S Morden - One Way

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he just wants to live alone on Mars, grow his crops, and feed his fish. Makes as much sense as anything else.”

“A couple of things have been bothering me,” said Declan.

“Just a couple?”

“Shut the fuck up, Frank, and listen. Alice.”

“Alice killed herself. Most likely because she could see us starving to death.”

Declan separated contact, and walked around the console, leaning his hands on the desktop. “Did she?”

“There were pills in her hand.”

“Were there any in her mouth?”

“I… I didn’t look. But there were pills, and there was water, and she was dead, Declan. I’m not a cop, but what other answer are you looking for?”

“You found her, right?”

“You were there. I climbed up the ladder in front of you.”

“I was there. I wasn’t there when Marcy died, though.”

“What the fuck, Declan? What the actual fuck? What are you trying to say?”

“Marcy died. You were with her. Alice died. You found her. Zeus died. You opened the airlock door on him. Dee died. First on the scene again. Are you not spotting a pattern here? You think no one else has noticed, Frank? Maybe they haven’t. Maybe Zero’s too stupid, and I’m pretty certain Captain Brack isn’t the sharpest knife in the block, otherwise he wouldn’t be here with us deadbeats. But I’ve noticed. I’ve been watching you for a while now.”

“Because that’s what you do, right?”

“Nothing wrong with turning a vice into a virtue. You haven’t got away with this. Just because we’re on Mars doesn’t mean you can just kill people and walk away.”

Frank looked around. “Walk away? Walk away? There’s nowhere to walk to. Look, I’ve not killed anyone.”

“Well, that’s not true, is it?” Declan started for the door, and Frank blocked him.

“I’ve not killed anyone here.”

“And that’s supposed to be OK, is it?”

“He was dealing drugs to my son.”

“Most people would have just called the cops.”

“He was the cops. The sheriff’s son.”

Declan moved closer and touched helmets. “All I see is a whole lot of bad parenting going on. Now get out of my way.”

Frank pushed him back. “I’m not a killer.”

“Of all the people in this room, hands up who hasn’t killed anyone.” Declan raised his arm. “Anyone else? Anyone?”

“This is serious, Declan.”

“Don’t you think I know that? I’m trapped on Mars with a psycho. And at the moment, the only thing that’d make this whole scenario better would be being trapped on Mars without a psycho.” He wheeled away, and took up his position behind the console again. “I liked you. I actually liked you. I thought we could get on, at least. You seemed to want to treat me like a human being and not some rapo scum-of-the-earth. And Dee looked up to you. He was just a kid. And Zeus: he was easy in your company. Alice? She was difficult to like, but you could respect her. And Marcy was fun, and she was dead before I even got defrosted. Why, Frank? Why? What possible advantage do you think you’re going to get?”

“But I haven’t done anything. It was Zero.”

“Zero wasn’t even out of bed when Marcy died, Frank.”

“Marcy died because her scrubber failed. She died in my arms. I did everything I could to save her, and it wasn’t enough.”

“So you say.”

“And Alice took pills. She checked herself out.”

“That was what it was made to look like, sure.”

They resumed staring at each other across the room.

“Fighting in a spacesuit is a really stupid idea,” said Frank.

“That’s something we can agree on.”

“I didn’t kill Marcy, I didn’t kill Alice. That’s just crazy talk. We know how they died, and it was no one’s fault. No one living’s fault. But Zeus was murdered. Someone deliberately depressurized the workshop.”

“And Dee?”

“They shut him in here. There’s no way he couldn’t make it out the door in time. But if you hold the door closed, he’s got nowhere left to go and nothing else to breathe.”

Declan scanned the console, the hab’s softly glowing walls, the strings of LEDs he’d put up himself. “Do you know what tripped the alarm?”

“No, I don’t know enough about the system. It works off heat, but there’s no evidence of a fire. I just don’t understand how it could have gone off without an actual flame.”

“What is it about you that makes you so incurious?” Declan risked stepping around the desk and used his gloved finger to work his way down through the system’s menus until he could access the fire-response mechanisms. “There. See?”

Frank looked over his shoulder. There was a schematic of the hab, and on-off tabs that could work the cameras. Status bars that indicated the fill level of the CO 2extinguishers. A manual purge button for each.

“It’s the backup. You can hit the switch and activate the extinguishers if they don’t go off automatically. Probably too late by then—a hab breach will kill a fire stone dead, assuming there’s no oxidizer. You can do this through your tablet. No special controls.”

“Why the hell didn’t XO tell us stuff like this?” Frank stared at the screen.

“Because we’re just the monkeys. We’re not meant to mess with this; this is for the real astronauts who know what they’re doing, and aren’t likely to use the deep controls to try and kill each other.” Declan shuffled around, and was face to face with Frank. “You know, I want to believe you. We knew it was risky. I want to believe that four people dying in a matter of a couple of months is just one of those things. But we both know that it’s not. I’m just going to let Brack handle this. That’s his job, right?”

“You’ve got a problem with that, Declan: I was outside, with you, when Dee died. I couldn’t have held the door shut. You’re my alibi.”

Declan aimed a finger at Frank’s chest. “And you’re mine.”

Frank blinked and turned away, heading out through the door. What if there wasn’t one killer, but two, working together? And they were framing him for everything, deliberate and accidental? The base, where he was, was now literally the worst place he could be. He could feel his heart rate spike, and his skin go cold. He had to get out, the only problem being that the base was it, the single place on Mars that he could live. He’d have to come back at some point.

But he could go to the ship. He could go to the ship and find Brack, and tell him he’d found his evidence. It was his last chance. And he had to do it now, before anyone tried to stop him.

He grabbed a fresh pack from the life-support rack. Then he hesitated. Unless he wanted to wrestle it all to the ground inside the airlock, the only place he could swap packs would be the greenhouse. Zero was in there.

What kind of accident would Frank die in? Would his suit fail him? Would his air fail him? Or had it gone beyond that pretense now? Was it going to come down to shivs and shanks, or a sock full of rocks?

He could just carry it with him, swap it when he got to the relative safety of the ship. Brack had one buggy. He’d have the other. Even if they wanted to chase him, they’d be the better part of an hour behind.

“Hey,” said Zero, a faint disembodied voice. “Who’s that in the cross-hab?”

“Frank,” said Frank. He turned round and saw Zero’s face at the greenhouse airlock window.

“What you doing?”

“Thinking about swapping my life support out.”

“You not got enough?”

“I’m not taking the chance. That OK?”

“Whatever, man. You don’t need my permission.” Zero turned his head so he could peer partway down the connecting corridors. “You going outside?”