Page 126 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

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Larry—that’s Dr. Kapil, the team physician—was well aware of the
potential difficulties of interacting constantly with the same handful
of people, and he kept a close watch for signs of instability.”
“I see. A finite universe, completely bounded. A lot to search, Miss
Day, but not an impossible task.” She was making a sketch of the
floorplan in her notebook. “Would you tell me the function of each
of these structures, please?”
So much for an attempt at informality. “Certainly. That small shed
over there contains gardening tools. The pre-fab structure with a tank
on the roof is for water storage and purifying. It is connected by
those pipes with the waste recycling unit on the right and the
Anthropod on the left. That is where the team ate, slept and did their
paperwork. You can see some tables and chairs outside it; we tried to
create a difference between indoors and outdoors, to augment the
diversity of environments our people could occupy.”
She motioned toward the Anthropod. “Is that where they had their
last meal?”
“I assume so. I don’t see any dishes on the picnic table, and they
had no time to clean up afterward.”
“Let’s go inside, then. Please don’t touch anything.” She put away
her notebook, drew a pair of thin rubber gloves out of her shoulder
bag and put them on. My role as tour guide had abruptly ended.
The Anthropod was not a Cyborganics creation, of course. Waldo,
through his NASA connections, had gotten the use of one gratis for
the publicity our project would generate. I put the thought of what
kind of publicity that would now become out of my mind, and busied
myself with the unnatural actions of entering a building without
touching anything. The pod was completely modular, each ‘pea’ in it
consisting of a chamber opening off a central hall. Common rooms
were in front; each person had a private room with bath at the far
end. We went into the dining room/kitchen. It was a mess. Chairs
were overturned. Cups had spilled. Plates lay upside-down on the
floor. The table itself, obviously decorated in as festive a fashion as
the crew could devise, took on a rather macabre aspect.
“Can you tell who sat where?” Labelle Gramercy was moving
rapidly around the room, looking, I assume, for clues.
“No. We were in communication by telephone, not by two-way
television.” I hoped that didn’t sound too sarcastic, but how could I

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