Murder On Mars

‘Nobody can hear you scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. When Ernest’s eyes opened, terrified, and his mouth contorted in pain, I knew what it would sound like, in my head. Before I heard it for real. The atmosphere out here on Mars is, as you know, a hundredth of that back on Earth. Do you know what that does to a scream? When Ernest unclipped his helmet and threw it away, he was still screaming, right next to me, I heard it through my own helmet, nothing more than a distant whisper, the worst scream ever.’

When Sorelle Lavigne stopped talking, a long, haunting silence fell on Habitat Pod 3b, all that could be heard was the gentle thrum of the Atmospheric Regulators, like the gentle tapping of rain on a glass window. Sorelle was a pretty woman of average height, in her late twenties with pale-blue eyes, light freckling across her nose and cheeks and with hair so white-blonde it was a source of pride, whenever possible she let her hair down, golden curls so long they cascaded all the way to the small of her back. She had been recruited for the Mars Colony One Project through the European Space Agency. Her official role was designated Third Technician, but on Mars, areas of expertise mattered little, everyone had to help out wherever they could. Her English was flawless yet retained a delightful French lilt, a language she sometimes reverted to in times of stress – a common occurrence in the last two days.

Sat opposite Sorelle was Habitat Pod 3b’s resident, Elizabeth Trent, Lead Safety Engineer. Elizabeth was taller, in her early forties with black hair always kept in a short, pixie cut. Her eyes were also blue, though deeper, more oceanic. She was recruited through NASA and hailed from Casper, Wyoming.

Both women wore their standard grey coveralls with white, hi-vis cuffs and collars and were sat round 3b’s small white dining table, which was identical to every other table in every other Habitat Pod on Mars Colony One. Elizabeth had invited Sorelle to her pod to discuss the accident, but when Sorelle stopped talking, Elizabeth allowed her some time.

‘Where does that come from?’ Sorelle eventually asked in a hollow voice.

‘What’s that?’ said Elizabeth thinking Sorelle was referring to something in the Pod, and stopping herself from stating the obvious; Earth.

‘The “no-one hears you scream in space” thing?’

‘Tag line, from a very old movie.’

‘Which one?’ Sorelle asked absently.

‘Let’s focus on the incident if we can,’ Elizabeth gently prompted.

‘It was routine maintenance, that’s all. Up on Dish 2, keep it aligned with Falcon Satellite’s changing orbital inclination, make sure dish and satellite are still talking to each other. That’s all, just usual routine–’ Sorelle said the word “routine” as though it was some exotic food ‘–until… Ernest started becoming short on breath. He tried to speak over comms but he had no breath, he just mouthed words. He tried giving me hand signals but… it all happened so fast. When he… when…’ Sorelle’s chin quivered, and she fought back tears. ‘I called for aid, but they would take too long. I tried to put his helmet back on, but he fought me. I tried to give him comforting words… to say to him he was not alone as he died, but my voice would have been like his scream, so faint, he never heard.’

Elizabeth reached over and placed her hand on Sorelle’s. ‘I’m sure Ernest knew he wasn’t alone.’

Sorelle nodded and, as though her heart was tired of the fight, gave in to tears.

‘If you would like a moment–’

‘NO! No, it’s fine. We all knew tragedy could happen when we signed on for this mission. Just, we were doing so well… it’s different when it’s real, you know.’

‘I know.’

‘So,’ Sorelle forced herself to talk through her teary sniffles as her sombre eyes met Elizabeth’s, ‘What else would you like to know?’

This was what Elizabeth had been waiting for. ‘Actually, I think there might be something I can show you, if I may?’

Sorelle gave a single, shallow nod.

Michaela pulled out the top drawer of the cabinet by her side, picked something up and held it out for Sorelle.

‘This is the Oxygen gauge taken from the Life Support system on Ernest’s EV suit.’

The Oxygen counters LCD display showed nine minutes of Oxygen remaining.

Sorelle took hold of it and shook her head slightly, wordlessly asking why she was being shown this.

‘Just wait.’

After a few seconds the counter went down to eight and Sorelle’s brow furrowed. She turned it over in her hand, checking the other side of the rectangular orange instrument, then turned it up again and stared at display until the counter changed to seven.

‘How is this…’ Sorelle asked, clearly seeing the gauge was not connected to anything.

‘It has been tampered with. If you keep watching, it’ll count down continuously to zero despite not being connected to its parent EV tank. Every time you switch it off and on, it resets to show a full tank of oxygen. The tank itself malfunctioned but this,’ Elizabeth pointed to the gauge, ‘that was designed to give false-positive readouts from the malfunctioning tank and… it could not have been done by accident.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The gauge was designed this way.’

‘Designed?’ Sorelle said, anger rising in her voice, ‘who would… it is so reckless.’

‘It’s been programmed to simulate a regular oxygen depletion readout. The Life Support system failed on Ernest’s EV suit, so the next question is why wasn’t this picked up. That gauge was never connected to Ernest’s Life Support system. That’s how it’s giving readouts right now. To programme an oxygen gauge to deliver those numbers specifically designed to make the wearer think their oxygen levels were normal … well… I don’t think this was an accident.’

‘What do you mean?’ Sorelle asked in a fuller voice that time, curiosity having temporarily nudged aside her grief.

‘Well, this can’t be done by accident, it would have taken effort and planning, I think this was… deliberate.’

‘But that’s insane,’ said Sorelle. ‘I mean… why?’

Elizabeth took a deep breath before saying something she had clearly been rehearsing, ‘I don’t know, I really don’t but right now you’re the only one I can confide in. I need to approach this as level-headed as possible, make sure I have all my facts right before I do anything, but, if this was as intentional, as I think it is then, well… we’re looking at the very first murder to take place outside of Earth.’

Sorelle started to speak but never uttered anything, though her mouth hung open in dismay.

Elizabeth continued, ‘And something else, I can’t even say for certain that Ernest was the intended target. And if he’s not then we could likely see another “accident” happening somewhere down the line.’

This snapped Sorelle’s attention into focus; she had, after all, been the only one to accompany Ernest on the maintenance walk across the Martian surface.

‘Mon dieu. What do we do?’ Sorelle asked.

‘I don’t know, but I’m going to need your help. Here’s how I see it. We’ve seventy-two colonists–’

‘Seventy-one’ Sorelle corrected.

Elizabeth closed her eyes and inhaled through her nose, nodding ever so slightly. The error had been simple force of habit. ‘Of course. Right now, whoever did this will want to know they got away with it, and they’ll be watching to make sure they did. They might even be waiting to strike again. And we have a number of serious problems; there’s no court system in place on Mars, we have no police force, no trained detective’s, there’s no prison out here, and we can’t even contact Earth without tipping off the killer.’