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school graduates assigned against their will. Vainu was neither. He was Estonian, from a Baltic republic where Russians were treated like occupying troops. Not a man with a great deal of sympathy for the crew of the
Polar Star
.
    “No problems of dizziness, headaches, fainting? No problems with drugs? You didn’t treat her for anything?”
    “You saw her records. Absolutely clean.”
    “Then how is it that no one was surprised by the absence of this able-bodied worker?”
    “Renko, I have the impression you are the only man on board who didn’t know Zina.”
    Arkady nodded. He was getting that impression, too.
    “Don’t forget your ax,” Vainu said as Arkady started for the door.
    “I’d like you to examine the body for signs of sexual activity. Get her fingerprints and enough blood for typing. I’m afraid you’ll have to clean out the abdomen.”
    “What if …?” The doctor stared at the eel.
    “Right,” Arkady said. “Keep the ax.”
    Slava Bukovsky was bent over the rail outside. Arkady stood beside him as if they were taking the air. On the trawl deck mounds of yellow sole waited to be shovelleddown the chute to the factory. An American nylon net was strung between two booms, and a net needle—a shuttle with a split tip—hung from an ongoing repair. Arkady wondered if it was the net Zina had come up in. Slava studied the sea.
    Sometimes fog acted like oil on water. The surface was dead calm, black, a few gulls hovering over a trawler he could make out only because American boats were so bright, like fishing lures. This one was red and white, with a crew in yellow slickers. It swung in and out behind the
Polar Star
’s stern, the factory ship’s rusty hull looming forty feet above the trawler. Of course, the Americans went out only for weeks at a time, whereas the
Polar Star
was out for half a year. The American boat was a toy in the water; the
Polar Star
was a world unto itself.
    “That doesn’t usually happen at autopsies,” Arkady said softly.
    Slava wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. “Why would anyone stab her if she was already dead?”
    “The stomach has bacteria. The puncture was to let the gases out, to keep her from floating. I can carry on alone for a while; why don’t you catch up when you feel better?”
    Slava stiffened up from the rail and folded his handkerchief. “I’m still in charge. We will do everything like a normal investigation.”
    Arkady shrugged. “In a normal homicide investigation, when you find the body you go over the ground with a magnifying glass and metal detectors. Look around you. Is there any particular wave you want to examine?”
    “Stop saying ‘homicide.’ That’s rumor-mongering.”
    “Not with those wounds.”
    “It could have been the propeller,” Slava said.
    “If someone hit her over the head with it.”
    “There were no signs of a struggle—you said so yourself. It’s your attitude that is the greatest problem. I’mnot going to let your antisocial posturing compromise me.”
    “Comrade Bukovsky, I’m just a worker off the factory line. You are an emblem of the radiant Soviet future. How can I compromise you?”
    “Don’t play the worker with me. Volovoi told me about you. You made a big mess back in Moscow. Captain Marchuk was crazy to let you off the line.”
    “Why did he?” Arkady was genuinely curious.
    “I don’t know.” Slava seemed as confused as Arkady.
    Zina Patiashvili’s cabin was the same as Arkady’s in space and layout, four people living in what could pass for a fairly comfortable decompression chamber: four bunks, table and bench, closet and sink. The atmosphere itself was different. Instead of male sweat, the air contained a powerful mix of competing perfumes. Rather than Gury’s pinups and Obidin’s icon, the closet door was decorated with Cuban postcards, sappy International Women’s Day greeting cards, snapshots of children in Pioneer scarves, magazine pictures of movie stars and musicians. There