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Security Sergeant Bridget "Bridg" Powell was more than a little bored. She had signed up for a life of adventure but spent most of her time staring into space. She had enjoyed the view at first, but after 25 years on the job, the magic of it had palled somewhat. Her job was to help patrol the Aquarius system and keep an eye on the rookie on her left, Officer Aurelius Truran. Although he was a rookie cop, he was going on thirty years old and had been a lab rat for several years, undertaking backroom forensic work for the service. He had requested a change of assignment which, unusually, had been granted. Since they started their shift four hours ago, absolutely nothing of interest had happened. It was as if everyone in the system was asleep, even though it was now mid morning, Ohio time.
The comm unit squawked "Sergeant Powell, please respond to a call about a missing person from the ‘roid Theta 4. A Galactic Comm Technician, Melvyn Smith, is already there and will fill you in with the details when you arrive."
"Will do. We’ll be there in about an hour" responded Bridget, as enthusiastically as she could.
"At last, something to get our teeth into, Aury" she exclaimed, looking at her partner. Neither felt particularly enthusiastic but it was better than nothing.
Bridget steered the patrol ship towards the asteroid and set off at full speed.
"Can you grab us some food and a drink? Might as well make sure we get something inside us before we land. These things can drag on and I hate working on an empty stomach" she said to Aurelius.
"No problem, Sarg. Anything in particular, or your usual?"
"The usual will be fine, thanks."
Ten minutes later, he returned with a tray with a vegetarian bolognese and a steaming mug of white coffee for each of them. Like most people living on the Shackleton space station, most of their meals were vegetarian. Real meat was too expensive a luxury for most people, at around three times the price of meat substitutes, making it something of a luxury. Meat substitutes were normal but it also made it a lot easier to feed everyone this way, when the station residents and visitors held a wide range of religious and ethical views, some of which forbade meat-eating. Although meat could be obtained for those determined enough to get it, few on the station did so on a regular basis, unless they were trying to impress someone.
As they ate, they discussed what little they knew and tried to guess what they would be dealing with when they arrived on Theta 4.
Once they were able to see the asteroid, Bridget called the Commbase to let the waiting Melvyn know they were almost there, then did a routine sweep of the immediate area with a scanner, to see whether there was any sign of any unusual activity around the comm station. All they identified was the usual space dust, a few small lumps of rock and the two space ships resting on the asteroid. Satisfied that there was nothing floating around the area that would help or hinder either her landing or investigation, she manoeuvred the patrol cruiser into position next to the two Galactic Comms ships and killed the power. As she and Aurelius always travelled suited up, it was then a quick task to put on their helmets and propulsion systems.
That done, they both made their way across to the small building on the asteroid’s surface and entered the airlock. Once inside they were greeted by Mel, hand extended "At last, you’ve arrived. I’m Mel."
"Good afternoon, Mel. I’m Sergeant Powell and this is Officer Truran. What can you tell us?"
"Should we go through? We can sit down and have a drink, if you’d like one."
"That would be good. I’d like a tea, white, no sugar and Officer Truran usually has black coffee, one sugar"
"No problem, Sergeant. Follow me and we can kick things off."
As he made the drinks from the dispenser in the small staff room beyond the main comms room, Mel said "All I can really tell you is that I was asked to come and have a look around because our dispatch couldn’t contact our Technician, Will Hunt, who had been called out to sort out a major communications failure problem. You can see the mess it left behind, with a fairly serious fire in the main room. Fortunately, this room’s undamaged. I’ve looked around and can’t find him. His ship is outside and his suit, helmet and power pack are all hanging in the lobby. None of the emergency suits are missing and his ship’s outer airlock door is open, so I’ve assumed that he’s not gone back on board. However, there is a small amount of blood over by the door that was still damp when I got here a few hours ago. It’s probably dry by now."
As she took her drink from Mel, Bridg said "Thanks. Cheers. We’ll have a look in a minute. Did you check inside his ship, in case there was a failure of the outer door?"
"With the outer door open, I assumed that he couldn’t be, because the inner one’s still closed and overrides stop them both being open at the same time. His is the one nearest to us, by the way."
"Although that’s normally the case, I have seen it happen on a couple of occasions. I’ve even seen one case where both inner and outer doors failed simultaneously. Very unfortunate and messy, to say the least. Took a while to clear up all the stuff that got sucked out, including the pilot and her passenger who weren’t strapped in when the accident happened. Have you looked around the asteroid, in case he’s fixing something outside?"
"I’ve called him on the radio and had a look using the outside cameras and can’t see anything. Because the light levels are so low here, they use a combination of infra red and natural light, so the clarity is pretty good once the computer has done its thing with the image. No sign of him that I’ve found."
"OK. It sounds like we need to have a good look around and see if there’s anything we can spot that you’ve missed. We’ll start in here. Can you show us around, please?"
They finished their drinks and Mel showed them around the small comm station. The few doors there, including the larger storage cupboards, were opened, without anything new being discovered. Because of the station’s compact size, it only took about thirty minutes to fully examine the interior of the building, chatting the while. As they left the main room, Bridget bent down and checked the blood on the floor.
"Looks fairly fresh. Aurelius, can you check the blood’s DNA?"
Aurelius moved his scanner across the blood. A few seconds later the scanner had finished and Aurelius said "The scanner shows that the blood belongs to William Robert Hunt of Shackleton. The sample was created less than twenty four hours ago. The absorbent floor material makes it impossible to be more precise."
Even before man first started to travel between the stars, fingerprints, retinal scans, full body tissue images and DNA were automatically recorded so that, should an accident occur, any human remains found in space could be positively identified. In the early days, when the original solar system was opened up to regular space travel, several spaceships were lost due to collisions with space debris or equipment failures. Because of the vastness of space, it was several years before some were located and boarded. It was generally a grim task identifying those that had perished. At least the scans and DNA allowed identification to be possible, so that families could be informed and the appropriate decision taken as to what should be done with the remains.
"Well that confirms he’s been here and not so long ago. I noticed that there were a number of shards of equipment littering the room. Has there been some kind of explosion in here?" she asked Mel.
"I’ve been more interested in trying to work out what I need to do to fix everything but now you point it out, there does seem to have been something like that. I’ll need to have a closer look to be sure."
"OK, can you have a look around and see what might have happened in here? It might give some explanation for the blood but it doesn’t explain where your colleague has gone."
"Won’t take long. I’ll let you know shortly"
"Thanks for the tour, Mel. We’d better check for any more DNA, then we’ll need to check outside. We’ll also need to look in your ship as well, just to make sure" declared Bridget. Bridget and Aurelius then
started to process the base, looking for any DNA that wasn’t either Will’s or Mel’s. Although some old DNA was found, it was identified that it was a Company employee and couldn’t have been involved in Will’s disappearance. No other fresh clues were found during their search. Once they had finished, Aurelius packed away their test equipment and he and Bridget went outside. She decided to start with Will’s ship. Once they had entered it, it took only a few minutes to realise that he wasn’t on board, even having searched through the work and storage areas at the rear of the ship. They then had a look around Mel’s ship but, as expected, that didn’t have Will on board either, so they set off to look around the rest of the asteroid. While the asteroid was quite small, it took them almost three hours to cover it adequately and had seen no sign of Will, either visually or with their scanners, so returned to the comm base.
Whilst they were outside, Mel had started to look into Bridget’s idea that there had been an explosion. Having looked around in detail, he discovered, a few feet in from the entrance door, an equipment rack where equipment seemed to have thrown against the opposite wall.
Having examined the debris, he formed a clear view as to what had happened, so mentally prepared his findings for Bridget. He then resumed his work on sorting out the mess made by the short-circuit for the purposes. As he worked through the room, it became clearer what he needed to do, as well as start to clarify in his mind what was going to take a while to repair. Unfortunately, much more than he would like was in the latter category. He had discovered a few problems with all the comms systems. He did want to check the antenna systems, as there may have been a problem created in the cabling to the antennas or a voltage surge could have damaged the circuitry at their bases. Even though the checking routines he had been able to carry out hadn’t revealed any problems, he liked to check. Past experience led him to realise that a failure to do this would mean that he would have to come back again in a couple of days or less when something failed that could have been picked up on his test programme. He knew he would have to wait until the two Security Officers had done with him before that could happen – they wouldn’t want him to go outside while they were still on the asteroid looking for clues.
Once Bridget and Aurelius had returned inside the comm base, Mel explained to Bridget what seemed to have exploded, confirming Bridget’s earlier observation on the subject. Bridget then told Mel that in the absence of any evidence as to what had happened to Will, for now there was nothing further they could do except record him as missing due to unexplained circumstances. She asked Mel to let her know if anything should happen, or if Will or anyone else contacted either Mel or the Company, so that they could close the case. For the time being, however, the case would remain open. She then thanked Mel for his assistance and cooperation and then returned to their cruiser with Aurelius.
Mel was somewhat unhappy with Bridg’s verdict but he had to agree with her assessment. Much as he hated to think it, Will seemed to have vanished into thin air. Once they had cleared the outer airlock, Mel reported back to Beth.