Read Online Starfire by Charles Sheffield - Free Book Online Page A

left.
    "January tenth, Tanya Bishop played a game of three-ball on a court up near the axis, where it's close to zero gee. She pulled a muscle and had to drop out before the game was over. Instead of waiting for the others, she said she was goin' home to shower and rest her leg. Home was level sixty-six. She never made it. They found her in an airtight tank on level five. Thought at first it was an accidental death—gone in there, fallen asleep, asphyxiated. I know, that sounded like a bunch of crap to me, too. When they took a closer look at her body it turned out she was strangled. Fourteen years and one month old. This time she was naked. There was no intercourse, but there was mutilation after death. Sexual mutilation. Everybody said, we got us a crazy sex killer."
    I nodded. Once again I sat with eyes closed. Fourteen years and eight months, fourteen years and one month; the ages were right.
    "On January twenty-sixth," Seth went on, "Doris Wu disappeared. Age: fifteen years and four months. They never found a body, but everybody assumed she'd been murdered and dropped out into space. Wouldn't be hard to do—earlier that day she had been on level hundred, right at Sky City perimeter. Dump her outside, and centrifugal force would carry her out and away. Pretty risky if you left any evidence on her, because the outside of Sky City is packed with meteorite sensors and the body should have been seen. It wasn't. Soon as the disappearance was reported, people made the connection. Sixteen days between Myra Skelton and Tanya Bishop, sixteen days between Tanya Bishop and Doris Wu. Hey, we got us a killer who's regular as clockwork. We better watch real close come February tenth.
    "Except that Cissy Muller was found stabbed to death on January twenty-ninth, only three days after Doris Wu. No sexual interference, though Cissy was more mature-looking than the others. Mature-acting, too. Only fourteen years and three months old, but a real hot number. Experienced. If the killer had just wanted sex, best guess on Sky City is all he'd've had to do was ask.
    "April Jarrow was murdered February sixth, eight days later. No intercourse or sexual interference, but maybe that's not too surprising, because April was only eight." Seth paused. "What's up? You havin' ideas?"
    One might say that Seth Parsigian was brutish, vicious, uncouth, and self-serving; I certainly approve all those descriptors. But he was not without observational powers. He had seen my eyes open.
    I shook my head. "Far from it. I have nothing close to a productive notion."
    That was the exact truth. I had been sitting, absorbing and sifting the information flow, and waiting. For what? It is hard to describe, although I am normally blessed with an adequate vocabulary. Let us say that I awaited the burgeoning within me of a strange desire, the joy of an old wound waking. The methods of murder described by Seth Parsigian were barbaric, and those I could not relate to. But the hunger, gusting through the cold arches of the mind, unpredictable and variable and irresistible—that should have resonated between the murderer's brain and my own. April Jarrow's death provided a jarring sense of dislocation. "Eight years old? You are sure she was so young?"
    "Eight years and six months and one day. She looked a lot older, big and mature for her age. Might have passed for eleven or even twelve." He waited, and when I closed my eyes again he went on. "Death was from a single wound, the severing of the jugular vein. It was up on level nine, only a twentieth of a gee environment. Must have been a devil of a mess, blood everywhere. Don't see how the murderer didn't get covered with it."
    If Seth were distressed at the picture that he was painting, it did not show in his voice.
    "Suppose that the murderer had worn a space suit." I opened my eyes again. "Would any blood boil away if he went—" I paused, then forced myself to continue, "—if he went outside? Into space?"
    "Dunno. I can