The Genius Asylum: Sic Transit Terra Book 1 by Arlene F. Marks Page A

Jason Smith still behaved like a regular Fleet officer.
    Drew sighed. “At ease, Mr. Smith, and report.”
    The engineer took a deep breath and began, “Out in space, we have to keep warm air circulating constantly. Otherwise, a compartment will rapidly lose heat, eventually becoming as cold as space itself.”
    “So something — or someone — cut off the air circulation to Karim Khaloub’s quarters?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “I assume you have already performed a thorough examination of the air circulation system?”
    “And the ductwork leading off the mains and into the station manager’s quarters, yes, sir. We’ve ruled out any physical blockage that might have diverted the airflow. End-of-shift readouts showed all manual controls inactive around the time of the — incident. We also did a full diagnostic on the life support console. Everything is working perfectly.”
    “No possibility of an accident, then?”
    Smith shook his head. “There’s no way this should have happened, Mr. Townsend. Not by accident, not by sabotage. The entire system is watchdogged. An alarm would have gone off the second anyone hacked into the programming.”
    Drew smiled ruefully. “So you’ve ruled out the possibility that the console or its programming might have been tampered with? I’m afraid that leaves us with only one alternative, Mr. Smith.”
    As the engineer drew himself indignantly erect, Drew heard a collective intake of breath. “Sir, if you’re about to suggest that I—”
    “When the impossible has been eliminated, my dear Watson, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” Drew said, quoting from memory in Ameranglo. “If there’s no way the system could have been sabotaged, then we must assume it was doing exactly what it was programmed to do.”
    “By someone with the necessary skill and authorization codes,” Smith added hotly. “That still points the finger at me.”
    “Maybe it does. But I told you, knowing the truth and making the report are two separate items. At the moment, I just want to know what happened. Don’t you?”
    Smith hesitated a moment, then nodded thoughtfully. Meanwhile, a darkly scowling Gavin Holchuk began striding toward the front of the room. As he passed Jensen’s chair, the sound of a woman’s sobbing stopped him in his tracks.
    It caught everyone by surprise. Drew scanned the room and finally found her, standing with her back to the wall, beside the entrance to the caf. Lydia Garfield. Unable to barricade herself with furniture, Lydia had hidden instead behind a wall of people.
    “I shouldn’t have left him,” she wailed. Ruby hurried over to comfort her, but Lydia was inconsolable. “I would have felt the temperature going down. I could have saved him.”
    “You were in his quarters?” Drew demanded.
    “Doc Ktumba asked me to check on him,” Lydia replied tearfully. “There was no change. I was going to put his skin on him, monitor from my console. I went to the SPA room — it took only a minute or so — but when I came back — I couldn’t get in!”
    “Don’t blame yourself, Lydia,” Smith told her. “There was nothing you could have done. By the time you’d noticed the chill in the air, the door would already have been sealed shut, and we’d be talking about two deaths now, instead of just one. Be grateful that you weren’t inside with him.”
    In the ensuing half-second of silence, forty-four Eligible minds leaped to the same conclusion. Then, all at once, the room erupted with shouted questions and denials.
    “What’s that about the door sealing itself? Doesn’t the Meniscus Field—?”
    “I didn’t think there was any connection. I thought it must be a malfunctioning—!”
    “Doesn’t the Meniscus Field generator control airflow? Isn’t that how it supercools the area where—?”
    “Detmar, you and Vera were talking about putting on PLS suits and going onto the landing deck to—”
    “We never touched the damn thing! All