Season of Passage, The (56 page)

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(UPI). Last night, at approximately 10:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Lisa Jackson, a computer specialist aboard Space Station One, entered the

station's kitchen and removed a paring knife. When asked by a friend on duty what she wanted the knife for, Miss Jackson replied, 'To cut

something.' She then left the kitchen and entered the hub of the station, which does not rotate and is therefore a weightless environment.

Floating alone in the hub and turning off al the lights, she took the knife and cut open the jugular vein in her neck and bled to death in a matter of

seconds. Her body was quickly discovered because her blood was sucked into the ventilation system. It sprayed the engineering section and

alerted the personnel on duty. The reason for her suicide has yet to be determined...

The phone rang. Terry set aside the paper and picked it up. Herb had indicated in his message that he knew the real reason Lisa had kil ed herself.

UPI thought maybe she was bored.

'Hel o?' Terry said.

'Terry Hayes?'

'Yes.'

'Hi, this is Herb Fry. I cal ed you earlier.'

'Yeah, I got your message.'

'Have you read about Lisa?'

'Yeah. Did you know her?'

'Yeah.' Herb sounded as if he were talking in a cramped closet with a stalking murderer outside the door. 'Mr Hayes, I didn't know how to get hold of

you. A couple of years ago I used to read your articles on the space program in the Houston Herald. I cal ed the paper and got a Mr Brenner. He

said you were no longer writing for the paper.'

'That's true. I got fired over a year ago.'

'That's too bad. I have a story for you. I don't care that you don't work for the Herald anymore. I know your stuff. You're good. You could publish this

story anywhere, if you thought it should be published.'

'What's al this about? How wel did you know Lisa?'

'She was my girlfriend.'

'Oh. I'm sorry to hear that. I real y am. But I'm not

interested in writing an article about anybody. I write books now. I don't work anymore.'

Herb was distressed. 'But I've got to talk to you.'

'Why me?' · 'Because you knew Lauren Wagner.'

Terry noted his use of the past tense. 'Talk. I'm listening.'

'No, not over the phone. Do you know where the Hopple is? It's a bar on the corner of Western and Fifth.'

'I know where al the bars in Houston are,' Terry said.

'Could you meet me there in an hour?'

'Are you in Houston?'

'Yeah. I flew in from Florida this morning just to talk to you. Could you please come?'

Terry glanced down at the article. There was a picture of Lisa at the top of it. She had looked like a nice girl. 'Al right,' he said.

Terry arrived early and took a table in the corner. The bar was cool and dark, the way al bars should be. He ordered coffee and looked over at the

rows of bottles behind the bartender. He thought of how he shouldn't have cal ed the ambulance when he had woken up vomiting blood. The last

three days had been difficult for him, to say the least.

A tal thin man with a scraggly red beard entered the bar a few minutes later. He glanced nervously from side to side, and over his shoulder. Terry

decided he was looking at Herbert Fry. He waved, and the guy hurried over. Herb's handshake was quick and moist. He had prominent

cheekbones and tired green eyes. They made some smal talk, and Herb ordered whiskey. It came with Terry's coffee. Herb's mouth twitched as he

raised the glass to his lips. Terry had to remind himself that Tom Brenner had told him that Herbert Fry was a bona fide employee of the space

station.

'I guess your partner told you I'm not just some nut,' Herb said final y, reading his mind.

'Were you on the station two days ago?' Terry asked.

Herb nodded sadly.

Terry played with his coffee. 'I'm very sorry. Do you know why she kil ed herself?'

Herb stared at him in the eye. 'She was murdered.'

'By who?'

'By them!' he said bitterly, sitting upright. Terry was instantly alert. But then Herb shrugged and settled back in his seat. He continued, 'What I have

to tel you - I'l warn you in advance it wil sound crazy. But I know you were engaged to Dr Wagner.'

'How do you know we're not stil engaged?' Terry asked.

'Your partner said you were just in California visiting her.'

'No one was supposed to know that.'

'Everybody at the station knew they were landing at Edwards.' Herb added, 'You didn't stay long.'

Terry was annoyed. 'I had business I had to get back to.'

'She wasn't the same, was she?' Herb suddenly blurted. 'I knew Lauren. She had changed, hadn't she?'

How the hel can this guy know that?

Terry decided to move cautiously. 'You spent a month with her in the station. Suppose you tel me.'

Herb seemed satisfied with his answer. He took a sip of his drink. 'I'l tel you my story,' he said. 'If you think I'm nuts, when I'm done, then I guess

there's no helping that. You're not recording, are you? No? That's good.

'I'm an engineer. I've been up and down to the station in the last seven years more times than I can remember. Before the Nova left, I did a lot of

work on the ship,

particularly in the living-quarters. After that I helped with the design of the new wing they're putting on the station. I've done construction, too. I'm a

good worker. A level headed fel ow. You can check that out if you don't believe ¦me.'

'I believe you,' Terry said.

'Spending so much time at the station, I got to know Lisa.' Herb smiled sadly. 'She was one of those people who was so ful of life. In a lot of ways

she reminded me of Dr Wagner. She was wild, Lisa was. It got where we were spending a lot of time together. Of course, this was after the Nova

had left. She told me frankly at the start that she had a crush on Major Gary Wheeler. That didn't upset me. Al the women on the station loved Gary.

When the Hawk seemed to col ide with the Nova, she was devastated. But she got over it. Lisa was a strong girl. The papers - they're making her

out to be a nut. But she wasn't, and I knew her as wel as anybody.

'When Lauren and Gary suddenly appeared out of the deep space, the whole station turned upside down. A few of us had just been about to come

back to Earth. I was one of them. But al traveling was canceled when the quarantine began. Lauren and Gary were isolated, to a certain degree,

but the station's only so big. We ended up seeing a lot of them. Like I said, I knew Lauren, but not wel enough to pop into her cabin for a casual talk.

She wasn't speaking to many people, anyway. At first I thought the president or Ramsey had given her orders to keep silent about Mars.

'But Lisa was spending time with Gary. At first I was jealous, but let me tel you, I wasn't mad. There's a difference. I could understand. He was a big

hero. I was only another engineer. It's important you understand that. I'm not trying to get back at Gary, not without good reason.

'Lisa would visit him in his room after her shift. I didn't

know if they were having sex or what, but she started to get depressed. I asked her what was the matter, but she shrugged off my questions. I

thought maybe Gary's amputated arm had her down. The days went by and her depression got worse. I'd pass her in the corridor and she would

ignore me. The next day, though, she'd stop and hug me and say how much she loved me. Final y she admitted that her relationship with Gary was

awful, that it was dragging her down. But she was stil spending plenty of time in his room. She seemed repel ed by him, but at the same time drawn

to him.

'My room was changed the last week of the quarantine. I'd been sharing a room with another engineer, but a senator was flown up from Washington

to talk to Lauren and Gary. Natural y, he got my bed. I was stuffed in a closet-size room adjacent to Lauren's room. They gave me a mattress to put

on the floor and promised me it would only be for a few days. What the hel . I didn't care where I slept.

'I was lying on my mattress during a rest period when I heard strange laughter. It was coming from Dr Wagner's room. I listened closer. There were

two people, a man and a woman. But their voices sounded deep and rough. And they seemed to be speaking in a weird language. After a while

they stopped and I fel asleep.'

Herb's mouth twitched. His skin had an unhealthy pasty texture to it that seemed to worsen as his story continued. It was almost as if the rehash of

the memory caused something unpleasant to sweat through his pores. Just looking at him made Terry uneasy.

'During my next rest period I heard the laughter again,' Herb continued. 'I was curious. I told you I'd helped construct the station. I know its internal

layout as wel as anybody. I left my room and walked over to one of the main

ventilation ducts, just down the corridor. The ducts are big, and you can see how skinny I am. I knew I could crawl inside this one without getting

stuck, as long as I didn't try to turn around. Feeling like a criminal, I looked both ways and then removed the duct's gril e and squirmed inside. My

plan was to creep close enough to Dr Wagner's air vent to hear exactly who was talking and laughing in the weird voices.

'I was maybe fifteen feet away from her vent when I stopped. I wasn't sure why, but I began to feel scared. The light shining out her vent was a dul

red. I figured she must have put some kind of filter over her lights. I listened closely. At first I heard nothing. Then the laughter started again.'

Herbert Fry stopped and drained his glass in a single gulp. His hands shook. 'It was terrible. The voices belonged to Lauren and Gary, I could tel

that much, but they weren't human voices. They were ful of bass. They were thick and twisted and they rumbled as they laughed. Just the sound of

them made me feel sick to my stomach. I can't tel you how awful the sound was. Then occasional y they would stop laughing and say words they

must have found in the Satanic Bible. They said the words like they were incantations. I pissed my pants just listening, and I mean that literal y.

'But I didn't move, I couldn't. I couldn't get my body to work. Then suddenly Dr Wagner shrieked, and there was this smel - an acidic, fetid odor. It

smel ed like something that could burn the inside lining of your nose if you got too close to its source'. It stank, and it did something else. It was a

smel that went right inside your brain. Al of a sudden I had an avalanche of perverted thoughts. I wanted to rape an eight-year-old-girl and then

dismember her. I wanted to bite a chicken's head off and drink its blood. Right then,

with that stink in the air, I would have enjoyed doing both those things.'

Herb coughed, as if he were trying to clear the same foul smel s from his lungs right now. He seemed unable to ful y catch his breath.

'Then the laughter stopped and I heard this slobbery sucking sound,' he said. 'Dr Wagner groaned with sighs of pleasure. But at the same time she

sounded as if she was in pain, as if she was smothering or something.

'I couldn't take it. I began to inch back toward the corridor. It took me half an hour to get out of the duct. I was trying not to make any sound, but the

main reason was because my muscles had lost their strength. When I final y reached the corridor, I replaced the gril e on the duct and went back to

my room. I lay down on my mattress, but I couldn't sleep. I got up and wandered about the station until my shift started. Then I spent ten hours playing

with my pencils. Later I ate dinner with some friends in the cafeteria. Lauren was there. She sat alone in the corner, spooning a glass of water into

her mouth. She stared at me from across the room. I tried not to look at her, but she wouldn't stop looking at me. I knocked over a glass of milk I was

drinking. Her eyes were like two long knives cutting into my head. I didn't know how, but I knew she knew I'd been listening to her and Gary. She

final y grinned at me, and licked her lips, and got up and walked away.'

Herb fidgeted. The chair was not big enough for him. Or it was too big. He just couldn't get comfortable. He acted like a long-term prisoner who

cried for freedom, but secretly feared the bars of his cel were about to topple down.

'I spent the next five days trying to avoid her and Gary,' Herb said. 'I don't know how I did it. I thought of tel ing the commanding officer of the station

what I'd heard, but I

couldn't imagine it. They'd think I was insane, or some kind of peeping pervert. The general would just pass it off as a private affair between the two.

I'd lose my job. I was even worried about going to prison. You see, no one else noticed anything unusual. Gary and Lauren were two heroes. Plus

everyone knew Lisa had been my girl, and that she was now seeing Gary. If I opened my mouth, you can imagine how it would go over.

'I didn't even tel Lisa what I'd heard. Maybe if I had, she'd be alive today. But I did tel her to stay away from Gary. That was no problem with her. She

said she was never going to see him again. She didn't say why, and I didn't ask. I was just glad. What I didn't realize was the damage had already

been done.

'Final y it was time for Gary and Lauren to leave. The general wanted us to al line up in a row in the corridor and say goodbye to them. There I was,

standing with my back up against the wal among al the wel wishers when Lauren walked by. She stopped smack in front of me. I started shaking

like I had never done in my life. She knew it, too. She just stood there and looked me over real slow. Then she grinned and said she hoped we could

get together sometime soon. Before I could respond, she leaned over and kissed me on the lips. She kissed me hard; she ran her tongue around