I was surprised he knew that one—and I wondered if he knew both its meanings. If he did, my next jab would have to be even harsher. While I was phrasing my reply, Mac came in the front door of the station. I turned to him. “Why, Mac! You actually went outside?”
He smiled. “Well, no. I’m arriving at work for the first time today. My daughter had an appointment with the pediatrician.”
“P.D. attrition?” I said, raising my eyebrows. “You mean the police department might actually lose old Huxley here at some point?” This one played better in my head than spoken aloud, and they both just looked at me. Crickets were one of the few Earth bugs that hadn’t made it to Mars, which was probably the only reason I didn’t hear any chirping just then. I cleared my throat. “Anyway, Mac, can I talk with you?”
“Surrrre,” he said, his brogue rolling the R. He nodded at Hux, and the sergeant pushed the button that slid the black inner door open. Mac and I walked down the narrow corridor to his office, and we took chairs on opposite sides of his desk; the desktop looked like polished wood, but was fake, of course—either that, or Mac was even more corrupt than Pickover thought.
“What can I do for you, Alex?”
I fished out my tab and showed him a picture I’d taken of the Caldera-7 Pickover had brought in. “A client of mine came across one of these on the claim he was working. It’s a land mine.”
Mac squinted at the image. “Looks more like it was a land mine. How old is that thing?”
“Might date right back to near the beginning of the Great Martian Fossil Rush. Anybody ever sell devices like this here on Mars? It was officially marketed as a mining explosive.”
“Well, not openly, that’s for sure. But let me check.” He spoke to his computer, asking it to display all records in the police database about land mines or mining explosives. “Bunch of accident reports involving explosives,” he said, reading from his monitor, “but nothing of—no, wait a sec. This one’s sorta interesting. Copy to wall.” The wall opposite the door, which had been showing the green Scottish countryside, changed to a blowup of the report Mac had on his own monitor.
“Thirty years ago, just after the dome went up,” said Mac. “Ship arrived here bringing a load of stampeders in hibernation, plus their supplies. Cargo was being offloaded, but one of the carrying cases had become damaged in transit—wasn’t anchored properly in the hold, I guess. The worker who’d been unloading the ship could see inside, and recognized the objects within as land mines.” Mac pointed at the wall, and a portion of an image expanded, showing a flat disk like the one Pickover had brought to my office, but in pristine condition. “Same kind of device, right?”
I nodded.
“It was in one of the last cases offloaded from the ship,” Mac said. “All of the other cargo had been collected by that point. Could well have been more of the same kind of mines in other cases, but no way to tell—and no record of who collected them. And, of course, no one ever claimed the three mines that had been found.”
I nodded. “What’s the status of that ship?”
He made motions in the air, and the wall changed to show the answer. “The B. Traven,” he said. “Decommissioned in—no, check that. It’s still in service, but under a new name, the Kathryn Denning. Owned and operated by InnerSystem Lines, a division of Slapcoff Interplanetary.”
The ship’s original name rang a faint bell, but I couldn’t place it. “Can I get a list of who was on it when it arrived with the land mines?”
I expected Mac to want his palm greased, but he was in a generous mood; I guess his daughter’s appointment had gone well. “Sure.” He gestured at the wall some more, and a passenger manifest appeared.
I scanned the names, checking under V and D, and even W, for a Willem Van Dyke, but none was listed. Well, this clown hardly would have been the first person to come to Mars under an alias. “How many names are there?” I asked.
“One hundred and thirty-two,” Mac’s computer said helpfully; it always amused me that it had a brogue as thick as Mac’s own.
“How many males?”
“Seventy-one.”
“Can you download the full list into my tab—males and females?” I said to Mac.