Dale looked at him, then realization flashed into his eyes. He quickly connected to the ship’s Intercom and made an announcement. “Now hear this. This is the Captain. We are about to experience an unscheduled inspection by the Feds. We have also just discovered there may be another macropathogen entity on board—some sort of infection form. We believe this may be what killed crewman Keir. It’s a small tentacled creature which may also have some sort of whip or stinger. If you see it, keep your distance. Its attack range may be farther than it looks.  It uses the vents to get around, so watch out and stay in your groups. Uh… comply as much as you can with the Feds, but stay in your groups. For your own safety. Captain out.”

Franklyn looked at the Captain with wide eyes. “That’s not going to calm anyone down,” he observed.

Alberts squinted. “What was that about a whip and a stinger? Where you get that from?”

“Well, I don’t think it stabbed Keir with sailor’s knife, do you?” Dale said, coming over to look at the gore Alberts had been examining earlier. “Was Keir’s body mutilated?” he asked, looking at the clumps of hair and unidentifiable chunks. “I mean, besides the stab wounds?”

Alberts and Franklyn shook their heads. The crewman’s body had looked pretty intact, as far as either of them had seen.

Dale eyed both of them and frowned. “There is something happening here that we’re not seeing. There’s too many things that don’t fit.”

“Even with a macropathogen in the equation?” Alberts asked.

Dale nodded.

Alberts had to agree. If there was a macropathogen, and it did infect people to perpetuate its life cycle, then why was Keir dead rather than merely infected? Where did the hair and the solid viscera come from? These and similar thoughts came into the minds of the three men standing around the gory mess in the lunchroom.

“We… should probably make sure Kier is really… dead,” Alberts said, slowly, incredulous about the words that were coming out of his own mouth. The other two men stared at him, unbelieving the idea that Alberts had just implied, but eventually Dale agreed.

“We should hurry,” he said, leading the way out of the lunch room. As he walked, he took out his data pad again and put a call through to Doctor Burnstyle. “Doc, I want you to check Keir’s body—see if he’s been infected with Burnstyle-Marlowe Disease. Also—”

“What!” the doctor exclaimed. There was a bit of an unintelligible commotion from Burnstyle’s end of the connection, which ended with a very distinct exclamation of “What?!?” from Dr. Marlowe, who must have been nearby. This was followed by another sequence of unintelligible sounds from the two men that sounded distinctly inquisitorial.

Dale ignored their inquiries and continued, “Also, make sure that he’s really dead. Look for… unusual cell activity, or whatever. Stick a fork in him, see if he jumps. If he starts moving… put him in the airlock—just lock him in there. Oh, and quarantine yourselves in the MQ again so the Feds won’t interfere.

There was a bit more inarticulate garble from the two men. When it died down, Dale said, “I didn't catch that. Did you get my last?”

Burnstyle responded, “Y-yes. You want us to suit up?”

“No, not this time. Not unless you think you should.”

Burnstyle shook his head and moved on to something else. “Lombard and Jenner are still here,” he said. “Do you want them in here with us?”

“They’ll just have to stick it out with you,” Dale said. 

Halfway to the MQ, Dale received a notification from Feorn letting him know the government ship would be docking in about five minutes. 

Reaching the MQ, Dale, Franklyn, and Alberts looked in through the large windows at the men inside. Lombard appeared to be asleep on a patient bed, with an IV bag hanging over him and a heated blanket draped over his unconscious form. Jenner was reclining on another patient bed, looking bored. Burnstyle and Marlowed were grouped up around Keir’s body, which lay on the main examination table in the middle of the room.

Sensing motion, Burnstyle turned to the Captain in the window. Dale hit the two-way button on the Intercom so he could hear what the doctor had to say.

“There’s nothing here, Captain. He’s just dead.

“This is serious,” Dale responded. “I want you to scan him, check to see if those stab wounds were actually made with a sailor’s knife, check if he’s missing any hair or body mass, and… check his DNA for abnormalities.

Burnstyle walked over to face the Captain in the window. “Dale, I understand the desire to be thorough, but the idea that some critter did that…” He gestured back towards Keir’s body, “seems a little hard to believe.”

The Captain did not have anything to say. He knew how it sounded.

Franklyn spoke up. “Look, there’s something really weird going on here. We’re pretty sure the killer got away through a vent in the ceiling—a tiny vent. So unless we’ve got some incredibly spry contortionist on board…” Franklyn trailed off.

Another notification chirped on the Captain’s data pad. The government ship was only moments away from docking. 

Dale grunted. “Hillman’s here. Let’s go roll out the welcome mat.”

Burnstyle nodded. “Let the farce commence,” he said as the Captain, the navigator, and the foreman stomped away. He turned back toward Dr. Marlowe and gestured toward Keir’s body, indicating that they should get busy with the tests the Captain wanted them to perform.

XXVI.

The Captain, Alberts, and Franklyn stood in the hall outside the airlock door separating them from the Feds. Various thumps and clanks and hisses could be heard as the much smaller government vessel connected to the Pater Noster. Eventually the airlock’s readouts indicated that it was safe to open the door and Dale scanned his ID card to open it. The door swung open and revealed the bored-looking faces of about a half-dozen uniformed goons who stared back at the Captain and his companions for a few moments before beginning to move lazily forward into the freighter. Their hands were resting on the butts of their rifles, which were hanging around their necks and shoulders on straps.

Dale had resolved to be as non-confrontational as possible, but his lack of faith in the Feds’ intelligence got the better of him. “You got rubber bullets in there, I hope?”

A few of the uniformed men eyed him contemptuously as they moved past him but did not respond.

Eventually a gap appeared in the parade of goons and Hillman made his entrance, stepping carefully over the lip of the airlock. His suit contrasted sharply with the uniforms his enforcers were wearing.

“You left so… quickly the last time we were together, Captain,” Hillman said. He had to pause as he spoke to watch his step. “It was such a pity we didn’t get to spend any time together!”

It was a narrow, crowded hallway they were all now standing in, and Hillman found himself face to face with the Captain—or they would have been if the Captain were a head shorter. Dale looked down at the diminutive man and waited for him to continue.

Hillman backed up a few paces, perhaps so the difference in their height would not be quite so accentuated. “How fortunate to run into you again out here,” the Fed said. “Maybe we can actually get to know each other a little bit.”

Dale sighed. “Well, I suppose when we’re both going the same direction, it’s only reasonable we might run into each other.” He left unspoken the implication that Hillman had obviously been chasing them.

The Fed nodded and made a show of looking around as if the inspection had already started. “Hm! We weren’t properly introduced last time. I’m Agent Hillman.” The man had an affected way of speaking, using a condescending tone like he was communicating with a dull child.

The Captain took a deep breath. “I’m Captain Dale. This is my foreman Alberts, and my navigator Franklyn.”

Hillman eyed the other two men. “Both accredited, I presume?”

“Of course, yes.”

Hillman closed his eyes for a moment and scratched his nose. “You said something about an infection? Why is nobody masked up? Where’s the HAZMAT suits?”

“We’re pretty sure it’s not airborne—” Dale began, but Hillman interrupted him.

“I don’t care about the sniffles and the runs!” the Fed proclaimed. “You did have a homicide, I hear. That sounds much more interesting to me. How long ago did this happen?”

Dale had to calm himself and gather his thoughts before replying as civilly as possible. “Just a few hours ago. We’re still investigating.”

“How’d the victim die?” Hillman asked. He seemed very flippant in the way he said it.

Dale did not respond, so Franklyn spoke up. “We think he was stabbed.” The navigator looked a bit confused as he said it though, as if he was unsure whether he should mention the macropathogen.

Hillman nodded and made a contemplative expression with his eyebrows raised. “Crime scene still intact?” he asked.

“Er…” Franklyn hesitated.

Alberts spoke up, “No. It is very much not intact.”

Hillman shook his head in an exaggerated manner. “Hm!!! Well, I guess we can’t expect a bunch of plebs to know how to properly deal with this sort of situation, can we? I think me and my guys should go take a look anyway, if one of you would be good enough to show us the way. Oh, and Captain, I hope you won’t mind if the rest of my people take a look around the ship while we deal with this unfortunate business.”

Dale made some vague motions with his hand that betrayed the extreme exasperation and helplessness he was feeling, but then he responded. “Certainly, but your people should stay in groups.”

“Why do you say this?” Hillman asked.

“Because we think there might be a macropathogen crawling around in the vents. It's big and it's got tentacles.”

The Fed blinked at him a few times. “Strange story. I’ve actually never heard that one before!”

The little man gave no indication that he meant to pass the instruction along to his men however, so Dale raised his voice, hoping they could all hear. “You heard that?! Stay in groups, please, for your own safety. We might have a dangerous critter on board.”

Hillman cleared his throat and shook his head but did not countermand the order. He gestured toward the interior of the ship and looked at the Captain. “After you!”

XXVII.

Following the Captain into the bloody lunchroom, Hillman took one look at the floor and exclaimed, “Whoa! That’s quite a mess!”

A few of Hillman’s men followed them in.

“You have the culprit, I presume?” Hillman asked.

Dale sighed. “No.”

“Seems to me,” Hillman declared, “that it should have been remarkably easy to find out who did this. He’d be covered in blood!”

Dale replied without much inflection. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

One of Hillman’s men spoke up. His name tag read RACHAELS. “What about security cameras? Did you check those?”

Dale looked at the man before responding. He appeared to be the leader of Hillman’s security force.  “Yes. There wasn’t anything on them, however.”

“They were blank?” Rachaels asked.

“No. They just didn’t have anything on them to help us identify the killer. The tapes appear to indicate Keir—that’s the dead man—was in here by himself when he died.”

Hillman interjected. “What? Pbthb! That’s not possible.”

“Well, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Dale began to explain. “We think there might be some kind of critter on board that killed Keir and escaped through that vent there.” Dale pointed at the ceiling.

Stepping into the middle of the room, Rachaels took out a flashlight and shone the beam upwards into the vent.

Hillman frowned. “That sounds like a load of BS to me.”

“There’s a trail of blood up there in the vent,” Dale explained.

Rachaels shone his flashlight in Dale’s face for a moment, then lowered the beam. He turned to Hillman. “A man would have a hard time fitting in there.”

“Why don’t we…” Hillman began, “go take a look at the security footage ourselves? Hm? Where can we do that, Captain?”

“The CIC.”

Hillman gestured toward the door, inviting the Captain to once again lead the way.

XXVIII.

Stepping into the Command Information Centre, Dale called out, “Marala, these fellows would like to take a look at the security footage we collected.

Marala looked at the Captain and the men standing with him, then turned to her workstation to pull up the video files. She began scrubbing through them to get to the most relevant parts. She was disturbed a few moments later by one of Hillman’s men making shooing motions with his hand in front of her face, telling her to vacate the workstation. She hesitated for a moment, unsure of what he wanted, then got up. The man sat down in her place and looked her up and down for a moment. Then he raised his eyebrows, turned to the workstation’s readouts, and began scrubbing through the video files himself. Dale and Hillman looked on. The man in the workstation seemed to be fairly competent with the system. Dale gently waved Marala back into the navigator’s alcove with Feorn, away from the rest of the Feds, where it was less crowded.

Noticing the two security nodes resting on top of the workstation, the man who had taken Marala’s place turned to the Captain with an inquiring look and pointed at them. Dale had to explain how the security system was down.

When Tavistock and Nunes appeared in the footage, Dale explained, “It wasn’t either of those two. If you check—”

Another one of Hillman’s men, who was also crowded around the workstation, held up a hand to silence the Captain.

When they had finished reviewing the footage, the man in the workstation turned toward Hillman and shrugged.

“What’s that noise in the video?” Hillman asked.

“Engine vibrations. It’s nothing.”

Rachaels spoke up. “Rewind the footage. Who was the last person in the lunchroom before the dead guy?”

The man operating the workstation synced the two video feeds, then began to play them backwards at high speed.

“There!” Hillman exclaimed. In the video, a man could be seen entering the corridor from the direction of the loading deck. He did not exit the hall at the other end of the corridor, meaning he must have gone into the lunch room. The timecodes on the video indicated that this had been about five hours before the murder.

“Well, there’s your guy,” Rachaels declared. “Who is that?”

Dale and Alberts leaned into the video screen to get a closer look.

“That’s Grady!” Alberts exclaimed.

Dale did not know what to think. There was absolutely no way a man the size of Grady could have fit into that vent pipe.

“Do you know where he is right now?” Rachaels asked, looking at Captain Dale.

Dale turned to Alberts, who pulled out his data pad and began checking his spreadsheets. He held it up so the Captain could see the list of names.

Using his own data pad, Dale connected to the ship’s Intercom system and made an announcement. “Samuels, Grady, Turner, and Toews—please go to the loading deck.” He put his data pad away and looked at the Feds.

“What was that?” Hillman demanded.

“What?”

“You should have asked us before doing that,” Hillman explained.

Dale looked around at them all, then shrugged.

“Why’d you call three extra guys?” Rachaels asked. “We only need the Grady guy.”

“Because we’re on the buddy system.”

Rachaels nodded. “Oh, right.”

Hillman shook his head. “Well, that won’t be necessary any more.”

Dale grimaced. “Possibly. But I’ll still keep my people in groups for the moment, if you don’t mind.”

Alberts was closest to the door, so he exited the CIC first and led the way toward the loading deck. The Feds followed him. Dale was bringing up the rear when Marala laid her hand on his shoulder and stopped him.

“Captain, I think I need to tell you something. I should have mentioned this earlier, but there is a possibility the videos I decrypted are out of sync or corrupted somehow. It’s possible that there’s footage missing or rearranged.”

Dale gawked at her. “What? Why didn’t you mention that before?”

The girl made a pained face. “I’m sorry, I thought you knew.”

“How was I supposed to know that?” the Captain asked.

Marala made uncertain motions with her hands as she spoke. “It’s not always clear to me what’s obvious to other people. The security nodes… It’s a hybrid system…Because we interrupted the data flow…” She shook her head. “It’s hard to explain.”

Dale rubbed his eyes. “OK. How corrupted are we talking?”

The tech girl’s eyes went hazy for a few moments, then she began thinking out loud. “Well, each data block is about seven minutes worth of video… so anything within a seven minute period could be rearranged a bit, and there could be up a minute of missing video. And both videos would be corrupted the same way because I used the same algorithm... And there could be overdubbed video within each seven-minute window…”

Dale stopped her. “OK, OK. Is there any way you can fix it?”

Maral nodded. “Yes, but I’d have to return the nodes and repair the whole system—find the broken node, allow the data to pass through normally. Then we’d know for certain that the videos were displaying correctly.”

Dale grimaced. “How many more nodes do you have to check?”

“Several hundred.”

Dale took a deep breath and looked heavenward for a moment. “All right. Well, hold off on that. We’ll have to do that at some point, but I want you to stay here for the moment.”

“I’m really sorry, Captain…” Marala began, but Dale stopped her.

“It’s all right,” he said, moving towards the door. “Don’t worry about it.”

XXIX.

Upon arriving on the loading deck and finding the four men who had just been ordered to appear there, Rachaels took Grady into custody, read him his rights, and sat him down on the floor. The man looked genuinely confused.

“Captain! What—” he tried to exclaim, but Hillman would not let him talk.

“Well! Now that that’s settled…” Hillman began, “we can get down to why I’m really here! It’s inspection time. I’m going to start with some interviews!” He pulled out a data pad and made a show of scrolling through it.

Dale looked back and forth between the Fed and the bewildered-looking man sitting on the floor with his hands cuffed behind him. He desperately wanted to question the man, but Hillman seemed to be committed to whatever routine he wanted to run.

Still looking at his data pad, Hillman raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “What have we here! We have a female slave on board! I think I will start my interviews with her, because you know, if the government has only one job, it’s to ensure that the slaves are being treated well.”

Hearing the word slave, Alberts leaned over to Franklyn and whispered, “We have a slave?” The navigator nodded but did not enlighten the foreman any further. A short while later, Alberts mouthed, “Oooooh!” as he realized who the slave must be.

Dale grimaced, reacting to the Fed’s plan to interview the crew, starting with Marala. “That’s perfectly fine,” he said, “but in the meantime, I would really like to talk to my crewman over there.” He pointed at the handcuffed man.

“Oh, please!” Hillman exclaimed, smirking. “Like you’d be able to get anything out of him! You didn’t even think to rewind the video far enough! We’ll take this… sorry fellow back to Earth and sort this out there. You can all feel safe again.”

Dale raised his hands in what several of the Feds interpreted as a threatening gesture, and they squared up on him, but the Captain quickly transformed the movement into a gesture of frustration or maybe acknowledgement, palms facing upward, and the Feds backed off.

“Is there a room where I can hold my interviews?” Hillman asked.

Dale took a deep breath before replying. “There’s a small conference room behind the CIC.”

Hillman began to make a gesture inviting the Captain to lead the way again, but Dale cut him off. “Franklyn will show you the way,” he said.

Suddenly realizing that everyone was looking at him, Franklyn stuttered, “Uh… this way.” He pointed towards the front of the ship and started walking. The Feds followed—except a few who remained on the loading deck to guard the prisoner. The Captain and Alberts watched them go, then turned towards Grady.

“Do you think he did it?” Alberts asked, quietly.

Dale did not respond. There were a million thoughts flying through his mind. He took out his data pad and called Doctor Burnstyle. “Got anything?” he asked.

“This is just an ordinary dead human body, Captain,” Burnstyle responded. “There’s no sign of Burnstyle-Marlowe Disease. DNA’s normal, no foreign bodies. Nothing. Stab wounds are a match for a standard sailor’s knife—we used Jenner’s for reference. Same profile. Nearly all the crew’s knives are identical to his.”

“Anything missing from Keir’s body? Hair, skin, internal organs?”

“No. He was aerated, not eviscerated.”

Alberts, contemplating the handcuffed man, overheard this turn of phrase and raised his eyebrows. He glanced down incredulously at the Captain’s data pad, from which the Doctor’s voice was emanating.

“Why do you ask?” Burstyle said.

Alberts leaned into the data pad to provide an answer. “Because we found hair and possibly viscera at the crime scene.”

Burnstyle responded. “Well, it did not come from Keir.”

Dale shook his head. “All right. Call me the moment you find anything. Marlowe’s still working with you there?”

“That’s a yes, of course,” Burnstyle returned.

“Good. Keep at it.”