Part VII
	Ratislav and Morris went through the files with the files with all
the care that Nunez took, but at a more leisurely pace not knowing what had
already happened. Looking over their notes they came to several conclusions
and decided it was time to talk to each of the guests. Taking the mag-lev
from Konig's office to deck twelve, Ratislav decided to start with Mark
Gowrie just on the fact that he had a funny feeling about the man.
	At first no one answered the door when Ratislav knocked on the door,
so tried again several times, each time trying louder and getting more
annoyed. Finally he pulled his swipe card out of his pack and used on the
door lock. The door slid open and even Ratislav had to admit that this did
put a small crimp in his knowledge of he murder.
	It was Jason this time who had the witty comment:
	"Well, I guess Gowrie isn't a suspect any longer. And suicide is
really out of the question because I don't think somebody's head will
naturally bend that way."
	"Time to call the captain again." Ratislav said, looking at the
bodies of Mark Gowrie and Crewman Nunez. "What can you tell me about the
murders, Middie?"
	"From the bruising on Nunez, I would say that he died first after
being beaten by Gowrie. Apparently Gowrie must have had an accomplice who
didn't like how things were proceeding and thought that Gowrie was a loose
cannon."
	"Very good, Middie. Those are some very astute assumptions, but now
can you tell me why all this happened?"
	"As I understand things, Nunez must have found out something about
Gowrie or his accomplice, Gowrie didn't take the discovery too well, and beat
him to death. Gowrie's accomplice didn't want this kind of connection leading
back to them and took something across Gowrie's neck."
	Ratislav looked around the room, it was quite a mess with clothes and
furniture strewn about from what must have been quite a fight. What was odd
was there didn't seem to be any broken furniture so who ever had killed
Gowrie had known a good bit of hand-to-hand fighting and knew exactly where
to hit to snap a person's neck.
	"What do you think about all this, Lieutenant?" Morris asked as he
walked around the two bodies.
	"That is not for me to say yet. You see, I have a thought about why
all this might have happened and if something slips too soon. Well that would
be disastrous. What we must do now is conduct a search of the entire ship to
find a certain collection of items which will be imperative to explaining
everything."
	Ratislav called first the captain to give him the news of the new
bodies found in Gowrie's room and then explained that he needed the ship
searched for anything unusual. Henry agreed and called Konig in his office,
explaining the new developments he ordered Konig to search the ship
immediately. Konig called Ratislav to ask if he was looking for anything
specific, but Ratislav was rather evasive and just specified things being out
of place. Ratislav only asked that as soon as something was found that
someone be sent up to tell him directly.
	Jason watched as Ratislav calmly took a chair from the room, set it
down outside the door, and the settled in to wait. Jason peeked inside and
seeing that there weren't any more chairs left, hunkered down and the floor
and decided to see just how this went. This was one of the strangest style of
detective work, Jason had ever seen, there was a murderer aboard this ship
maybe two now, and the Lieutenant wanted to sit and wait for someone to find
something.
	They had been waiting for just under half an hour when one of the
security personnel came running down the hall from the direction of the
ladder wells. He pulled up short and saluted just long enough before he
dropped his hands to his knees to catch his breath.
	Ratislav smiled:
	"Thanks for hurrying, Crewman. So let me guess, you found a satchel
full of insulation and well as one torn crewman's uniform. The bag is a large
one stuffed full, and the uniform looks as if it was worn by someone at least
four sizes to big for it."
	The crewman froze in the act of breathing, and slowing craned his
neck up to look at Ratislav in amazement. "How did you know that, sir? We
haven't even used the ship's intercom since we commenced the search. Chief
Konig specifically told us that as soon as something was found the group that
found it went into a certain set of tasks. First we call him, then we send
someone to find you and the rest of the group closes the area off."
	"Closing off the area is like locking the barn after the horse is
out," Ratislav smiled. "It's a nice though but you aren't going to find
anything else down there. We take the way back down a bit more leisurely so
you can catch your breath." Ratislav took off down the hall at a leisurely
pace, with the crewman and middie following in confusion.
	"How did you know," Jason asked. "I figure you didn't kill these
people, but how did you know about the insulation and the uniform."
	"It should be rather obvious, Middie. Obviously you can't move about
a military ship without a uniform unless you plan to land yourself in a whole
load of trouble. You must not have heard about it but the reason you and I
found the body of Mr. Setzer was because of the noise that the McEwens heard
in their room. The reason for that noise was that somebody had taken all of
the insulation out from between the wall and the outer hull in those two
rooms and the floor below."
	"So somebody pulled all that out and stuffs in the sack. Then they
crawl up and using the uniform as a distraction. Setzer doesn't have time to
run or scream, so the perpetrator uses him as a knife sharpener. We are
dealing with one smart and crazy person."
	"That is very true, Lieutenant but once we take a look at the
uniform, I should be pretty much ready to have a talk with all of our guests
at one time."
	The uniform was exactly what Ratislav thought it would be. It was
torn as if someone several sizes to large had put it on in a hurry. Looking
carefully, one could even see small splatters of blood especially around the
cuffs of the sleeves. Nodding to Jason, they called the Captain and asked if
he could join them in the guests lounge for an informal meeting to see if
they could straighten this little mystery out.
	Ratislav made one stop before going on to the meeting and that was to
pay a quick visit to Commander Xanatos in his office. Xanatos told him about
the damage to the shuttle and how it had not been an accident at all.
Apparently there was a certain fingerprint in the ships computer that it had
been fiddle with by someone with a great deal of experience in reprogramming
computers. It quickly became that the asteroid strike so near to only the
Normandy was no quirk of fate but something special planned by someone or a
group of someone's. He also explained that the asteroid strike must have been
carefully planned indeed for whoever had done it had done so without Setzer
noticing. Ratislav asked about the possibility of it being some mistake made
by Setzer. Xanatos shot that down in a blink by replaying the ships course to
show how the ship had gradually altered its course to be hit, and that the
proximity alarms had been reset to ignore only this one object.
End Part VII