I Haven't a C.L.U.E Mr. Bigeloo
by Michael P Calligaro
Warren G. Bigeloo watched in nervous apprehension as the station approached at great speed. The rocket jock steering the controlled explosion upon which their lives hung shared none of his concern. The young man yawned and glanced at a few gauges, then took his feet off the console and calmly flipped three unlabeled switches--a red and two green ones. With another yawn, he leaned back and threw his feet back onto the console. Bigeloo exhaled a sigh of relief as the station's speedy advance slowed.
The pilot heard him and looked back. "Don't you worry 'bout it Mac. Since they installed that UGF on the station, docking's a no-brainer."
"UGF? Whatever is that?"
He stared at him in shock. "Well, I guess you lubbers don't pay much attention to advances up here. It stands for 'Uniform Gravitation Field.' Used to be I had to get this baby spinning to match the station and couldn't be off by more than two rpm. It was tricky business. Now they've got UGF panels around the ring and I barely have to do anything to dock."
Bigeloo, happy for a distraction from the space station's filling of the forward port, focused intently upon the man who held his life in his hands. "Really then. Aren't you worried they'll replace you with an autopilot?"
The pilot frowned. "I never thoughta that!"
"Ah, perhaps you'll be needing my services then." He proffered his business card. The man stared at the card as if it might crawl over and bite him. Bigeloo knew quite well that his business cards were old fashioned in a world of instantaneous electronic data transfers. He also knew that people tended to lose information in the giant databases they amassed over the years. His cards were different. They set him apart and caused him to stick in people's minds. Besides, he loved watching their reactions to them.
The pilot gingerly removed the card from Bigeloo's pudgy fingers and read the front, his lips moving as he read. Bigeloo prided himself on being able to read lips in fourteen different languages, including Hadean, but this time was particularly easy. After all, he knew what the card said. "Warren G. Bigeloo, President and CEO, C.L.U.E Enterprises." The pilot stopped there.
"What's C.L.U.E. mean?"
"Why that's my company, Crumbling Liabilities Until Eradicated. I will conceive some wonderful reasons why your employers will need to keep you on and instruct you on certain steps you can take to assure they understand your worth. We'll keep at it tirelessly and eventually they'll have to tear up their plans to replace you."
With a look of fear, the pilot slid the card into a pocket.
"You just think about it. I assure you, my rates are quite reasonable. We'll talk after my business at the station is completed."
The pilot nodded and returned to his controls.
Bigeloo hummed an ancient tune and glanced around in all directions other than forward. Presently, the rear hatch opened and his eyes shot forward to see the inside of a docking bay. "I didn't even feel us stop. You are a fine driver! I'm sure the company's plans to replace you are misguided." He patted his companion on the shoulder and waddled back to the rear hatch.
After stepping down, he removed a handkerchief from his breast pocket and made a show of mopping his brow. The bay was climate controlled at a temperature of 19 degrees, or was it 20? He must be losing his senses as age set in. Still, at either temperature, the 'kerchief was not necessary. One had to keep up appearances, though. Besides, it gave him a chance to stop and look around.
Using his fine eye for detail, a skill for which he was immensely proud, Bigeloo glanced around the area. He noticed a maintenance man in coveralls walk over and chat with the pilot. Two other ships were docked, leaving two slips open. He memorized the registration numbers on all three ships and committed to memory the face of the maintenance man. He did not memorize the values on all the miscellaneous displays and readouts in the hangar, but did try to give himself a good feel for their correct values.
He then drove his stubby little legs in a determined march across the bay to the bored attendant waiting for him. "Permission to come aboard, sir?"
The boy laughed. "We don't do that here."
"What a shame! I suppose instead you'll ask me stuffy questions and mark them off on your little clipboard there."
"What's a clipboard?"
"Why, the device in your hands!"
He shrugged and turned the board around. "I don't know what a 'clipboard' is, but I can't let you in until I make all these lights stop blinking."
"Oh, so it's a game then! A logic puzzle, perhaps? I'm very good with those."
With another laugh, the attendant replied, "No, I've just got to ask a bunch of stuffy questions and record your answers."
"Blah. I like my way better."
"To tell you the truth," the attended mused, "so do I."
"Then perhaps you are in need of my services!" Bigeloo proffered his card.
The boy, being younger than the space jockey, had probably never even seen a business card before. His face scrunched up in confusion as he took it. "What's C.L.U.E. mean?"
"That's my company, Countless Laughable Undying Entertainments. One should never be bored. It makes the mind go to mush."
The boy eyed him appraisingly.
"I assure you, my rates are quite reasonable. Talk with me later."
"I may just do that." He tucked the card in his back pocket and read the first question from the electronic clipboard. "What is the reason for your visit?"
"I heard about the mystery you have on your hands. I have come to solve it."
"Really? I thought you said you sold games?"
"I am a man of multiple talents, my boy."
He nodded and jotted something down on the board. It beeped and he read the next question. "What is the duration of your stay?"
"Until I solve the mystery, of course!"
The boy frowned, scratched his chin with the stylus, and jotted something down. The board sat silent for a moment, then beeped. He looked up in relief.
"See, I told you it was a game."
"Evidently so. Where are you from?"
"The Hadean home world."
"No, that means . . ." he stopped, shrugged, and wrote something. The board beeped. "I guess that's good enough. Here's the final question. Do you understand that Hadeans live on the station and that you are forbidden from committing any violent acts in their presence?"
"How could I not know that? I live on their planet!"
The boy shrugged. "So, do you want me to put down 'yes' for the question?"
"I believe that would be appropriate."
The board beeped twice. "Welcome to Triania, the human space station."
"Thank you, son. Does that mean I have permission to come aboard?"
Laughing, he responded, "Yes, permission granted. Just give your thumbprint here." He handed the board over.
Bigeloo took the board and stylus and signed his "Warren G. Bigeloo" to the bottom. The boy looked at him suspiciously, so he added his thumbprint and handed it back. Smiling, he asked, "Would you, kind man, direct me to your station's commander? I have a mystery to solve!"* * *
The commander, one Daniel Smitten, was a harried little man with dark rings under his eyes and far too little mass on his bones. Bigeloo took in his whole office with one expert glance, then swept across the room with hand outstretched. Smitten stood and accepted the hand, shaking it firmly. "Ah, I knew an old earther when I saw one," Bigeloo beamed.
"Oh, is my age that obvious? I'm trying the new fad of shaving my head to hide the gray hairs."
With a jolly laugh, Bigeloo responded, "No, my friend, on appearances, I wouldn't put you a day over forty." Smitten would actually be forty-one in three more Earth months; Bigeloo checked before arriving. "What gave you away was the diploma on the wall." He pointed to the left. "MIT, I am suitably impressed."
Smitten glanced over at the small plaque. "That's very perceptive of you, Mr.?"
"Oh, how atrocious are my manners? My card." He handed one over.
The commander's eyebrows rose, but he took the card in stride. "Well Mr. Bigeloo, what I can I do for you?"
"The question, Mr. Smitten, is what I can do for you! As you can perhaps infer from my card, I am an investigator."
"I had wondered what C.L.U.E. meant."
"Cheating Life's Uncertain Enigmas; my company. I have come to solve the mystery of your missing Lawheed Drive."
Surprise showed on Smitten's face like a twentieth century projection movie. "And what do you get out of this?"
"I assure you, my rates are quite reasonable."
In thought, Smitten drummed his fingertips on his chin. "I must confess, I would love to have that drive returned. It looks bad that it was stolen on my shift."
"Then will this be an individual payment, or a company one?"
"Oh, I'm sure I can drum up funding if you can find the drive. No one likes its being stolen. Can you do more than just notice diplomas on walls and guess age from appearances?"
Bigeloo turned internally giddy. For a moment there he feared the commander would foot the bill himself. He could get away with charging so much more with corporate clients. "A fair question." He bowed magnanimously, "My fee will be zero unless I can provide for you the guilty party and the method he or she used to filch the drive. You will be on your own in retrieving it from there."
"With an offer like that, I can't see how I could refuse. Follow me."
They discussed pricing on the way to the crime scene. Smitten seemed quite free with other people's money, a trait Bigeloo admired greatly in an employer. They crisscrossed back and forth up the ramps along one of the station's spokes, moving toward the museum in the center. At one point Bigeloo stepped onto a large red square marked on the floor. He became immediately disoriented and dizzy.
Smitten grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out of the square. "I'm sorry, Mr. Bigeloo. I forgot to warn you about that. There are areas throughout the station where the UGF breaks down. We call them the Lagrange Points."
Bigeloo mopped his brow with his handkerchief. "It's hardly a Uniform Gravitational Field then, wouldn't you say?"
"Well, the developers had little to do with naming that product. 'UGF' comes from marketing. For future reference, all Lagrange points are marked in red."
"Duly noted my good man, duly noted."
They soon arrived at the Museum in the center of the station. It was a large room with a circular floor that allowed them to walk straight forward and quickly come back to where they started. Smitten pointed to an enormous, transparent steel case with an open top. "We used to keep the Lawheed Drive in there."
"The only Faster Than Light Drive our species has ever built, and you didn't put a top on it's cage?"
"Mr. Bigeloo, do you realize how much a starship drive weighs? There's not a bulkhead in this room that could support it. We didn't set it down in the case, we built the case around it. Nothing could lift it out."
"But, as the cage is still intact, something obviously did."
The commander sighed, his eyes showing his age. "Yes, something obviously did."
"Any idea how, then?"
"If you don't mind the pun, I haven't a clue, Mr. Bigeloo."
Clapping him on the back with a meaty palm, Bigeloo laughed, "Mind? My already high opinion of you has just risen two notches!" He surveyed the room and noticed an absence of red marks. "I take it there are no Lagrange Points in this room?"
"No, the closest L-Point is the one you found in the spoke."
"Could our thief have modified the UGF to position one in this room?"
"Not without totally rearranging the UGF panels around the outside of the station. It would have been an enormous job and someone would definitely have noticed him doing it."
"When exactly did this happen?"
"During night cycle four days ago. We have a report of it being here at 20:32E and first noticed it gone at 07:17E the next morning."
"And ten Earth hours isn't enough time to change the UGF panels?"
"Definitely not. Besides, the panels surround the outer ring, by the living quarters. We'd have noticed people working out there. Also, we'd certainly have noticed the change in gravity."
Bigeloo pursed his lips. "And they couldn't have just turned off the gravity in this room?"
"No, all the UGF panels are wired in series. You can't turn one off without disabling them all. And even if they turned them off while we were asleep, people would have noticed. It's hard to miss crashing down suddenly in the wrong place after floating from your bed. That didn't happen."
Nodding appreciatively, Bigeloo said, "Well, it certainly is an interesting mystery. Let me poke around and ask some questions. I'll get back in touch with you when I figure it out."
"Good luck Mr. Bigeloo. I hope you have more than we did." With a nod, Smitten left the room.
Bigeloo walked the room's circumference once again and took everything in. He cataloged it all in his mind, but nothing struck him as a clue to the method of the theft. Once they got the drive out of the cage, they would have taken it out through the cargo hatch. That much was obvious. But how did they get it out of the cage? He studied the cage carefully, but found no undo scrapes or scratches that would give any information. Humming to himself, he wandered out of the museum and back down one of the spokes. He stopped at a viewport and stared down at the blue planet below.
A Hadean on her way to the Museum stopped and stared out the port with him. Her spiked tail scratched at the base of the stubby little horns that poked through her long dark hair. Other than the tail and horns, she looked mostly human-like, as did all of her race. Bigeloo felt she could stand to gain a few pounds, but he thought the same was true of most of his fellow humans.
Without looking in his direction, she spoke. "Our world is beautiful from up here, isn't it?"
Bigeloo smiled graciously. "It most certainly is, young lady. It's a shame we have come here to dirty it."
"Yes and no. Our problems are our own, even if our current main problem is you."
In his time away from Earth, Bigeloo had spoken with many Hadeans. Most lamented the arrival of humanity. Some ignored the issue out of politeness. None had ever waffled on it, as this one just did. "How is that?"
"We weren't always pacifists to the point of nausea and we didn't have to let ourselves evolve into our current debilitating state. Sure, peace and love made a lot of sense before you arrived, but we should have foreseen the coming of people like you."
"That is quite different than what other Hadeans say."
Finally turning to look at him, she grinned. "Yes, well, I am quite different from my people. That's part of the reason I live up here. They annoy me."
A mutant! He should have realized. Very few Hadeans could even think about violence without making themselves sick. The few mutants who could contemplate such acts were generally shunned by Hadean society. Could this one have stolen the Lawheed Drive? Perhaps she used a piece of Hadean technology unknown to the humans.
But why? The Hadeans had their own FTL ships and theirs were far superior to the human one. Could she be plotting something? She'd need help to do anything extreme. While a Hadean mutant could plot a violent act, no Hadean could carry one out. Bigeloo marked her down on his mental "suspects" list. "Perhaps we will not always be a problem."
She sighed and her tail thumped against the floor. "I wish that to be true, but know it to be false. Right now your laws protect us, but you are a very short lived people. Your descendants will ignore those laws and enslave us. There is little we can do."
Except move away. Perhaps she stole the drive so that the Humans could not easily follow? This left much to think about. "I like to think we are better than that, but my history says otherwise. At least I can guarantee to you that I, Warren G. Bigeloo, will not be one to enslave you."
She nodded. "I feel light for meeting you, Warren. My name is Mhra-na." She continued down the spoke and Bigeloo watched her go. With a hat and loose clothes and in the right lighting, Mhra-na might have passed for a human. Hers was definitely a branch to inspect.
Ready to move on to the outer ring, he glanced out the viewport one more time. A bit of movement caught his eye. A man in a maintenance spacesuit worked at the base of one of the spokes. Bigeloo decided to wander over to the hatch near him, but, not knowing how long he would be out there, chose to take the long way around.
He traversed the long crisscrossing ramp down to the outer ring. There he took careful note of his bearings and headed in the direction of the spoke under repair. Along the way he noticed a young girl sitting on a bench and looking bored. Taking a moment to wipe his brow, he plopped down beside her and exhaled loudly.
"Phew. All this walking can be hard on an old man."
"Why are you walking so much, mister?"
"I'll tell you if you'll tell me why you're sitting on this bench with that terrible expression on your face. It's not right for a little girl to be bored."
She kicked her feet and bounced up and down on the seat. "I'm being punished. Mom says I broke my transceiver. But I didn't, I swear it!"
"What ever happened?"
"I put it on the shelf before I went to bed, just like always. And when I woke up it was on the floor, busted."
"How horrid. This was last night?"
She made a face. "No, four nights ago. I've got to miss play time for a whole week!"
"That's pretty long."
"Yeah, forever!"
"It must have been an expensive transceiver to get your mother so angry. Was it one of the round ones?"
She nodded. "The FG-34."
"I see. That is an expensive one. What's your name, honey?"
"Alison."
"Well, Alison, I can't promise anything, but after I get done with my work, I may be able to convince you mother that you're in the clear."
"Really?" He nodded. "Thanks, mister!"
"You're welcome. Now be a good girl and listen to your mother. She's doesn't know any better."
Alison frowned. "Okay."
Bigeloo stood up and continued waddling toward the defective spoke. The commander had not told him of finding things on the ground on the morning after the theft. Had that been an oversight or had he been hiding the information? Bigeloo hoped for the former. He rather liked the little man. He arrived back in the museum just as the maintenance man finished stowing his suit. Bigeloo recognized him from the docking bay. "Hello, my good man. Are you the station maintenance technician?"
The tech nodded. "Harry Warden at your service. What can I do for you?"
"I was curious why you needed to go outside."
"Some of the spokes were showing signs of a shear stress. I went out to investigate."
"Good heavens! We're not in any danger, are we?"
"Oh, no. It's nothing to worry about. The strains are minor and shouldn't be a problem. I may go back out and do a bit of preventative maintenance, but it's not a big deal."
"What could cause such a strain?"
He looked at Bigeloo sideways and frowned. "To tell the truth, I don't know. I'll be keeping an eye on them to see if it gets any worse."
"Have you ever seen this problem before?"
He shook his head.
"In how long?"
"What? Are you questioning my abilities? I'll have you know I've been head main-tech on the station for six years now. I oversaw the building of this place!"
"Forgive me, sir. I did not mean to imply that at all! I'm just not used to the prospect of breathing vacuum. I've let worry cloud out my manners. I should listen to your better judgment."
Warded nodded. "Sorry for yelling at you. Since they stole the drive, it's been a little stressful around here."
"Well, hopefully I can rectify that situation."
"Oh, really?"
"Yes, I have been assigned the task of solving the mystery of the stolen Lawheed Drive. I will be sure to inform you of whatever I discover."
"You do that. We're all wondering what happened."* * *
The commander had left his door open, so Bigeloo walked in and cleared his throat. "Commander Smitten, may I steal a moment of your time?"
"Sure, Mr. Bigeloo. How is the investigation going?"
"Fine, just fine. But I'm having trouble keeping the station layout square in my head. I'd like to make sure I've got it straight."
"Go ahead."
"Well, first of all, it's not straight at all. It's round, like a wheel. And we are now in the outermost ring. Correct?" Smitten nodded. "And 'down' is outward, so your UGF panels are below my feet?"
"That's right."
"I'm facing a viewport, which is behind you on the wall opposite the door. So I must now be facing perpendicular to the wheel." The commander nodded again and Bigeloo stretched his arms out straight to his sides. "And these directions run in the circumference of the wheel. I could walk in one of them and arrive back where I started?"
"If there were no walls in your way, yes. You can do that out on the promenade."
Bigeloo glanced right and left. "I notice you have shelves with knickknacks on those two walls. On the day after the theft, did you find any of your knickknacks on the floor?"
Smitten's eyebrows arched. "Yes, now that you mention it, I did. From--"
"Ut!" Bigeloo cut him off and held up a hand. He quickly looked back and forth again, then pointed to his left. "From that side, yes?"
"Yes! How did you know?"
Bigeloo ignored the question and walked to the shelves on his right. He picked up a tall, thin figurine from the middle shelf. "Had you found this knocked over as well."
"Yes, I believe I did."
"It fell toward the wall?"
"I believe so, but I didn't pay much attention to it."
Bigeloo carefully set the figurine back down and sauntered back to the center of the room. "I believe that if you interview the station's inhabitants, you will find many had similar experiences. One poor girl had a transceiver broken and her mother blamed her for it. I would wager that her transceiver came from a shelf on the left wall when facing this way."
"What are you getting at, Mr. Bigeloo?"
"Do you know that there are stress damages where the spokes connect to the museum?"
"No, I haven't spoken with Harry in a few days. Is it serious?"
"Fortunately, no. But I did watch Mr. Warden repair one of the spokes. If I were to face in this direction, all the damage is on the left and right sides. Furthermore, the damage is one of compression on the right side and expansion on the left. What do you say to that?"
"I say that I'm beginning to see what you're getting at."
"Good. I would like for you to call some suspects up to the museum in the hub. Here is my list." He handed it over and the commander, who quickly scanned it.
"Surely, you don't think Judith's little girl, Alison, was in on it?"
"All people with whom I've spoken are potential suspects, and, as your name is also on the list, I prefer not to speak further about it until everyone is assembled."
Smitten frowned. "Well, okay. I'll have them meet you there in an Ehour."* * *
Bigeloo looked over the group of people milling about in the museum. He winked at little Alison, who smiled and waved. Her mother, Judith, looked on in distrust. Judith was not a potential suspect, she was there for another reason. He addressed the group of twenty. "Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming. As many of you are aware, I am investigating the unbelievable theft of the Lawheed Drive from this cage." He patted the cage with a chubby hand. "The drive is too heavy to have been lifted out and the cage remains intact, so it could not have been removed. But it has been."
He began to pace in front of the cage. "When faced with these facts, I immediately concluded that the thieves had turned off the station's gravity. With no gravity, it would be easy to lift the drive up and out. But the commander assured me this was impossible. Even if you had been asleep, you would have noticed if the gravity had been turned off. Everything not bolted down would have floated around and made a terrible mess when they switched the gravity back on."
He stopped and stared over the group. "But when you woke up, there was a mess. Many of you found things knocked over and on the ground. Poor Alison Wilson's transceiver was even broken. That provided an important clue that has unraveled the mystery for me." He turned to the maintenance technician. "Mr. Warden, you told me you could not understand what had caused the stress marks on the spokes. Now, I am a layman when it comes to space station dynamics, but even I could tell that the stress came from the impulse needed to spin the station. How is it that you, who oversaw its design, could not figure this out?"
The commander eyed his technician in shock. Bigeloo was relieved to see a complete lack any of other telltale emotions in his face. If he was in on it, he was a better actor than Bigeloo had ever met.
"So, I forgot that the station could spin."
"No, Mr. Warden. Some people on the station might forget that, but not the man who had been responsible for keeping it spinning at the correct rate. And I am also sure you did not forget that centrifugal force is proportional to the distance from the center of rotation. Back when the station got it's gravity from spinning, this room near the center was a low gravity laboratory, was it not? In fact, the very center of the room," he pointed up, "would have had no gravity at all."
"That is true, but it doesn't mean I did it."
"I don't know about that. How many people here have access to both the UGF controls and the old spin controls? And of those people, how many know how to operate the spin?"
Warden tried to change the subject. "Frankly, I'm offended by your innuendo. My service to this station has been long and distinguished. Who are you to come here and accuse me of theft?"
"I apologize for the innuendo, my good man. Unfortunately, in this case it is true."
"You can't prove it."
This wasn't getting anywhere. Time for plan "B." Bigeloo made a show of sighing regretfully. "Ah, but I can. It is unfortunate that you bring us to this, Mr. Warden. Have you ever heard of a device called a Hadean Mind Probe?" Everyone looked to him in surprise. "Yes, they invented it after we arrived. They intended to use it to learn our real intentions with them. However, while it does no actual damage, at least none that has been measured accurately, the invasion of privacy gives them fits. Only a few mutant Hadeans are capable of operating the controls."
He paused and glanced in Mhra-na's direction. She stared at him in amusement, staying silent. Relieved, he continued. "It so happens, however, that we have one of those mutants on board right now."
Everyone but Warden looked to Mhra-na. Warden just looked down at his boots. "Okay, so I did it," he confessed.
"What in God's name for?" the commander cried.
The technician turned angry. "Because some of us don't like being stuck out here away from Earth. We're going back."
"But Earth is bad!" Smitten replied in astonishment. "We left for a damned good reason."
"We don't all feel that way. We're sick of living with these peace freaks." He pointed to the Hadean.
The commander continued, "But if you take the Lawheed Drive back to Earth, they'll be able to come back here. Those greedy bastards will tear the Hadeans apart! You know we can't allow that."
Bigeloo cut off Warden's next statement. "Now that you realize this is more than a simple theft, I suggest you get in touch with your people and get to work on finding it. I have done my part."
Smitten nodded and turned back to Warden. "Don't try to leave the station." He rushed down one of the spokes. Most of the others followed him at a more leisurely pace. Bigeloo, Warden, and Mhra-na stayed back. Bigeloo handed a card to the former maintenance man. "Here son, you may be needing this."
He held the card at arms length. "What's C.L.U.E. mean?"
"Criminal Litigations Unambiguously Explained. I think you'll need a good counselor to get you through the next few days. I assure you, my rates are quite reasonable."
Warden scowled and stormed out. Bigeloo noted, however, that he kept the card.
The Hadean slid over and dropped an arm around his shoulders. "A Hadean Mind Probe? What's that?"
Bigeloo patted her hand. "My dear lady, are you making a pass at me?"
She removed the hand. "No, but I would like to get to know you better. You're a very interesting specimen."
"I try, dear. I try."
"Besides, a peace freak like me could learn a thing or two about 'Creative Lying Using Euphemisms' from a master such as yourself."
Bigeloo did a double take. "Did you come up with that on the spot, right now?"
"What do you do?"
"I like to wait until the last possible minute to think up useful acronyms."
"And that's just what I did." She smiled.
"Hymm." He stroked his second chin. "You know, I could use an assistant. Would you like a job?"
"Well, that would definitely be educational."
"Good, focus on the educational aspects of it. My rates are so reasonable that the pay is lousy." She laughed and he looked at her earnestly. "One question first. Did you have anything to do with the theft?"
She crossed her arms and frowned. "I refuse to answer that until I have had more time to practice my C.L.U.E. skills."
He got nothing from her face. If she was hiding something, she was very good at it. She would be worth having around just to hone his face reading ability. They wandered toward a spoke. "And I suppose you won't tell me why you did it either, will you?"
"Far be it for me to instruct you on investigating, but I think you should concentrate on working out the 'if' before you spend much time on the 'why.'"
"Learning already. You're quick."
With a smirk, she responded, "I try, dear. I try."The End
Copyright Michael P. Calligaro
All Rights Reserved
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