A Visitor to the Future - 20 - Climbing for Clues
"Sub-Commander Travers, do you have any spare shoes?" asked Tungsten, pointing to his talon-like metallic feet.
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Tungsten led us out of the building wearing his new military boots, following the security fence around to the back. I'd almost forgotten the futuristic cityscape of Anchor was in the background - everything had been very immersive so far. He came to a stop near the base of the structure, looking directly upwards to a window on the third floor. The building was concrete with prominent pillars that divided each section. He briefly paused, taking the side of one hand in the palm of the other, as I heard an odd clicking sound. He did the same with his other hand. Then turning to Sarkona he held out both his palms - from which Sarkona took something. He turned around to me, holding up his hands before flipping them the other way, like a magician showing they had nothing up their sleeves. I was confused briefly before I noticed what the motion was intended to show - his six fingers on each hand were now five, a vacant slot remaining for the now-absent thumbs which Sarkona held onto carefully.
"That should be the victim's window," he said, pointing. "Now, observe." He casually strode a few paces back from the building, skipped on one foot and moved forward, springing forward into action with haste. A three-foot leap marked the start of his ascent, as his hands and feet moved to either side of the pillar. He began to climb, seeking out areas to grip wherever he could find them. I was a bit taken aback to see the usually relaxed and restrained Tungsten suddenly jump into so much physical activity. He climbed like an athlete, stopping occasionally to size up the next area to ascend. Over the next five minutes he swung, leapt, and climbed through sheer determination until he reached the third floor window. He pushed it open and ducked inside.
Antonia gave Sarkona a thumbs-up motion, which Sarkona returned using Tungsten's metallic thumbs.
Not long afterwards Tungsten returned with a casual stride. He took his thumbs from Sarkona and locked them back into place, flexing them experimentally. "As I suspected, it is possible to scale the building from the outside. But much more difficult than anticipated."
"That was amazing!" I said.
"Oh, it was nothing," said Tungsten, "It would have been much faster had I not been limiting myself to human strength."
"Limiting yourself?"
Tungsten nodded, "I can control the strength and power of my limbs. I was trying to approximate human levels of strength. More accurately, those of a certain athletic astronaut."
"Hang on," said Sarkona, "Strength isn't everything - you still would have to catch your breath and deal with muscle fatigue if you were human, plus the surfaces of your hands are much better at gripping things."
"True," said Tungsten, "I did say it was an approximation. Would you admit it's at least conceivable that someone climbed the outside?"
"Yes, but did they? That's the question. We should check the camera footage," concluded Sarkona.
We made our way back into the building and headed towards the security station where Travers told us the footage was stored. There were extremely thin computer screens clustered around a desk which displayed the camera footage with crystal-clear definition, and we were left to investigate them - a task it turned out I would have to do as no-one else knew how to use a computer mouse. I was glad to be useful even if all three of them kept remarking how odd gestureless interfaces were every time I clicked something.
We spent a good two hours checking through the sped-up footage, which showed a basic sequence of events around Commander Jackson - he left his meeting with Okumu, had meetings with three other staff members who were not suspects until the evening, then went to the base canteen where he was joined by a man and a woman - presumably Hollings and Meers - who both brought him drinks, presumably to help drown his sorrows. The Doctor popped in briefly but didn't join them. As the evening progressed the woman left them and the man almost carried the Commander back to his quarters. The exterior and hall cameras didn't seem to show anything out of the ordinary. Then we skimmed through the door log evidence and staff files, which thankfully I was able to print off. It had been a long time since any of the group had seen paper, and I amused them briefly by making a paper airplane out of a blank sheet.
"I was hoping there would be something obvious!" said Antonia, "This is why I'm terrible at auditing." She scattered the log files she had been holding in front of herself, sighed, and began to collect them back up.
"There are no signs of tampering either in the footage - no glitches or skips," I said.
"The logs don't say much either," said Sarkona, "The Doctor left his lab, went to the canteen, then went to his room. Okumu spent the entire evening in the gym and then his quarters. And Hollings and Meers were both in the botany lab all day, went to the canteen, and then their rooms."
"Botany lab?" said Antonia, her eyes lighting up at the mention.
"Yes," said Tungsten, looking up from the staff files, "You should ask Reserve Specialist Meers about it when we speak with her - she's one of the botanists on the base."
"Anything else in the staff files?" I asked.
"They are all very skilled at their roles, and cross-trained too for resiliency purposes. The Doctor had started training Meers to be a medic on the next mission, and Hollings was training Okumu as a back-up technician for the upcoming flight. However, despite their comprehensive set of skills none of them seem to have expertise in video manipulation." Tungsten tapped a finger on the table briefly as if thinking, "Though I'm not so sure that it would be listed in the files."
"So nothing definitive?" said Sarkona.
"Definitive, no. Promising - yes. A tangled web of background is starting to weave into something interesting. Perhaps one of the remaining interviews can give us what we need."