Orbital Decay (42 page)

“What conspiracy?” Felapolous asked, beginning to feel nervous now. He had to take this step by tentative step, leading Wallace but not putting ideas into his mind. Use objectivity, he reminded himself. He was little more than an armchair psychiatrist, with only the basic med school training in psychology, but he had to have more definite proof that Wallace had flipped before he recommended to Huntsville that the project supervisor be replaced on grounds of mental incompetency.

Wallace looked around at him with an expression of surprise. He studied Felapolous for a moment before turning back to his search of the locker. “No, of course not,” he said. “You wouldn’t know. But I have put it together. There’s a mutiny afoot on this station, with Felapolous… I mean, with Neiman and Hamilton and Hooker as the prime conspirators. There may be others, but they are the nucleus of the conspiracy to overthrow this station and take control for themselves.”

“What proof do you have of this?” Felapolous asked.

“I’ll show you my hard evidence in a moment. But ever since I noticed the degradation aboard Olympus, I put myself in semi-isolation in this compartment, while covertly keeping track of station personnel, both through careful monitoring of roll-call records and reports and through having Security Chief Bigthorn watching and reporting. I’ve observed that the principals have been absent for long periods of time—once they even went so far as to crowd into a pod together, to avoid prying ears while concocting their plot—and they have attempted to recruit others. I suspect that Communications Officer Lowenstein and… um, what’s his name, Chang, are also involved.”

“Why haven’t you said or done anything?”

“Because I’ve been biding my time,” Wallace replied evenly. “I wanted to wait until I had all the evidence, and until I thought the moment was right. With the events of this morning, I know for certain that a mutiny is imminent.”

He twisted around on his haunches so quickly that he lost his balance and fell over. As he put out his hands to stop his fall, an object in his right hand fell out onto the floor. Felapolous knelt and picked it up; it was a loosely wrapped plastic bag containing something soft and crumbly.

“Marijuana,” Wallace explained tersely as he struggled to his feet. “Hamilton brought it up here, and used it to brainwash the crew. I’m not saying that people like Neiman or Hooker wouldn’t have turned to treason sooner or later, but Hamilton’s drugs helped accelerate the process. Through him, they became drug zombies.”

“Then why didn’t you…?”

“Because I was waiting for this moment!” Now Wallace was scurrying around the dark compartment, fitting his feet into sneakers, putting on his cap, and grabbing a vest with a number of Velcro-sealed pockets. The communications headset had slid down around his neck, and Felapolous heard a tinny voice coming through the earpiece. Wallace slapped it to his ear, listened for a moment, then snapped, “Good work, Bigthorn! Continue to search and await my command!”

He ran toward the ladder. “Come, Doctor!” he shouted. “The conspirators are absent and unaccounted for! There’s no time to lose!” He started to climb the ladder.

Felapolous stared at the bag of marijuana in his hand, then looked up at Wallace. “Wait a minute!” he yelled. “How can you be sure that this is the cause?” He shook the bag at Wallace.

Wallace paused at the ladder and glanced back at him. “Because I smoked some in a piece of rolled-up printout a few hours ago,” he hissed. “It’s marijuana, Doctor! And believe me, it
can
bend your mind!” Then he scrambled the rest of the way up the ladder and disappeared, leaving Felapolous staring at the empty ladder, not even noticing that the bag of pot had slipped from his hand and fallen to the floor.

C
LAYTON DOBBS WAS BENT
over the master terminal, punching up another of the long series of test programs he had been performing over the past couple of days, when the module hatch swung open. Assuming that it was Dougherty reporting for this, the day when the Ear was to be put into operation, he didn’t look up from his work until he heard McGrath say, “Pardon me, but this area is off limits, you’ll have to leave.”

Dobbs swung his head around, slowly and carefully. Two previous bouts with spacesickness had already taught him that even simple head motions were enough to bring on instant nausea. Through the open circular hatch he saw two men, both wearing spacesuits with their helmets and gloves off. One had longish blond hair tied back in a ponytail; the other man was dark and unsavory-looking, one of the scruffiest characters Dobbs had ever seen. The ugly one was already halfway through the hatch and was smiling at McGrath in a way which made Dobbs think of snakes.

“Yes, yes,” he said, pulling his torso through the hatch, grabbing a rung with his left hand and swinging his legs inside. “Module safety inspection, sir. We’re here to check for air leaks, electrical shorts, that sort of thing.”

“What the hell is this?” Dobbs complained. Irritated, he slapped a hand against the console and was immediately glad that his feet were slipped into stirrups on the floor; otherwise, that slap might have pushed him against the ceiling of the long, narrow compartment. “You guys were here yesterday looking for leaks and you didn’t find anything. Don’t you know this is a secure area?”

The swarthy one shrugged and the guy with the ponytail, who was pulling himself through the hatch after him, smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, but that’s the regulations. Any module which has been here for less than six months has to be given daily inspections. It’ll be just a few…”

“Bullshit,” Dobbs said. “I don’t know who told you that, but I helped write the revised code book for this station, and those inspections are done once a week, not every day. Now get your ass out of here.”

“This is a secure area,” McGrath repeated, turning completely around to face the men, raising his chin and crossing his arms. Dobbs let his eyes roll up. Self-important little government schmuck, he thought. You can’t get away from these pricks any more than you can escape from semi-retarded Joe Sixpack types, even up here. He shook his head and started to turn back to his test—only a dozen more to go—when he did a double take.

“I know, sir, but… ah…” The swarthy one hesitated for a moment, and looked at his companion. “That’s what the checklist said, didn’t it? This place was due for inspection?” Dobbs found himself staring at a round patch on the sleeve of the man’s spacesuit, which, after a second, he recognized as a mission emblem for Project Franklin. The guy with the ponytail had one also. And both wore square Skycorp patches, which only a few industrial specialists on Freedom wore on their coveralls. No one except shuttle pilots or cargo specialists on secure runs from the Cape should have Skycorp insignia on their space-suits… and there was no reason why anyone on Freedom should be wearing insignia which belonged on Olympus Station.

“Hey, who the hell are you guys?” he demanded. McGrath looked around at him, with an expression which showed the government man’s irritation at having his authority superseded by someone else. Dobbs pointed at the ugly guy’s shoulder patch. “You guys aren’t supposed to even be here,” Dobbs snapped. “What are you doing here, huh?”

“What?” the man with the ponytail stammered. He stared at the patch on the ugly man’s arm, turned red, then quickly averted his gaze toward an overhead display screen. “The patch. Well, we were short of spacesuits here on Skycan and so we borrowed… I mean, on Freedom, so we had to get Skycan, I mean Freedom…
Olympus
, I mean… to ship a couple…”

“Oh, goddammit!” the ugly one snarled. “Just clobber ’em!”

He threw back his legs, touched the soles of his feet against the module bulkhead, and snapped his knees, bringing his straightened arms up in front of him. A human projectile, he shot across the module, hurling himself straight toward a startled and unreacting McGrath.
Paw
! Ugly’s right fist sailed into the government stooge’s face even as his momentum slammed them together in a zero g tackle which lifted McGrath’s feet out of his stirrups.

Dobbs barely had time to kick out of his own stirrups and dodge aside as the two men flew by him and hit the end of the compartment. Floating free of the foot restraints, he instinctively grabbed for the nearest handhold… and was stopped by the impact of the ponytailed guy tackling him in midair. The air left his lungs in a loud
whoof
, and as he doubled over he felt hands grabbing his powerless wrists and forcing them behind his back. As Dobbs attempted to yank his hands free, Ponytail shoved him brutally against a console, hard enough to knock the wind out of him for a moment.

“The tape! The tape!” Ugly yelled from behind them. Dobbs felt a hand release his wrists. Instantly, he attempted to struggle loose, turning himself half-around… then a balled fist connected with his chin and he staggered back again, his eyes going out of focus.

A few moments later he felt something cool and sticky being applied to his wrists. He was being bound with something that felt like duct tape. He realized that four hands, not two, were restraining him. Glancing up, he could see that another person besides Ponytail was behind him, a guy with a scraggly mustache, who had apparently been waiting outside the hatch.

The hatch. Dobbs wondered if it was still open. “What do you guys want?” he asked, turning his head around to see if the hatch was open, while hoping to distract his captors with a stupid question.

“Yours is not to ask but only to wonder,” Ponytail replied in a near-whisper. The tape made a final revolution around Dobbs’ wrists, then he felt a final tug as it was cut from the roll. Someone gave it an experimental yank to make sure that it was tight.

“Good enough,” Ponytail said. Dobbs bit the inside of his lip to keep from laughing or even cracking a smile. Good enough, like hell! The tape was not that tight. Given a few seconds, he knew he could work his wrists free. Wait, he told himself. Pull your shit together—stay calm, and just wait a couple of minutes for them to get even more careless.

The one with the ponytail was looking anxiously around the module, apparently searching for some function on the consoles arrayed along its walls. He pushed himself off and drifted to the console where Dobbs had been working. He studied the keyboard for a moment, then pulled a folded sheet of paper out of a thigh pocket of his suit and consulted something written on it. Dobbs watched him as he tentatively pushed a key which cleared the screen, then looked over his shoulder and grinned as he spotted the module’s communications board.

“Popeye!” he shouted. “How’s it looking?”

A second later the one with the mustache reappeared in the hatchway. “Coast’s clear,” he said. “And I found the wardroom just down the tube. It’s vacant.”

Ponytail nodded. “Good.” He checked his wrist chronometer. “Okay, let’s move it. Popeye, help me out in here. Bruce, take these guys to the module and…” He stopped and looked at Dobbs and McGrath. “I dunno, just do something to keep ’em out of the way. Haul ass.”

“Okay, just a second.” The one called Bruce pulled the roll of duct tape out of a pocket, slid behind McGrath, and sealed his mouth with it in a single, swift movement which caught the little man by surprise. As Bruce stepped toward Dobbs, ripping out another few inches of silver tape, Dobbs turned his head toward Ponytail, the one who seemed to be the leader.

“Just what is going on here, anyway?” he asked calmly. What the hell; it couldn’t hurt to ask.

“Putting a banana in your Big Ear, my friend,” Ponytail replied. Then the tape was spread over Dobbs’ mouth, its sticky gluelike taste making him want to gag. That, plus the realization of what these men wanted to do, made him feel sick.

They were after the Ear. But with that revelation came questions. Even though they had somehow managed to get aboard the station undetected and had managed to take him and McGrath by surprise, it seemed to Dobbs that these men were not exactly professional terrorists, even if the swarthy one, Bruce, looked sinister enough to be a
summa cum laude
graduate of a Palestinian terrorist school. Enough of that, he commanded himself. If they’re not pros, then you’ve got an even better chance of getting away.

“Okay, boys, let’s go,” Bruce pushed them one at a time toward the hatch, where Popeye—not exactly a name for a terrorist, Dobbs noted with brief amusement—grabbed first McGrath, then Dobbs himself, and guided them through the opening. Bound as they were, Dobbs and McGrath were little more than long, cumbersome parcels in the microgravitational environment.

Out in the access tunnel, with his back momentarily turned away from Bruce, Dobbs began to quickly, furtively wiggle his wrists against the duct tape. He’d been right; he could work his wrists free. Good; only Bruce was escorting them, leaving the other two inside the module. His captor was beginning to look genuinely nervous now. Looking quickly back and forth along the access tunnel, he grabbed the back of McGrath’s shirt and kicked off the wall with the tip of his boot, heading for an open hatch just twenty-five feet away. Left alone for a few more moments, Dobbs began to wiggle his wrists frantically against the tape. C’mon, c’mon,
c’mon
—!

Snap
! there went the tape, along with a little bit of his skin. Dobbs was glad that the tape was still on his mouth; it kept him from crying aloud. Bruce’s back was turned to him, he was trying to push a futilely struggling McGrath through the hatch. But the way to the command module was that way, past Bruce.

No time to even think about it. Dobbs pushed himself against one wall, doubled his knees, balled his fists and, with a violent kick, lunged straight at Bruce, sailing through the air like a human lance.

He was able to do it only because he took Bruce by surprise, with his back turned and distracted by McGrath. Dobbs fell onto Bruce, depending on his mass and momentum to do what his weightless condition could not. His right fist slammed into the back of Bruce’s neck, his left into the side of his ribs. Bruce grunted as his head bounced off the side of the hatch and, for a moment, Dobbs thought he had knocked him senseless.