15 RATIONAL ARGUMENTS

15 RATIONAL ARGUMENTS Lunar day 252 T minus 15.5 hours to evacuation Chang didn't seem very surprised to see us. "I knew Nina was up to something," he grumbled. "How on earth did she rope you two into this?" "She blackmailed Dash," Kira said. She had already moved the syringe behind her back so that Chang wouldn't see it. "With what?" Chang asked. "My family's seats on the rocket tomorrow," I admitted. "She said she could give them to the

Sjobergs instead of us." Chang looked surprised, then sighed. "Man, I knew that woman could be cold, but blackmailing kids to do her dirty work? That's absolute zero." "It is," Kira said. "Maybe you should go give her a piece of your mind." She said it a little too quickly. Chang didn't bite. Instead, he looked at her skeptically. "What do you have behind your back?" "Nothing," Kira said. Again, way too quickly. "That is one pathetic acting job," Chang informed her. "Do yourself a favor and just—" To Kira's surprise, he didn't finish the sentence. Instead he sprang across the room, moving with startling speed for someone so big. He caught her arm, spun her around, and pried the syringe from her grasp in the space of a single second. I tried to bolt from the room—though I wasn't abandoning Kira. I was hoping to get help. But once again, Chang moved faster than I could. He caught my arm and yanked me backward, throwing me into Kira, then stood between us and the door, blocking our escape. Then he held up the syringe. When he'd grabbed

it from Kira, the protective cap had come off, leaving the needle exposed. Chang looked at it curiously. "Where did you get this?" "Where do you think?" Kira said defiantly. "Under your SlimScreen." "Really?" I had expected Chang to be angry, if not downright dangerous. Instead he seemed amused. "Do you have any idea what this is?" "It's a syringe with cyanide in it," Kira said. "Yes," Chang admitted. "But it's also the most blatant piece of planted evidence I've ever seen in my life." To our surprise, he started laughing. As though we'd found a rubber chicken in his room, rather than a syringe full of poison. Kira and I shared a wary look, wondering if Chang was trying to trick us somehow. "You mean you didn't put that there?" Kira asked. "Of course I didn't put it there!" Chang exclaimed. "If I was actually going to go through all the trouble to poison Lars Sjoberg, why would I keep the syringe in my room? Especially when there are thousands of other places on this base to hide it? For that matter, why would I keep it at all? To have a memento of the time I tried to kill someone?" Kira and I shared another look. The argument

certainly made sense. "It's not like it would have been hard to get rid of," Chang went on. "There's a hundred separate waste receptacles here. Or I could have planted the syringe in someone else's room. Or if I really wanted to ditch it, I could have taken it outside after everyone else was asleep and thrown it into a field of moon dust. No one would find it for a thousand years. There are only two reasons someone would leave a syringe with cyanide in it taped to the bottom of a table in their room: "One: They're an idiot. And I am not an idiot. "Two: I'm being set up by the real killer." I could actually think of a third reason: Chang hadn't had time to get rid of the syringe. After all, if he had only poisoned the lutefisk the night before, this made at least a little sense. He certainly couldn't have left the base with it, because he knew my father was taking me outside for my birthday catch. (In fact, he was the only person besides my family who'd known that.) So he'd hidden it in his room, which was admittedly stupid—but everyone, even geniuses, made mistakes. And now that we'd caught him red-handed, he was simply emphasizing how stupid it was to throw us off.

I didn't say any of this to Chang, though. Because I didn't want his good mood to shift to an angry one. Also, it wasn't a great theory. As Chang had pointed out, even if he couldn't take the syringe outside, he could have tossed it in the garbage or planted it somewhere else. Chang was now scrutinizing the syringe. "Looks like there's only two prints on this besides the ones I've just made, and I'm guessing they're yours, Kira. Whoever planted it here would have certainly wiped it clean, although we can check." He tapped the plunger so a tiny bead of the fluid inside formed at the tip of the needle, then gave it a smell. "And that's definitely cyanide." "Okay," I agreed. "Let's get it to Nina." Chang held up a hand. "Not so fast. I want to know why Nina was so convinced that I was the murderer that she sent you in here scrounging for evidence." "Well, you've threatened to kill Lars before," Kira said. "So has almost everyone else here," Chang pointed out. "So why me?" His gaze shifted my way. I thought about keeping what Nina had told me a

secret, then decided against it. After all, Nina had blackmailed me into searching Chang's room. For all I knew, she was the one who had planted the syringe. "She has footage of you poking around in the food-storage area last night," I said. "The same place where the lutefisk is kept." "Oh," Chang said, not so amused anymore. "I wasn't poisoning Lars's lutefisk." "Then what were you doing?" Kira asked accusingly. "I was getting some rassolnik," Chang said. "Rassolnik?" Kira and I repeated. "It's a traditional soup made from pickles, barley, and kidneys." "Pickles and kidneys?" I repeated. "That sounds even worse than lutefisk." "It is," Chang said, making a face. "But Viktor likes it. It's a Russian thing." "Dr. Balnikov?" Kira asked. "Why were you getting him food at midnight?" "Because I was on my way to his room," Chang replied. "And it seemed like a nice thing to do." Kira and I stared at Chang, trying to make sense of that. Then we looked at each other. Then we