Midnight Blue

If Glen Norris lived on Earth, the woman would have sauntered into his seedy office like they did in detective novels. Instead, she appeared on the wall of his tiny flat located deep inside Mars' New Chicago dome.

"I need your help," was all she said. But after looking around, she added, "You don't use holographs?"

"Nope," Glen said, running his hands through his salt and pepper hair. "Nice seeing you again, Minister Duran."

Morgan Duran, a member of the Martian Parliament, was the daughter of his oldest friend. But if she intended to hire him as a private investigator, he'd keep it professional.

"You've known me my entire life. Don't be so formal."

Glen smiled. "Okay, what's the problem?"

"It's political," she said. "First, the opposition party complains about a minor rise in crime. Then a nobody stumbles across illegal drugs smuggled onto Mars. Now my party may be voted out of office because the public thinks crime is rampant!" Morgan shook her head in disgust. "It's all too convenient."

Glen waited for her to finish. "And you want me to do what?"

Morgan's eyes opened wide. "Find out what's really going on!"

"The Security Ministry's police are good, you know."

"Oh, they'll eventually sort this out," she allowed. "But I don't have the luxury of time. We'll be out of power before an investigation is complete. Once the other party has control, they’ll push the whole mess under a dune."

"You sound a little paranoid."

"No, I'm practical. It's what I'd do if the sand was on the other dome. I just need someone on my side looking into this. Whatever you find will go to the proper authorities. I'm not interested in another scandal. I only want the facts correct. And fast."

"Ok, I'll look around, but this could all be legitimate."

Morgan's lips curved into a sly smile. "You don't believe that, do you?"

"Nope," he said. "Guess I better get started."

******

Glen took an underground shuttle to the Capitol Dome, where the Security Ministry's offices were located. One tiny room was labeled 'CD Police.'

Captain Ken Auburn sat behind a desk with three holographs flickering. As he concentrated on the information, he never noticed someone lean against the open door. When he looked up, Glen quipped. "Sharp as ever, I see."

"Damn!" Ken exclaimed. "Why didn't you say it was you?"

"You were busy," Glen said. "So, they're keeping you off the streets these days?"

"I'm eighty-three in Earth years. The mind works fine, but the body doesn't always cooperate."

Glen understood. Ken was rather young by Martian standards. With limited manpower, almost everyone on Mars worked into their nineties.

Ken pointed to a chair, saying, "You still a private snoop?"

"Yeah," Glen said, sounding apologetic.

"Why the sudden visit?"

"I need info."

"Let me check your license to make sure I'm allowed to talk to you." Ken laughed.

After scanning a chip in Glen's left hand he said, "Okay, you're clean. What are you looking for?"

"Information on the Space Port drug bust."

"That case is pretty cut and dried, but if you find something, I want it first."

"That's already covered. I can't afford to screw up my relations with the cops."

"The kid who found the drugs is getting an award," Ken winced. "We have good people, but not many with your experience."

"Any chance I can see the police report?"

"Get me relief from the politicians and you can inspect the Security Chief's mistress."

"Humph," Glen observed. "I'll skip that, okay?"

******

Glen spent the next few hours reviewing the smuggling file. To an inexperienced observer, it appeared straightforward, but he found it riddled with unanswered questions. Since the Police stayed out of politics, most of Glen's concerns wouldn't have occurred to them.

The drug, called Midnight Blue, was the latest in a long line of designer drugs. The report profiled the inspector, who found it in the cargo of a space freighter from Earth. Alan Flarity was twenty-three and had a few minor scrapes with the law. Just some illegal gambling busts, but convictions none the less. Nothing in the files tied him to narcotics, but that meant little. If the Space Port eliminated everyone with a shady past, the Mars colony would dry up and blow away.

His first hint Morgan might be right came when he dug into Flarity's background. His stepfather was a donor to the opposition party. That was merely interesting, but then he learned working at the Space Port was the first real job the kid ever had.

It was time to discover how the young man had been living before he landed this position. That would require a visit to an old acquaintance in the Space Port dome where Flarity lived.

******

Each Martian dome was named after an Earth city, except the Space Port and Capitol Domes. They all started symmetrical, but the Space Port had evolved. It was a disorderly mix of outdated freighter shelters and various appendages that were added as the colony grew. This haphazard growth made it interesting, but it also drew the seedier side of humanity.

At the Port, Glen entered a dingy little bar called The Ram Jet. It had a faded sign depicting a Buck Rogers type spaceship and didn't attract many tourists.

Inside the saloon an indifferent bartender took his order. Glen glanced around and noticed only one other patron. This was a far cry from how packed it would be at shift change.

When his beer arrived, he asked for Ned Cohen.

"Who wants to know?" was the bartender's gruff response.

Glen looked him in the eye. "Tell him Glen Norris."

The bartender wandered off and when he returned, he mumbled, "Last table in the back."

Nodding, Glen walked to a nicked-up booth, where a balding man in his early sixties said, "Nice to see you, Norris."

"Good to be seen Ned."

"Have a seat. Been a while. How ya doing?"

"Not bad." Then Glen got straight to the point. "I need information on a case."

Cohen scratched his bald head. "And here I thought you came to gab about old times."

"Not today. I want to know if this Flarity kid owed you money."

Everyone knew Ned was one of the Port's biggest bookies. And Glen had covered for him by keeping his name out of police reports that could've made his life miserable.

Ned rubbed his chin. "This about that drug find?"

"Yeah," Glen said as he shifted on the hard bench. "What can you tell me?"

"The Port cops talked to me and I told them he didn't owe me a dime."

"But there's more, right?"

Ned picked at a scratch on the table with a manicured fingernail. "The kid loved gambling, but wasn't good at it. He owed everybody, even Sergio. You know old Serg. He'd throw his own mother into Valles Marineras for ten cents."

Glen nodded. Sergio was ruthless and into every racket on the planet. Unlike Ned, who owned a broken-down bar and made his money taking bets. "You tell them any of this?"

"They never asked," Ned shrugged. "And I wasn't about to volunteer anything."

"But he'd been into you for a few bucks, right?"

"Hey, I didn't lie." Ned winked as he flicked a scrap of unidentified food off the table. "Funny thing, a few days before the drug bust, everybody gets paid down to the last penny."

Glen raised his eyebrows. "Someone handed out bags of cash?"

"Nah, it was done real smart. Let's just say I won't pay the booze distributors for a while."

Glen ran his hand through his hair. "And the others?"

"I hear some guys had their mortgages paid off. That kind of stuff."

"What about Sergio?"

Ned slid back, as if to distance himself from the question. "He and I ain't on speaking terms. Someday he'll screw everything up for honest bookies like myself."

Glen nodded. "One last thing. Where do you suppose this windfall came from?"

"I assumed it was the kid's stepfather, but how would he know who the kid owed?"

"Good question."

When Glen left the bar, he caught a glimpse of two men lurking across the automated walkway. As he rode to the underground tubes connecting the domes, he noticed they seemed to follow him. If those guys thought he could be intimidated, they were mistaken.

******

That evening, Glen felt sure the drug smuggling incident was a setup. But the hard part was proving it. Unable to sleep, he examined the freighter's records to see if he could find something in the spaceship's logs.

Designated ECDSF-34, it was a dreary ship with a dull name. Most people thought spaceships were wondrous objects with exotic names. The truth was less exciting. To keep the colony alive, a fleet of nondescript freighters brought food and raw materials from Earth. It would take another fifty Martian years before Mars became self-sufficient enough to reduce its reliance on Earth.

The only thing he found interesting was how critical a spaceship's total weight was. The crew calculated it to the gram because it affected fuel consumption. Glen never realized how meticulous they were about getting this right.

The next morning, he went to an observation deck to stretch his legs and view Olympus Mons. As he watched a dust devil buzz around the New Portland dome, he envied its freedom. Yet he was stuck inside, where everything was regulated and controlled.

That thought sparked an idea, so he called Auburn. "Where's freighter 34's cargo?"

"In impound. The owners are complaining and want it released. Why?"

He considered telling Ken his theory, but only said, "Could you have it weighed?"

"Say, don't they do that when they take off and land?"

"Yeah, but can you do it again?"

"You got something?"

"Nah, just checking."

Ken sounded skeptical. "I'll let you know."

Glen felt bad keeping Ken in the dark, but didn't want to get his hopes up. Now he needed someone versed in chemistry, and he knew just the man. If he wasn't in jail.

He returned to the Space Port for some old-fashioned detective work. After asking around, he discovered the person he sought lived in the New Beijing dome and worked at a medical firm.

At Mays Pharmaceutical, he represented himself as an insurance agent and asked for a Mr. Ling. When a suspicious Tommy Ling entered the lobby, he ushered Glen into a conference room.

"What do you want, Norris?" Ling said with a sneer.

Glen only smiled. "I could use some help and you're the best man I know."

"Look, I have a clean record, a family, and I stay out of the Port."

Glen nodded. "You were always better than those crooks you worked for as a kid. I'm not here to mess up your life. I need help with an investigation."

Tommy relaxed a bit. "What's this about?"

"What do you know about Midnight Blue?"

"It's illegal," Tommy smirked. "And it's simple to create."

"How easy? Could I do it?"

Ling frowned. "You aren't thinking of becoming a villain, are you?"

"No, but can anybody make it, or does it take special knowledge?"

Tommy shot him a glance. "Yeah, it requires someone with my training."

"Could it be made on Mars? Or does it require stuff only found on Earth?"

"Oh, everything's available if you know what to look for. I heard of a guy who cooked it up on a space lab. It was so pure it would kill you instead of giving you a buzz." Tommy shook his head. "I think he's still in jail."

"Are you able to tell if it's made here, or on Earth?"

Tommy thought for a second. "That would be tough, since all the compounds are the same. If a good chemist had the latest equipment, he might figure it out."

"If I got you a sample, could you say where it came from?"

"Me with Midnight Blue? No thanks."

"Hear me out. This is legit. It would come from the Security Ministry."

"The cops can't test it?"

"What do you think?"

"Heck, I'm not even sure I can."

Glen's eyes narrowed. "I don't want to pull strings, only to learn it's not possible."

"If this is legal, it would be an interesting project."

Glen saw he was already working on it, and asked, "Is it a go?"

After a brief hesitation, Tommy said, "Yeah."

******

The following morning, Ken's image appeared on Glen's wall monitor. He looked around and commented, "Don't you use holographs?"

"They give me a headache," Glen told him. "Any luck?"

"Yep, got the freight weighed. Had to yell and pull rank."

"Can you send me the data?"

"Already did. Anything yet?"

"Nothing you can take to the bank."

With Ken gone, Glen accessed the file. With the weights from the ship's official log, he made three columns of numbers and displayed them.

Column one was the freighter's weight when it left Earth. Number two was what it weighed when it arrived on Mars. As expected, these differed because fuel was consumed on the flight. In the third column he subtracted the cargo from the total weight of the ship when it got to Mars. Using Ken's information, he added the cargo's current weight to column three.

Then he brushed back his hair and said, "Computer, give me the news."

The numbers were replaced by a woman giving a speech at Alan Flarity's award ceremony. Glen ignored her and watched the people behind her. The young man was flanked by his mother and stepfather, but after seeing the grim faces of the security minister and the police chief, he smiled.

Once he was sure the speeches were over, he contacted Morgan. As her image emerged, she exclaimed, "Have you found anything?"

"Well, good afternoon, Morgan."

When she realized how inpatient she'd been, she relaxed. "Sorry, it's been crazy around here. Did you see that horrible speech at the Flarity presentation?"

"Some."

"We're being buried by this fake crime wave and the media is lapping it up. I'm afraid we'll face a vote of no confidence soon." She sounded angry and a little scared.

"That's why I called. I need a favor from the Security Minister."

******

That afternoon, a courier made Glen sign a document before releasing a small metallic case. Typically, an ID scan sufficed, but when the stakes were high, everything intensified.

He resisted the urge to open it, fearing he might contaminate the contents, before heading to New Beijing.

Glen assumed he'd get a favorable response from security and arranged a meeting with Mays Pharmaceutical to ensure their co-operation with the police. Then he handed the container with a single Midnight Blue capsule to Tommy Ling.

"No promises," Tommy cautioned.

******

That night Glen couldn't sleep. In the morning, he resisted contacting Tommy, knowing he'd call when he had something. Now he understood how everyone felt when he didn't give them any information about the case.

By the afternoon he considered going to New Beijing when Tommy appeared on his wall. Glen could feel a knot grow in his stomach.

"I'll cut to the chase," Tommy said. "This stuff could've been made anywhere."

Glen stared at Tommy's image. This was not what he wanted to hear.

Ling watched Glen's reaction with mild amusement before saying, "But it definitely didn't come from Earth."

"What?"

"Yep. It was created right here."

"I--I don't get it," Glen stammered. "First you said it could be from anywhere and then you say it's from Mars?"

"Correct. The chemical makeup means it might be from anyplace. I mentioned that in our first meeting, remember?"

"Yes, but you thought it was worth trying."

Tommy shrugged. "That was more ego talking than scientist, but I gave it a shot."

"And?"

"Every test resulted in the same conclusion; the compounds were generic. I wasn't able to find any trace elements to identify the origin of the blue pill. I went home dejected and couldn't sleep. So, I watched the news and saw the ceremony for the guy who uncovered the stuff."

"Yeah, so?"

"Each speaker hammered away about how the Midnight Blue came from Earth. Then I realized, if it did, it spent months being bombarded by radiation."

Glen was skeptical. "Aren't those spaceships shielded? Who wants to eat radioactive food?"

"Sure, they are, but keeping all radiation out would make them heavy. So, they find a balance between what's unhealthy and what's acceptable. Anything spending a long time in space will contain a higher dose of radiation than something under a dome."

"And our blue pill?"

"My little girl's toys are probably more radioactive."

******

Glen's summary to Morgan was basic. It outlined the gambling, the payoffs, and Flarity's lack of work experience. The clinchers were Tommy's report, stating the drug didn't contain the radiation levels expected for a substance traveling from Earth to Mars. But what sealed the deal was the cargo weighed the same when the police checked it as when it landed on Mars. Meaning the Midnight Blue wasn't on the trip.

The authorities would need to untangle the rest of the story, but he suspected the why was to discredit Morgan's political party, and the who involved Sergio.

Up on the observation deck, Glen saw a dust devil bounce off a dome, spin away, then hit it again. Even with all its freedom, it looked like it wanted to get inside where the real action was.

THE END

Bio: "I am the former partner of a small tech firm (retired) with a degree in computer science. I live in rural Pennsylvania with my wife and two cats..."

E-mail: Jack Freehoff

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