"It’s my understanding he wanted his own mission command.”
Trask gave me a dismissive look. "Doesn't everybody want career advancement? We all want to improve our station in life, don’t we? Move up the ladder. I don't see anything wrong with that. I spent a lot of time with David in the past few days. I can’t imagine he would do anything untoward. He respected Weyland as much as anybody else.”
“What about Judy?”
Trask considered it. “Spouses are always suspects, aren’t they?”
I nodded.
“Lord knows, my wife wants to kill me at times. She was glad to get me out of the house for almost a month.” Then he muttered. “Probably so she can see her boyfriend.” He paused in thought, getting back on track. “Who knows what goes on behind closed doors, but they looked like a happy couple to me.”
"Where were you at the time of the incident?”
"I believe I was in the main control room, as was David.”
"Did you see anybody go into the engineering compartment?”
Trask shook his head.
"Tell me about the tremors and HPNS that Weyland was suffering from.”
"I noticed it on the return to the habitat and again when we were in the main control room. We both said something to him on the mini-submersible, but I didn’t bring it up again after we returned to the habitat. If it had kept up, I would have said something again. Of course, Weyland dismissed it as nothing.”
"Can you think of anybody who wanted to do Weyland harm?”
He frowned and thought about it for a moment. "I really can't. I mean, we’d only been here a few days, but this seems to be a really good group. We're all getting along well. No major personality clashes that I can think of. I’m shocked by this. I can’t imagine what Judy is going through right now."
"What about Ross? I've heard there might have been some tension between the two.”
Trask gave me a dumb look and shook his head. "Not that I'm aware of.”
"Have you heard or seen any evidence to support the idea that Blum may have brought drugs aboard?”
Trask hesitated, then leaned in and muttered, “You’re not really gonna gripe about a few edibles, are you?"
"I heard Weyland was thinking about reporting Ross for the infraction.”
Trask shrugged. “I hadn't heard anything about that." He considered it. "Then again, it wouldn't surprise me. Weylandwas a by-the-book kind of guy, at least from what I knew of him. He wanted everything just so.”
"How was your relationship with him?"
Trask shrugged again. "We got along. As you know, we'd only been on this habitat for a few days. Not really enough time to develop an intense hatred for someone.” With a doubtful squint, he said, “Do you really think he was killed?”
"Somebody tampered with that breaker box. It's obvious.”
“Have you considered the fact that maybe somebody bridged the circuit in an attempt at a half-ass repair? I mean, you know how contractors are these days. How do we know it wasn't a builder issue?”
I shook my head dismissively. "This was deliberate."
"Fair enough," he said with an agreeable nod.
“I’ll have more questions, I’m sure.”
“Whatever you need,” Trask said with a smile.
As an afterthought, I said, "Oh, tell me about the mission on the mini-sub.”
"Not much to tell, really. Routine cable inspection. It's a lot of fun. Have you been in one of those things?”
