“Okay,” Katherine said. “Talk to me.”

  Seraphina nodded to her, and gestured to her examination table where Calira’s corpse lay. Her clothes had been removed, but Seraphina had given her a sheet that protected her modesty, and a cushion had been placed under her head, even though it wasn’t strictly necessary.

  It was a nice cushion, with a red and gold pattern that made it one of the only colourful things in a room that was otherwise white and brightly lit. The other piece of colour was Seraphina herself. She had bright pink skin with golden flecks in her face, with hair of a far darker pink hue that gathered around her head. For most people, hair should have been bound in an examination room like this, but Seraphina was allowed to have hers down because the hair of Rosites, her species, was much different to that of humans – it never fell out unless it was pulled harder than Katherine herself could manage, and it was covered in a natural oil that would repel any germinating creatures that tried to latch on.

  Besides all that, those who tried to tell Seraphina what she couldn’t do in her lab would usually be laughed out of the room.

  “You were right in your initial assessment,” Seraphina said, her S sounds being drawn out slightly by the fork in her tongue. “She went for several weeks without receiving adequate hydration. I think that she was able to consume drinks as a human would, but that is not enough for a Tita to avoid dehydration. The moisture of their skin is what deters all harmful pathogens from entering their body, and it simply must be maintained.”

  “As for the knife blow, it appears to have missed any major organs,” she continued. “If Calira had been fully moisturised and healthy, she probably could have survived this blow and been back at work within the week. As she was already so weak, it acted as the last push, it seems.”

  “What about the knife?” Katherine asked.

  “I examined it, of course,” Seraphina told her. She brought Katherine to a table at the side of the room, where the knife was extended in a clear, viscous liquid. “The knife is of human make,” she said. “It’s also very old – some three hundred years at the very least. I asked a friend of mine who collects antiques if he could tell me anything.”

  “And?” Katherine said. “Could he?”

  “Oh yes,” Seraphina said. “It was his knife. He bought it four standard months ago, but it was recently stolen. He didn’t report it because…”

  “Because the collection of weapons, even those in a state of antiquity, is not allowed under Empiridium law without a permit,” Katherine groaned. “Which I’m guessing he didn’t have.”

  “Yes,” said Seraphina. “I told him that he cooperated fully and gave us any information that he had, then he would receive a pardon and be issued a permit for any weapons he wanted to collect in the future.”

  Katherine frowned at her. “You don’t have the authority to do that.”

  “No, but you do.” Seraphina smiled at her. “I always appreciate how fair and balanced you are with your judgements.”

  “Fine,” Katherine said. She folded her arms. “What else?”

  “At the moment, I’m attempting to pull any traces of who might have used the knife off of the blade,” Seraphina said. She nodded to the clear liquid. “This is Tubbles, my lab assistant.”

  “A psi-slime,” Katherine said. She stared at the creature, fascinated. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in person before. How did you acquire it.”

  “I acquired him in a game of cards,” Seraphina said. “A trader who was staying on the Ring for a short time. He was upset about losing such a useful creature, but I made it up to him.”

  “I’m sure,” Katherine said. She continued examining the psi-slime. It was difficult to see, but there were small fluctuation in the liquid body – these would be the brain waves passing through a form that was all at once brain, muscle, and blood.

  “I’m implying that we had sex,” said Seraphina.

  “I know,” said Katherine. “A lot of the stories you tell me about the things you do outside of work end that way.”

  “I’m just doing it because I care about you,” said Seraphina. “When was the last time you had sex?”

  Katherine glared at her. “We are investigating the murder of a woman who is literally on the table behind us as we speak, and you think that this is an appropriate time to talk about my sex life?”

  “You’re right,” Seraphina nodded. “I suppose you’ll have to agree to get drinks with me so that we can talk about it properly.”

  Katherine sighed. “Okay. Fine. We’ll get drinks. Has the psi-slime found anything?”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Obviously the blade has Calira’s blood all over it.” Seraphina’s voice had switched back into a far more serious tone. “As for the handle, we’ve been able to find skin samples that most likely belong to my collector friend. Besides that, there isn’t anything.”

  “So no clues that blow the case wide open, then,” said Katherine. “I suppose that makes sense. Anyone who goes to the effort of dehydrating a Calira for weeks would make sure that they don’t leave any evidence on the knife that they used.”

  “Yes, whoever did this was extremely clever,” said Seraphina. Katherine glanced at her. Seraphina almost never called someone else clever. Was her friend starting to go insane – or at least more insane than she already was.

  “Of course,” said Seraphina. “I’m more clever.”

  “What did you find?” Katherine asked.

  “There’s a planet named Allgarden,” said Seraphina. “It’s named that way because almost any plant in the universe can find a way to grow there. Now, I’m not a botanist, but it’s due to a chemical found in the soil, a compound of potassium that hasn’t been found naturally occurring on any other planet at all. Even when it’s been recreated on other planets and installations, it doesn’t have quite the same effect, though even the scientists aren’t sure about why that is.”

  “I’m not a botanist either,” Katherine said. “What is it about Allgarden that’s so important.”

  “The rain is very important for spreading this chemical around,” said Seraphina. “Normally it’s almost impossible to detect the difference between it and the rain on any other planet, but if you have a very strong nose, or perhaps a psi-slime, then you can just about detect it.”

  “This rain was on the knife?” Katherine asked.

  “Not the knife,” Seraphina corrected. “But someone who held it has been on that planet in the last six standard months – that’s how long the chemical traces would remain on a person.”

  “And where is Allgarden?” Katherine asked.

  “The eighteenth galaxy,” Seraphina said. “The domain of its third Ring.”

  Katherine reached for the cabinet in her mind that held all the departures and arrivals to and from other galaxies. She had been taught long ago that it became easier to remember these types of details if she imagined herself physically looking for them, and had made this mental drawer for that very reason.

  “The last arrival from that Ring was seventy-two days ago,” she said. “The one before that was a little more than a standard year.” She frowned. “I can check the passenger manifests of all the ships that came through at the time and see who is still here, but there’s nothing saying that the culprit couldn’t have travelled here indirectly.”

  “Well,” Seraphina said. “It’s not for me to speculate on that. All I can do is tell you the facts.”

  “You could speculate a little,” Katherine suggested.

  Seraphina smiled. “If you ask me, it was a direct voyage. You’re all military so you might not remember, but Ring travel is quite expensive to the average person. Unless the killer is rich, which I suppose is a possibility, then it’s unlikely that they would be able to afford travel by more than one Ring in six standard months.”

  Katherine frowned. “Is it really that expensive?”

  “Does that giant brain of yours not have the pricing for Ring travel in it?”

  “I’ve never paid for Ring travel,” Katherine said. “And people paying for their travel aren’t part of my job. I’m not standing there with a donations box, you know.”

  Ring travel, the only way that humans had found that would let them travel faster than light. By collecting kinetic and gravitational energy, a Ring would essentially point a ship in the direction that it was supposed to go, and shoot it there like it came from a child’s slingshot. Thousands of individual computers would use the data from star maps to calculate the precise angle and timing that would ensure that for the duration of the journey, there would be absolutely nothing in the way – no planets, stars, asteroids, or anything else.

  The process was incredibly complex. Every military ship carried a star log that would synchronise immediately with any Ring that it encountered, thus making sure that all star maps would be as updated as possible. With a Ring, it was possible to travel from one side of the universe to another in just a matter of days, which meant that the information in the ship’s computers was usually kept up to date. There were of course accidents on occasion, but none had happened in the last hundred years – if all five segments of a Ring, whose computers lived in complete isolation to one another, did not agree that a launch would be successful, then it would not go ahead.

  Truthfully, a journey directly from the eighteenth galaxy to the nineteenth was a rare one, which was why there were multiple standard months in between the arrivals that Katherine recalled. With both so far from the first galaxy – the Milky Way, as some still called it – and most of developed civilization being either there in the closer galaxies, most would only travel to the outskirts of the Empiridium and back. Tours of the outlands weren’t especially popular.

  Could it really be possible? That someone had gone to all that trouble to make the journey from one lonely galaxy to another, solely to kill? That was the thing that stuck in her brain and rattled around in there like a disturbed nest of insects. Was there any more point? What could be gained from torturing and killing a single Tita?

  “I think I’ll trust your judgement,” she said. “At least it will give me a good place to look. Thank you, Seraphina.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Seraphina. “What are you going to do next?”

  “Well, I have Robert coming to have dinner with all the kids tonight,” said Katherine. “And besides investigating, I have an entire Ring to be running. So I was thinking I’d go home and snatch about two minutes of relaxation.”

  Seraphina nodded. “You really need a drink.”

  “We will get drinks,” said Katherine. “I will be free to go out with you in about twenty years.”

  “How about two nights from now,” Seraphina suggested. “I’ll bring some wine with me to your quarters, and we don’t actually go anywhere.”

  “That does sound nice,” Katherine admitted. “Fine. But no more of you trying to persuade me to do things.”

  “Then how about as your chief medical officer I tell you that you have to get some sleep,” said Seraphina. “And that’s not me trying to persuade you, that’s me giving you the closest thing to an order that I’m allowed to an issue.”

  Katherine started to make for the door. “Goodbye, Seraphina. I’ll contact you if I have any questions about the things we discussed today.”

  “And remember that Oliver has a check-up scheduled next week!” Seraphina called after her. Katherine pressed the button to close the door, abruptly cutting her friend off before she could tell her anything more.

  Then she opened it again and stuck her head back in. “Was it just Oliver?” she asked.

  “Just Oliver. I’ll resend the information to you.”

  “Thank you.”

  This time, she actually left.