Charles Ardai - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 102, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 618 & 619, October 1993

“Any result?”

“The truth, Andy,” said Pascoe heavily. “That’s the result I’m looking for.”

“Only asking,” said Dalziel. “So how come you’re wasting time talking to a clapped-out candidate for the boneyard?”

“Andy, I need eyes and I need a nose. All right, I know I could have any of the Yard’s top men for the asking. Only, nowadays they get to the top by being on top of the technology and that’s no use to me here. Technology’s a two-way ticket. If you live by it, you can be fooled by it. So what I need is a seat-of-the-pants copper with a bloodhound’s nose, who’s got nothing to lose or to gain, and who doesn’t give a tuppenny toss about any bugger. I fed this data into my computer and it let out a huge burp. So I picked up the phone and I rang you, Andy. What do you say?”

“You cheeky sod!” exclaimed Dalziel. “I say you must be off your trolley! My nose is so out of practice I can hardly tell Orkney from Islay. As for seat-of-the-pants, I’ve been stuck in bed with gout for nigh on a fortnight, and I don’t want no jokes either.”

“Who’s laughing? Andy, what you clearly need is a place where you won’t have to worry about putting pressure on your foot, and I can help you there.”

“Hold on,” said Dalziel. “I didn’t quite get that. This must be a bad line. You are talking about bringing the Europa’s crew back to Earth for investigation, aren’t you? Well, aren’t you?”

“Andy!” said Pascoe reprovingly. “First thing you taught me was, good investigation starts at the scene of the crime. And anyway, you always expected the moon from me. So how can you turn me down now that I’m finally offering it to you?”

Perhaps space travel weren’t so bad after all, admitted Andy Dalziel as he lay on his back and watched the stars. But he’d taken some convincing, jumping up in alarm as Pascoe urged him into the soft yielding couch on the U.S. lunar shuttle which had been ferrying distinguished visitors to the moon for half a decade.

“What’s going off?” he demanded. “This thing’s trying to feel me up!”

“It’s all right,” assured Pascoe. “It’s just a wraparound fabric to hold you in place when we achieve weightlessness. Honestly, it’ll just be like riding in a limo, without any traffic jams.”

“If it’s so bloody easy, why’s the Federation making such a big thing about it?”

“It’s like going up Mont Blanc,” explained Pascoe patiently. “You can either book a table at the summit restaurant and take the scenic railway or you can pack your sarnies into your rucksack and climb. Thing is, with the moon, doing it on our own the hard way establishes our right to be there. Space is international just now, but there may come a time when the carving up starts, and we don’t want to be scavenging for crumbs under the Americans’ chair.”

“Bloody hell,” said Dalziel. “I’ll leave the politicking to you, lad. I’ll stick to nicking villains. If I survive the trip, that is.”

In fact, he was feeling better than he’d done for some time. The doctor had confirmed that his heart was in good order for a man of his age. He’d been more concerned about the high blood pressure related to Dalziel’s gout, but the drugs Dalziel was taking seemed to have this under control, and reluctantly he’d given the go-ahead. Now, as the shuttle came swooping in over the moon’s surface, the fat man was delighted to find that his gout symptoms had almost completely vanished.

“You were right, lad,” he admitted. “There’s nowt to this astronaut business.”

“Not this way,” agreed Pascoe. “Mind you, Europa’s not so luxurious.”

“Can’t be, if they’re still crapping in their breeks,” said Dalziel.

“Andy, I thought I’d explained,” said Pascoe long-sufferingly. “They only need their TECs for moving around the moon’s surface. In the mother ship they just wear light tunics. The TECs were kept in the hold. Each crew member has his or her own locker and each suit is individually tailored and has a name tag stuck to it, so it’s quite clear that whoever tampered with Lemarque’s was aiming at him and no one else. Now, have you got it?”

“All right, I’m with you,” said Dalziel. “No need to go on about things. Christ, have you looked down there? Where’s this village at?”

“Let’s see. Yes, there it is, down there, in the Sea of Tranquillity.”

“Those pimples? Looks like an outbreak of chicken pox.”

Dalziel wasn’t altogether wrong. The Village, a complex of sealed domes linked by corridors, covering about five acres, did indeed resemble a patch of blisters on the lunar skin till their third braking orbit brought out the scale of the thing. Next time round, one of the domes loomed large before them, threatening collision, and then they were slipping smoothly into a docking bay, and suddenly the stars were out of sight.

The commander of the Lunar Village was waiting to greet them. He was a small balding astrophysicist with a nervous manner who passed them over with speed and unconcealable relief to his head of security, Colonel Ed Druson, a lean and wiry black man with the stretched look of an athlete who has carried his twenties training schedules into his forties.

“Welcome to the moon,” he said, offering his hand. “Hope you had a good trip.”

“Aye, it were grand,” said Dalziel, bouncing gently up and down to test the effect of gravity on his gouty foot. Delighted to feel no pain, he went on, “Only thing is, that spaceship of thine didn’t seem to have a bar, and it’s thirsty work travelling.”

“Andy,” said Pascoe warningly. “Should you, with your gout?”

“Bugger the gout,” said Dalziel. “I’ve got a throat like a spinster’s tit. I could even thole bourbon if you’ve not got the real stuff.”

“I’ll see what we can do,” said Druson, clearly wondering what the hell the Brits were up to, filling valuable shuttle space with an overweight, geriatric alcoholic who had gout.

He went on, “Like we told your people, Europa ’s in a parking orbit with one of our guys acting nightwatch. We’ve got the crew in our accommodation dome. Looks like an open and shut case. Could have saved yourselves the bother of a trip, I reckon. You’ve seen our file on the German? Jesus, you Euros surely know how to pick ’em!”

To Dalziel it sounded like a just rebuke. Pascoe had provided him with copies of all the astronauts’ files plus the American incident report. This contained statements from the Europa crew, setting out where they were and what they were doing at the time of the fatality, plus Druson’s own analysis and conclusions. He saw little reason to look further than Kaufmann as culprit, and offered two pieces of concrete evidence and a motive.

The first pointer was an entry in Lemarque’s private journal. Several of the astronauts kept such journals with an eye to a literary future after their flying days were over. Lemarque’s consisted mainly of fluorescently purple prose about the beauties of space. Then at the end of a much polished speech in which he told the world of his sense of honour at being the first Euro, and more importantly, the first Frenchman, to step out onto the moon’s surface, he had scribbled almost indecipherably, Ka s’en fâche. Gardes-toi!

Ka is getting angry. Watch out!

Was Ka Kaufmann? Druson had asked. And the discovery of a microprobe in the German’s locker had deepened his suspicions. A gloss for the nontechnical pointed out that a microprobe was a kind of electronic screwdriver which would have been necessary in the readjustment of the TEC circuits.