Read Online Dead Man on the Moon by Steven Harper - Free Book Online Page B

computer again. "Let me double-check what I remember. I said there were no outstanding missing person cases on Luna, but I've only been here a few years."
    "You think perhaps someone's been missing for longer than that?"
    "Maybe." Linus tapped keys and the display flashed. "Let me see if . . . aha! Two cases, right here."
    Karen came over to look, and Linus smelled lilacs again. "Linus, both of those are from Sueyin Dai's time, when the UN was in charge and this place was just called Luna Base. And both missing people went out with vacuum suits on."
    "The killer could have taken the victim out of the vac suit after the murder."
    "No, love. Remember the frat boy? The inside of his suit was a block of ice. The water had been sucked from his body, and then it froze around him. The suit kept the water from evaporating right away, just like a block of meat left in a freezer bag for too long. If our lad on the table there had died with his suit on, the killer would have had to chop him out of the ice block to remove him from it, and that would definitely have left traces."
    'Traces like broken bones?" Linus asked.
    "Traces like severed limbs," Karen said. "And if the killer waited for the ice to sublimate before removing the suit. . . well, that would take a long time. There would have been missing limbs again because the corpse would have been freeze-dried and brittle by then, as Noah showed us. Bits would have broken off during the removal process. Our lad there definitely didn't die inside a vacuum suit. These two—" she gestured at the screen "—definitely did."
    Linus sighed. "You're right. I'm just running out of ideas."
    "I've sent the DNA sequence to law enforcement agencies in America and the European Union," Karen said. "But I don't have high hopes. Most countries only keep DNA records of criminals. If our lad has a record, we might find him, but otherwise ..." She shrugged. "We don't even have a good image of him. His face is so dried and twisted that his own mum wouldn't recognize him."
    "Yeah," Linus said. He turned back to the corpse and looked down at the taut, dry skin pulled across the nearly bare skull. Who was this man? What hobbies had he had? Who had he loved and who had loved him? And most importantly, what did he really look like?
    Karen mimed flipping him a coin. "Penny for those thoughts."
    "I just came back from computer programming," Linus said slowly, "but I think it's time to get hold of someone in computer graphics."

Chapter Six
    Irish folk music blasted through Noah's helmet as he looked down at the footprints forever frozen on the lunar sand. With the music going, it was easier to forget about the vacuum around him and concentrate on his job. So far he had found and marked footprints from seven different people, not counting him, Linus, and Dr. Fang. All of them were within twenty-five meters of the body. Noah wondered how many people had passed by, not realizing a corpse lay hidden in the icy shade.
    He was about to start the casting process when a jaw-cracking yawn split his face. Noah checked the time and was startled to discover it was almost midnight, local time. When had he last slept? The crime scene shouted for him to finish, but suddenly Noah was just too tired and too fed up to continue. Deliberately he turned his back on it and made his way back up to the lip of the crater.
    Half an hour later, he was back at the door to his new apartment. He slipped quietly inside, sure that Jake and Wade would be asleep in the bedroom, leaving Noah the couch for tonight. Noah didn't much care—he was tired enough to sleep on a bag of cement. To his surprise, he found Jake dozing upright on the sofa. A dim line of light limned the bottom of the bedroom door and the place smelled of stale fried food.
    "Jake?" Noah murmured. "What's going on?"
    Jake roused himself and blinked up at Noah with weary brown eyes. "Hmm? Oh. Hey, Noah."
    "What's going on? You look as wiped as I feel."
    "Wade's using the