Autopsy (Kay Scarpetta, #25)(58)

“Returning to the lab,” Chip says.

With a flick of a finger, he propels himself that way while I ask Anni if she can locate the emergency medical hardware locker.

“It’s right here.” She directs her chest camera at the large panel with the red cross symbol in the metal decking.

“Okay, very good,” I reply. “We’re going to want to try ultrasound, and I need you to power up the rack.”

“Powering HRF One.” In good astronaut fashion, she echoes back what I tell her, and NASA explains to the Situation Room what’s going on.

The Human Research Facility rack feeds electricity to life-science equipment including various radiation detectors, gas analyzers and the ultrasound imaging system, NASA says as Chip gets the power going.

“And while we’re at it, let’s see what’s going on with this.” Anni floats up to the ceiling, reaching a mounted video camera. “It’s been disabled manually,” she reports.

In other words, switched off deliberately as opposed to a malfunction. She turns it back on just like that as the story we’ve been told continues changing before us. Lies and more lies.

“So much for the spacecraft being damaged,” the president remarks grimly as Anni floats to other mounted cameras around the lab.

One by one she turns all of them back on, some of the lenses speckled with dried blood. Then the radios are next, and momentarily we’re linked to the orbiter’s camera system, more images appearing on the data walls. Another organ floats into the picture, an escaped liver that had been lurking behind a bioprinter. Stabilizing herself with a foot loop, Anni opens the medical storage locker, finding the handheld wireless ultrasound machine.

“Chip, Anni, what I’d like you to do now is to pull out medical and surgical packs.” I begin shepherding them through it. “I apologize in advance that what I’m going to need you to do will be difficult.”

That’s putting it mildly, and I tell them that to start with we’re going to need a thermometer. It would appear the only one they can find is an infrared scanner in the medical bag they brought on board. That’s fine for checking fevers but not ideal for postmortem purposes.

“Go ahead and take the ambient temperature with it,” I explain, not caring what the orbiter’s sensors say. “We need to check everything for ourselves as much as possible.”

“It’s twenty-point-five degrees Celsius in here,” or sixty-nine degrees Fahrenheit, Anni reports.

What we can’t do is take the bodies’ core temperatures. Were we able to do that, I would expect different readings than the ones we get when Anni points the infrared scanner at each victim’s forehead.

“He’s twenty-seven Celsius,” or eighty-one degrees Fahrenheit. “And she’s at twenty-five,” or seventy-seven degrees Fahrenheit, and I’m not surprised the female Russian crewmate is cooling faster since she’s smaller.

“What does that tell us exactly?” The vice president looks at me.

“It tells me that they’ve been dead in the eight-to ten-hour range at least. The best we can do is approximate,” I reply.

“Since about the time they were supposed to go out on their spacewalk,” Benton suggests. “Depending on when that was since there’s no video to tell us.”

“It was scheduled for half past eleven last night,” NASA says. “A little more than twelve hours ago.”

“Time of death isn’t an exact science, and we won’t have some of the same findings when there’s no gravity,” I explain. “But based on the cooling of the bodies and their extreme degree of rigor mortis, they died eight to ten hours ago.”

Next, I ask if Chip or Anni see something like a backboard, and in short order they find a folded fiberglass table inside a locker. Lifting it out, they flip down the metal feet, inserting them into the metal flooring’s receptacles.

“What is it you’re planning, exactly?” General Gunner meets my eyes across the table, everyone around it riveted to the sad drama playing out on the data walls.

“We need to see what they were hit with if possible,” I reply. “We can’t get them back home for a proper autopsy, can’t possibly manage something like that up there under the circumstances. We’ll have to improvise.”

EACH BODY WILL NEED to be strapped facedown on the table, starting with the male, I let Chip and Anni know.

“You’re going to have to be my hands up there,” I say to them. “And I’m going to keep reminding you to be careful about getting cut. I expect the projectiles inside the bodies to be fragmented, possibly quite sharp,” and I don’t need to add the other worry.

We don’t know what the two Thor scientists were hit with, and can’t assume it’s a material that’s familiar. Bluntly put, we don’t know what’s true. We also have no idea what we’ll find inside the bodies, and if it might be dangerous, as in radioactive or contaminated with something not indigenous to Earth.

The ripping sound of Velcro, and the rigorous dead male isn’t cooperative, as if trying to get away from his rescuers. Then he’s strapped facedown as securely in place as can be managed with his arms and legs bent, and I tell Anni and Chip to start by cutting through the right thigh of the long johns.

More formally known as a Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment, it includes three hundred feet of plastic tubing that circulates a gallon of chilled water, NASA explains to the room. But in this case, the tubing was perforated, the water long since evaporated.