closet that was rarely opened. “Petty Officer Watkins, I want you to grab a couple of breaker bars and a couple of pikes.”

Stone strolled into the processing room to stand next to the container. His crewmen gathered around him. He walked around the
container. It looked like any other container. He could not see in blatant evidence of alterations.

He looked at the crew. “Gentlemen, I want everyone to look for signs of tampering. Ask yourselves
if this container has been opened since it was sealed by Lieutenant Vaarhoo after his last visual inspection. Please make sure; take your time. Ask Petty Officer Watkins his opinion if you see something you think may be normal wear and tear or if it is an indication of intentional damage, theft, tampering or sabotage.” His mind flashed back to Hammermill pointing out the deliberately damaged anti-gravity rails.

He used his
p.a. to call up the commercial invoice, packing list, bill of lading, security validation, customs report and all of the tracking documents on the container. He enlarged the displays and broadcast them onto the bulkhead. He carefully reviewed them to see if all of the documents matched the container. He read the container numbers to a crewman who read them back to him.

“We don’t see any signs this box has been opened anywhere along the line, Mister Stone
,” Watkins said.

Ramirez raised a hand, “Mister Stone, shouldn’t we put this aside and have the missile maintenance crews come down and open this? I mean, it is their stuff, how do we know what we are looking for?”

“We don’t need to know what the item looks like,” Stone said. “We know that according to this packing list we have X number of packages labeled Y put into container Z. When we open this container and it doesn’t match XYZ then we have a problem. Does anyone want to disagree with that?”

No one said anything.

Watkins read the password code off the bulkhead display as another crewman entered the numbers on the container keypad. The lock cycled from red to green.

Stone nodded to Watkins and said, “Okay Petty Officer,
crack it open.”

A breaker bar in the hands of a crewman popped the seal loose. A
nother spacer stood at one corner and popped open the lid. The lid, a fabricated air based polymer, weighed almost less than nothing so it slid easily out of the way.

Everyone stared at the contents of the container as if speaking would name the contents and somehow make it real. Stone did
not know how long he stood there gaping at what should have been a container of missile parts.

“Hey!
” Spacer Rojo broke the silence. “There are some of us that are not in the processing room, remember? How about letting us know what you found!”

“Well, I guess they are missile parts of a sort
,” Watkins said. “At least, they were when humans lived in caves and threw rocks at each other.”

“What? We can’t see anything on the video pickups with all you goons clustered around the box. What is in the container?”
Rojo asked, the frustration evident in his voice.

Stone walked out of the Processing Ro
om. On the way he heard Watkins talking to Rojo over the duty comms.

“Rocks, Spacer Rojo. We have a full container of common ordinary rocks. We have a wide variety of big ones and small ones. We have some brown ones, some gray ones and some brownish-gray
ones. But, what we got is rocks.”

Stone reached his console and sat down with a thump. He had expected to find just a few missing pieces, but certainly not a whole missing shipment. The communications lock out was flashing red, indicating that he had incoming messages being blocked. He had all of
third watch still locked on communications lockdown; only internal messages and videos were allowed. The block extended to each person’s personal assistant. He decided if anyone really wanted to find out what he was doing, they could just come down and ask him face-to-face.

He hung his head as he thought about the bad day he had been having: Allie got mad at him and stormed off
. He had gone through a public meltdown because he got stuck in the openness of the farms. He had missed his last two meals because of the general quarters call and because Vaarhoo had chewed him out…again. He had earned and then had a great score on the g.q. taken away from him. He had been beaten and now he had a big box of rocks. Still, he thought, Allie did kiss him before she got mad and left. That accounted for something. All things considered, how do you account for a big box of rocks?

He looked up to see Spacer Ramirez looking at him.

“What, Spacer Ramirez?” He asked.

“Mister Stone, I really think we oughta call in the big guns on this. You shouldn’t take it on yourself.
Lieutenant Vaarhoo is your boss, right? Let him handle it.”

Stone shook his head. He looked up to see
everyone on third watch staring at him. All of the crew had left the processing room and had gathered around him. Those warehousemen not in the room were at their consoles staring at him through the displays.

Stone looked at Ramirez, “Spacer, how much do you think those rocks are worth?”

Ramirez shrugged.

“They ain’t worth the container their packed in,
” Watkins answered for Ramirez. “And those containers are so cheap that on my home planet they give them away to kids to play in.”