High Justice

"Amos Shorey had ten years experience in space. He was found outside-it was only an accident that he was found at all. His faceplate was open. His features were relaxed. That's not the way a spaceman dies, Mr. MacKenzie. Amos was drugged and put out an airlock."

"And Martin Holloway killed him?"

Eliot pursued his lips tightly. "I shouldn't have told Miss Hansen that." He was silent for a moment- "But you'll find out, now that you're here. Yes. I couldn't prove it, but Holloway did it."

"If you can't prove it, how do you know?"

"I have a witness." Eliot's features twisted into an involuntary thin smile-wistful, sad, amused? Aeneas couldn't tell. "And a fat lot of good it'd be taking her into a courtroom. Not that Holloway will ever come to trial. Who'd prosecute?"

Aeneas nodded. Mexico wanted no jurisdiction over Heimdall. The United States was unlikely to prosecute one of President Tolland's agents-if the victim had been Tolland's man, that would be different. "Send for the witness, please," Aeneas said.

Eliot glanced at the clock above his desk, then at his wristwatch. Crew schedules were posted on the bulkhead, but he didn't seem to need to look at them. "She'll be off duty." He lifted a telephone.

The girl wore white coveralls. She had a mass of brown curls, all cut short, and no makeup; but she walked with the grace of a dancer, making use of the low gravity. Her features were finely carved and relaxed into no expression at all, but Aeneas thought that she would have as much control over them as she did of her body. She was very young, possibly no more than twenty, and she didn't need makeup to be pretty. "A

"I know who he is. If I hadn't recognized him, Penrose has told everyone in the station anyway. Kit Penrose doesn't like you, Mr. MacKenzie. Should anyone?" She cocked her head to one side and smiled, but it didn't seem genuine, "I'm told you were a witness to the murder of Captain Amos Shorey," Aeneas said.

A

"You told me you were."

"I should have known better," she said. Her voice was bitter. "Occupational disease with whores, Mr. MacKenzie. It's no less lonely for us than for the men who talk to us. Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking we have friends."

"If you were a witness to murder, you should tell about it," Herman Eliot said. "It was your duty to come to me."

The girl laughed. The sound was hard, but it might have been a nice laugh at another time and place. She ignored Eliot as she spoke to Aeneas. "Suppose I did see murder done? So what? Who'd try the case – not that a court would pay much attention to a whore anyway. "

"You're registered as a biology technician," Aeneas said.

"Yeah. Mister, there are ninety-three men and twenty-six women on this satellite. Twenty of those women are engineers and technicians and whatever, and they sleep with one man at a time or none at all. Men serve a two-year hitch up here. Now what would happen if my friends and I weren't aboard? There are six whores on this ship. Call me an entertainer if you want to. Or a mother confessor. Or just friendly. I like it better that way. But if I get in front of a jury, I'm a whore. "

"You sound rather bitter, Miss Raisters."

"I liked Captain Shorey."

"Do you want this station he gave his life to handed over to the people who hired him killed?"

Her lips tightened. "There's nothing I can do."

"There is. First, I have to know what happened."

"Who the hell are you, Mister? Kit Penrose says you're working for the same outfit that killed Amos. Everybody knows the U.S. government wants to see Equity take control here. I don't know how to fight that combination, Mister."

"Miss Hansen does. Dr. Eliot, tell Miss Raisters your orders concerning me."

Herman Eliot frowned. "Miss Hansen said to give him complete cooperation."

"Tell her the rest."

"Do you think that's wise? All right. She also said that Mr. MacKenzie is in command of this station if he says he is. Are you taking command, then?"

"Not precisely. Now, what did you see, Miss Raisters?"

A

"Vengeance murder won't solve the problems of this station," Aeneas said. "You may as well tell me what happened. Everyone else seems to know."

"Yeah. Why not?" She sat across from Aeneas, every movement graceful and lovely, in stark contrast to the angry expression of her eyes. "It started a long time ago. Men get lonesome up here, Mister. They need a girl. Not just a lay, either. It took Marty Holloway longer than most, but he started coming to see me after six months. You will too if you stay long enough. Me or one of the other girls." She looked defiantly at him.

Aeneas said nothing.

"You will. Anyway, after about a year, Holloway starts talking to me a lot. I liked him. He's pretty cheerful and he seemed like a good worker. But he tells me how he's going to be rich when he gets down. Well, what the hell, we all are, but he meant rich and famous. Going to retire from the whole ratrace and spend his life hiking in the woods. Maybe buy some mountain land and put together an animal preserve. Or be the top man in a really big national park. Does this make sense?"

Aeneas remembered long nights when he and David Hindler stood watch together, and they talked of the things they would do when they'd taken Jerusalem… "Yes."

"Then he starts telling me Hansen won't own this place much longer, but I shouldn't worry because he can fix it so I go on Valkyrie anyway… I want on that, Mister. And I want in the Moon colony. So I listened. Pretty soon Marty had me convinced. He had me wondering if Miss Hansen could last a year. But I didn't say anything to anybody until he asked me to help him."

"What did he want?"

"I'm a pretty good biotech, Mister. I do my share of that work up here. Marty wanted me to poison the vaccine cultures so the yields would go down. Nothing drastic, nothing that would really hurt the station, just cut down production. So I told Amos."

"What did the captain do?" Aeneas asked.

"Amos wanted me to cooperate with Marty, but I wanted no part of that. I told Marty to go to hell. The next day when I was coming off shift I saw Marty go into my lab, so I went to the captain and told him about it. Amos went in after Marty. An hour later one of the construction people saw the captain drifting away from the airlock."

"Were there any other witnesses?"

She wouldn't answer. "There's no point in this," she said.

"We'll see." Aeneas turned to Dr. Eliot. "Is there any place you can assemble the entire crew?"

"Yes-"

"Please call them together in one hour. Until then, leave me alone here." His voice carried command, and when Eliot looked into his eyes they seemed as deep as the stars outside the viewport.

The messroom was large enough to hold the hundred men and women with room to spare. It was the full width of the central section of the crew quarters, twenty meters across and more than twice that in length. Thin aluminum flooring made the floor flat across its width and curved gently along the length. The walls were curving sections of a cylinder, with a metallic shine of impervious synthetic cloth. There were several viewports, deep, proving that the i

Aeneas let Kit Penrose lead him into the room. He noted small groups of crewmen clumped together, nervous little groups speaking in low voices that died away as they saw him.