“It’s too early and there’s not enough information to think,” says Fin. “But we can make observations. We have a ship where everyone was asleep. The robots and Ragtime were working and animated until three weeks ago. Two weeks ago, you woke to find the passengers already dead. The bodies are piled up in a most dramatic way. If we had not counted the body parts, we would have assumed, by subtraction, that they were all there.”

“What conclusions do you draw from that?” asks Shell.

“None, just theories. The body parts were piled for emotional reaction, for horror, by the killer or killers,” says Fin.

“But the bodies were piled by the robots,” says Shell.

“Yes. And most likely, the robots did the actual cutting of the bodies. But let’s assume, for the sake of my theory, that the killer knew what the bots would do with the bodies, that they would see bodies as waste and try to stuff them into the disposal unit.”

“Why?” asks Shell.

“In my career, I’ve found it useful to ignore why until I know how, Captain,” says Fin. “They didn’t want us to know about the missing parts, is my guess. If they are parts.”

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Fin looks from Shell to Salvo. “There might be two wakeful people in the Ragtime. We can’t assume they are dead, although they might be.”

“You think the killers are walking about on my ship?” asks Shell. She wonders about fitting a search-and-destroy into her work schedule. She is not in a forgiving state of mind.

“Maybe. But maybe the killers are dead,” says Fin.

“I don’t understand,” says Shell.

“There may be two people still alive on the ship, or there may be one, last-person-standing-type situation. Or there may be none. We cannot rule out the possibility of murder-suicide,” says Fin. “Right now, everything is possible.”

“Okay, okay, this is all interesting, but what should we do?”

Salvo says, “It makes sense to try to establish the location of the missing parts.”

“People, Salvo. We call them people,” says Fin. “But, yeah.”

“All right, we search,” says Shell. “Ragtime.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Organic matter search on board, excluding passengers in pods, excluding bioreactor, excluding this room, excluding Node E.”

“What if what we’re looking for is in Node E?” asks Fin.

“It’s not in Node E,” says Shell. “Ragtime, commence search.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Have you rested?” asks Shell. She faces both of them but makes eye contact with Fin. He seems lost in thought, contemplative. There must have been a reason Bloodroot chose him for the mission. Maybe he’s not entirely useless.

Fin seems to come back to himself. “No, but I will.”

“Do it now. I don’t want you making mistakes with the work detail,” says Shell.

“Organic matter located,” says Ragtime.

“Where?” asks Shell.

“I cannot say, Captain. It is in motion.”