The Space Opera MEGAPACK ®. Jay Lake

the ship, of making it worthy to fly again. He probably didn’t get challenges like this one often.

      Or maybe he did. Maybe his job was all about cobbling ships together so that they would survive to the next port.

      “Can you make it tamperproof?” Richard asked.

      The maintenance guy gave him a sad look. “No ship is tamperproof,” he said. “Especially not a ship as old as this one.”

      Richard must’ve looked unsettled, because the maintenance guy added, “We’ll make it better than it was. If you have a problem out there, it won’t be because of the ship.”

      “Yeah,” Richard said, “I’m beginning to figure that out.”

      * * * *

      Anne Marie Devlin still smelled of beer. Hunsaker wrinkled his nose as he stood inside Kantswinkle’s room. Anne Marie had crouched over the body for only a moment, and then she started walking the parameter of the room as if the room were big enough to have a perimeter. She inspected every little thing. The walls, the chair, the bed, the floor.

      Everything except Kantswinkle.

      Finally, Hunsaker couldn’t take it any longer. “What are you doing?”

      Anne Marie didn’t answer him. She stood on her toes, and peered at the small control panel he’d installed for the guests. The control panel didn’t give them much control over anything, just the illusion of control.

      You let them operate the heating and cooling in their tiny space, and they thought they had charge of the universe.

      “Anne Marie,” he snapped. “I asked you a question.”

      “You did, didn’t you,” she said, her back to him. He had never met such an aggravating woman. She’d be a marvel if she didn’t drink.

      “What. Are. You. Doing.” He enunciated each word so that she would know just how annoyed he was.

      “I. Am. Investigating,” she said, mimicking his tone exactly.

      His cheeks heated. Did he really sound that obnoxious? Not to his own ears, certainly. “Investigating what?”

      Anne Marie turned. She looked at the door first, and then at him. He pulled the door again to make sure it was pulled tight.

      “Don’t do that,” she said.

      “Why not?” he asked.

      She walked to the door and cracked it open just a little. “It’s better this way.”

      “Don’t tell me you’re getting claustrophobic now,” he said. He’d heard about her other ailments. The alcoholism she refused to treat aggravated the depression she refused to acknowledge which was caused by something in her past she refused to talk about.

      All in all, the most infuriating woman he had ever met. And one of the most brilliant.

      “I have a hunch I’ll always be claustrophobic in this room from now on.” She peered through the crack in the door as she clearly checked the hallway, then pushed the door open just a bit wider. “We’re alone.”

      He had to check on that himself. Not that he didn’t trust her, but he really didn’t trust her.

      “What’s going on?” he said when he was satisfied no one lurked in the hall or the stairwell.

      “This poor dear woman,” Anne Marie said, thereby proving she had never met Agatha Kantswinkle, “suffocated.”

      He glanced at Agatha Kantswinkle’s neck. No mottled marks, no sign of a struggle. If this woman had suffocated, she had done so without hands around her neck or something pressed against her nose and mouth.

      He swallowed hard. “Even if the environmental system had shut down,” he said, “she wouldn’t have died this quickly.”

      “Yes, I know,” Anne Marie said. “The problem is the environmental system hadn’t shut down.”

      “Then how did she die?” he asked.

      “I told you,” Anne Marie said. “She suffocated.”

      “You can tell that from eyeballing her?” he asked.

      Anne Marie smiled just a little. “I’ll confirm with an autopsy,” she said. “But I will confirm.”

      “No one touched her,” he said. “And if it wasn’t the environmental system, then what was it?”

      “Oh, it was the environmental system,” Anne Marie said. “That’s why your other guest fainted. The door opened, she saw the body, she screamed, took in what she thought was a lungful of air to continue her scream, and passed out. Lucky girl. Had she been closer to the door inside the room, she would have died too.”

      Hunsaker was feeling dizzy. He realized he wasn’t breathing either. He made himself take a breath, but it felt odd. He hadn’t thought of breathing before. Maybe, like Anne Marie, he wouldn’t want to be in this room alone with the door closed either.

      “What did she breathe?” he asked.

      “It wasn’t pure carbon dioxide,” Anne Marie said, “or her skin would be bright red. More likely a cocktail of gases, something that created the faint bitter odor that was in the room when we arrived.”

      He had been here earlier. The smell had been stronger. He didn’t tell her that.

      “How do you know?” he asked.

      She held up one of her portable scanners. “I’ve been taking readings from various areas of the room. I’m getting a mixture of things that should never be in a residential area of a space station. I have the behavior of both women. I have the smell. And then there’s the controls themselves.”

      She swept a hand toward them.

      He walked past her and peered at them.

      Someone had hit the override. The damn thing was blinking, asking for a manual code to confirm the oxygen mix, which was purer than it should have been.

      Not only had someone tampered with the controls, but someone had tampered with them twice—once when Agatha Kantswinkle entered the room, and then again after she died.

      “I would assume that these systems keep track of who touches them when?” Anne Marie asked.

      He had no idea. The last time he’d used an override had been a decade ago. Since then, he’d replaced most of the guest room environmental controls, going to a simpler system—one that gave the guests two options—hotter or colder. Nothing as fancy as this little box, which even allowed the guests—with the override code—to mix their oxygen from thin to thick.

      “I don’t know,” he said, feeling absolutely helpless.

      “Well.” Anne Marie smiled, clearly liking his discomfort. “I guess you’d better find out.”

      * * * *

      Pounding, pounding, pounding.

      Susan sat up, filled with adrenaline. She’d been dreaming. Not dreaming so much as trapped in a memory.

      The slight banging noise, rhythmic, feet against the thin wall.

      Her mouth tasted of bile. She got off the bed, rubbed her hand over her face, and went to her door.

      Janet Potsworth stood outside. She looked more disheveled than Susan had ever seen her.

      “Oh, you’re all right then,” Janet said with obvious relief.

      Susan frowned. “Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?”

      “Because you didn’t come for dinner,” Janet said.

      Susan rolled her eyes. She had asked the chef—if that man could be called a chef—to give her a meal for her room. He had obliged, serving her some kind of stew that wasn’t on