Never by Blood by Noel Carroll

From the Publisher

We wish to pay homage to the many people and institutions who contributed in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to the making of this novel. They include, but are not limited to, the FBI, the North American Space Agency (NASA), Britain's Scotland Yard and a few brave individuals in Beirut Lebanon.

AAS Showcase

"...nicely paced...well written...entertaining and well worth reading..."

MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW -

Plumb full of action, Never By Blood has all the hallmarks of a great whodunit, international thriller style. The Noel Carroll team does a bang-up job of secreting the murderer among a fairly small list of potentials and completely faking out the reader in the most delightful way. Shuttle/NASA details are complex enough to satisfy the biggest techno-nut. The power is in the details, and Never by Blood spares none. It is a multi-layered exercise in what excellent writing is all about. There is never a dull moment, and characterization is top-notch. A most amazing read. Please keep writing more of these...they're great!

Sime Gen - Linda Nelson

..Taken together as a whole this was an excellent out of this world romp. Chillingly believable, contemporary and very closely tied to what is happening in our world today. Taken from the daily news, the possibility of an accident out there in space, and the treatment of men and woman in our society whatever their profession or beliefs may be, gives this skeleton some meat that most mysteries I have read don't usually take on.

Scribes World - Thal

Strap on your shoulder harness and get ready for a non-stop thriller that will keep you guessing until its final pages. Husband and wife team, Noel Carroll, has a descriptive style and fluid pace that opens windows from the suburbs of Philadelphia, to the wet streets of London, and the poverty of war torn Beirut.

I highly recommend Never By Blood to all readers who enjoy fast paced action, international intrigue and suspense, with a dash of romance.

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All Therese Elliott could remember was the now, and the now was dominated by confusion and pain. And death--there was a dead man floating in the air not three feet away, his red-rimmed eyes open and accusing and his face twisted into a blend of agony and surprise. His casually-dressed frame, large for an astronaut, demanded more than its share of the flight deck as he bullied his way from one instrument-laden bulkhead to another then ricocheted off to follow a different path--perpetual motion in a surreal setting. Pushed out in front of him and extended to just above eye level, one of his hands moved slowly across his body as if trapped in an eternal wave.

The sight of him brought on a surge of nausea, its duration brief but powerful. Therese tried to fight it with a deep breath, but the thought of what might be mixed in with that breath, floating evidence of his mortal struggle, made her hold back. That the man was dead was surprising; that he was floating was not. Although never having been in space before, Therese was more familiar with the nuances of shuttle travel than many of the people at NASA, this the result of her husband's abundant enthusiasm.

But it was Mike who should be here, not she.

Shifting focus to her pain, Therese grimaced at the sight of bruises still in the process of forming below the sleeves of her loose, blue knit shirt. More could be felt on her upper and lower torso and on her left hip just below where her bulky sweat pants began. A touch of a finger to her lower lip hinted at a swelling that had not yet reached its limits, and there was a throbbing at the back of her head that she knew would only get worse.

A crash? No, not possible. At close to eighteen thousand miles an hour, a crash would bring more than a few bumps and bruises.

Beyond the pain, there was an annoying fog in her eyes, and it would not clear no matter how much she tried to blink it away. But then a blow to the head would do that. She tried to remember what her husband, a physician as well as an astronaut, had taught her about concussion. The symptoms were there, including the loss of memory-there was nothing about this voyage that she remembered.

Some of the fog was real. Not only was she trapped in an overgrown thermos bottle but in one that did not pay its electricity bill. It was dark inside the shuttle, the only light available leaking in from the outside: stars and reflections from the night side of the Earth some two hundred and twenty miles below. No sound either; no radio chatter; no hum of instruments to prove life-support was still being maintained; no hustle and bustle of fellow astronauts going about the business of staying alive in an environment that was both hostile and unforgiving.

And no Mike!

Reluctantly settling her eyes on the dead man, Therese saw that it was fifty-two-year-old Fred Oberly, Mike's mission commander and a friend to them both. On top of Oberly's head, where at a younger age hair would have prevented it from being seen, there was a small, white bandage, new and looking out of place on a dead man. It was like a beacon urging her forward, and she responded by moving her weightless body to where she could lift its edges and take a closer look. There was a small break in the skin, put there by some kind of blunt instrument that was either not blunt enough or wielded with too much enthusiasm. It reminded Therese of the pain on the side of her head, and she explored the area with her fingers to see if she might also have a bandage. She did not, but there was a sensitive lump to testify to the blow she must have received.

She looked again at Oberly's wound and saw that any blood that might otherwise have flowed had been held in check by a thick coating of a cream that looked familiar; probably Avitene--Mike used Avitene to treat cuts on boxers during prizefights, one of his passions.

But why was it used here? Chances are that blow killed him before any blood could begin to flow.

The thought died in the air as a scene of horror flashed behind Therese's eyes: violence in quick-time with herself as participant rather than victim; faces passing by quickly, too quickly to be identified, each with eyes burning and lips moving in anger or in protest. And blood, lots of it, some being shed as she watched and by her own hand. Emotions, dormant until now, pushed through whatever protective shell had held them at bay, and she felt fear, fear that she would not live out the day, that there was a force within this tiny outpost of space-age humanity that could not be stopped.

Movement outside the spacecraft, felt as much as seen, another beacon she had no power to resist!

Dodging the dead body that had not yet found its rest, Therese pushed toward one of the two overhead observation windows, feeling as she did so like a puppet on a string. A part of her wanted to back off, to return to whatever void had preceded her awakening to this madness, but a greater part wanted to know; needed to know. This was her life; it was Mike's life, and whether either of those lives were to continue was to be decided here and now.

Easily seen because of the starlight reflecting off his bright white spacesuit, one of the crew tugged against a badly shredded tether, his form as still as the dead man beside Therese. Another tether hung loosely in space, its near end connected to the shuttle but its distant end, the end that should have an astronaut attached to it, shredded and empty. The Remote Manipulator System Arm, the robotic lifting device that had likely caused the damage, was fully extended but out of action.

Therese could not see the face inside the space suit and thus could not tell which of the two astronauts scheduled to perform spacewalks it was. She could not even tell if it was a man or a woman-there were two women assigned to this crew, one of whom would be out there now.

More movement, this time beyond the spacecraft, something distant but closing. Like the shuttle, it was buried in the night side of Earth, but not so much that Therese could not pick out its shadowy arms spreading outward against a backdrop of stars. It was the International Space Station and they were moving toward it at an alarming rate.

Before Therese had time to consider this new twist, the spacewalker slipped his mangled tether then began drifting toward the slowly-turning planet far below. Therese watched him move away, aware that there could be only one end for him. He would become Earth's first (or perhaps second-the other spacewalker was nowhere to be seen) human shooting star as he tumbled into the atmosphere and evaporated in a flash of fire. And unless something was done to divert the shuttle, it and the International Space Station would soon follow.

Therese pushed away from the observation window in horror, the move ending in a jolt as she crashed against the opposite bulkhead. Three dead out of a crew of six--there were two not yet accounted for. Badly in need of company, she headed for the bottom half of their cramped capsule, pushing through the air to the starboard interdeck access hatch then head first down to the middeck as if this were a route she took every day. But it was even darker here than on the flight deck, and a buzzing appeared in her head as she scanned the room, barely able to see and afraid of what the shadows might reveal. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, one of the shadows became another of her ill-fated colleagues.

She was surprised but for an unexpected reason. The dead man was Howard Parkney, one of the crew backups. Parkney should not be here!

But then, I should not be here either!

Parkney was drifting without purpose through the crew quarters, his body from time to time brushing close to a switch and threatening an action which, in a fully-powered ship, could spell disaster. His eyes, although seeing nothing, were half open, and like Oberly he wore a bandage, this one in the center of his forehead-he would have seen the blow coming.

Therese's mouth turned dry as she moved within range then, in a moment of fear-driven frustration, grabbed the bandage and yanked it free. Another small cut and another smear of Avitene to restrict blood that could never have flowed. She released the offensive bandage then watched as it drifted in her direction, the action eerie and threatening.

Parkney was not alone. There was someone else, someone behind her and close by. She turned to face the new challenge, her eyes wide and her heart racing. Heading directly for her and now only inches away, was the last member of the team, Thomas Karak, the mission's pilot. One arm was stretched above his head as if readying a blow.

Even while certain that Karak was dead, Therese squirmed and twisted in the air wanting desperately to avoid contact--Karak's body was moving at her as if intent upon a violation it was no longer capable of performing. The collision, when inevitably it came, was made worse by the blood, bright red and moist, that clung to Karak's hair and forehead. Some of it spread to the hand Therese raised to protect herself, and yet additional molecules splashed into the air making breathing an unpleasant prospect.

Curiously, there was no bandage on Karak's head. It was as if his slayer, seeing that the blood loss was overwhelming, had given up. A lead-filled canvas sack, round and close to six inches long, trailed the corpse, enough blood clinging to its surface to brand it as the murder weapon.

All dead; only she left alive.

In a flash of insight, the origin of which she had no hope of discovering, Therese knew she was not in her own body. She also knew that the human shell she wore belonged to a killer. Needing to be sure, she searched for something that might serve as a mirror, even as the passage of the shuttle further into Earth's night meant less light was being reflected from below. She pushed her way back to the flight deck where the light was better, aware that her time was drawing to a close, and that she had to move quickly or the truth would forever elude her.

The observation window on the flight deck was a mirror of sorts, but all she could see in it, besides the approaching space station, was a scratchy hint of the human being that was herself. But there was something written in the window's upper edge, a confusing assemblage of words penned in a strong hand, the neatness of the letters suggesting it was the life's work of the author to ensure it be seen and understood. It took a moment of straining her eyes against the darkness, but soon the phrase, "auto da fe" appeared. Well versed in Latin, Therese knew it meant "act of faith," but what its author intended by the statement was not so easily interpreted.

As happens every ninety minutes when orbiting the Earth, the sun began to rise; there was light for the first time since this ordeal began. Fearing that it would as quickly be snatched away, Therese raced to find a way to discover who she was. There were HUDs on the forward instrument panel, Heads Up Displays, television tubes used to present information in a more easily viewed form. If she could get the sun to light up her face, one of them might do the trick. But as she struggled to angle herself in such a way that she could capture light yet still be within viewing distance of the HUDs, the spacecraft and all the horror it housed within its fortified walls began to fade away.

No, not yet! Please!

But the fading continued in indifference to her plea, and with only seconds remaining to discover the truth, she grabbed at a piece of cushioning then pushed off it to propel herself closer to the nearest HUD, taking a chance that this would not also bring her out of the light. It appeared to work; she could see something, the outline of a human face, the face of a murderer. The fading continued, and by the time she was able to arrange herself in front of the screen there was not much left to see. Even so, the glimpse she got was enough to suggest that the final curtain was descending upon her world.

My God, it's Mike!

Therese Elliot, Ph.D., associate professor of Middle Ages religions at Villanova University, lay in bed staring at a ceiling she could not identify, her emotions running too high to even try-the fear and revulsion would not let go. It had been a dream, a horrible dream, both real and unreal at the same time. The unreal was obvious: her being in space and in another person's body, her husband's. But the real was ... too real.

Where the hell did that come from?

She took deep breaths needing to calm herself, and only when this helped bring sanity to an otherwise insane moment did she look over at the person beside her. Mike was smothered in pillow and his breathing was slow and deep-at least she had not cried out in her sleep. They were still huddled together in one of two beds crowded into the motel's modest living quarters.

She remembered now: last night's party, the reception for family and friends of those involved in the Atlantis launch. The press was there as were a few politicians, some local and some from Washington. It had lasted well into the night-in training or not, these guys could party! Something said or done during the reception had triggered a nightmare. An idle comment, a joke, something her subconscious picked up and would not let go.

She closed her eyes but could not as easily shut out the thought that something horrible was about to happen, that there had already been set in motion such events that a disaster was now all but inevitable, that the shuttle she rode in her dream was doomed to end its existence as a gigantic fireball. And that it would take the International Space Station and her husband along with it.