Murder on Capella Space Station

Other broadcast caps were affixed to Hana's skull under her hair. Professor Erskine directed these outputs to the holographic projector, where they formed a three-dimensional graph with five main peaks.

"The five peaks relate to Hana's five basic program modules," he explained: "harm/care, obedience, self-preservation, femininity and sexuality. As the sensory inputs change or her responses do, the peaks will rise and fall. Their movement should tell us what part of the program is directing Hana's behaviour at any one time. It's here that we'll find our interloper. ... Are we all ready?"

There was assent all around.

"Then let's begin."

Hana was in the same clothes as on the day of the tragedy. She stood beside the bed. Humphrey's program was triggered and the robot made his way to her.

"I'm going to help things along here a little," Maurice said, as he snapped a vial of male pheromone and dabbed it on Humphrey. When Humphrey reached Hana, she reacted to the pheromone with obvious lust, breathing deeply and biting her lower lip.

Hana was designed to go into a kind of sexual trance, where every erotic feeling was magnified and her sexuality program was dominant. The pheromone trick was to get her into this erotic state quickly, despite the unnatural conditions. Sure enough, the sexuality peak now stood higher than the other four peaks on the graph.

Following his program, Humphrey took Hana into his arms and kissed her. Hana responded strongly, kissing him back passionately, holding him around the neck. She melted into the kiss, bending her body in an arch as Humphrey held her tightly around the waist.

The sexuality peak was twice all the others now.

"That's Hana's arousal," Maurice said. "She's amazingly responsive."

Their tongues were pressed together. Humphrey began to fondle Hana's bottom. She squirmed and gyrated, pressing her hips against him.

Without breaking the kiss, he started slowly to undress Hana, unzipping her an inch at a time, pulling the dress down as he went. When Hana was unzipped to her waist, Humphrey gently slipped the dress off her shoulders. He pushed her long hair to one side and kissed her neck. Hana's head went back, exposing her throat, which Humphrey kissed greedily. He kissed across Hana's collar bones from one shoulder to the other.

Humphrey eased her dress ever further down, exposing her breasts. Hana wore no bra. Her tits jutted out firmly, the dark-pink nipples big and hard.

Humphrey put his mouth to one of Hana's tits and sucked. Hana threw her head back again and gasped. She held Humphrey's head with both hands tightly to her breast.

He licked and sucked, making Hana moan happily. Then (being a man) he did the same to the other tit. Lingering and loving, Humphrey gave each tit the same treatment again before going to work on Hana's ribs.

On his knees now and kissing down her flat stomach to her slit of a belly button, Humphrey pushed her dress off completely and Hana stepped out of it.

He lifted her up and carried her to the bed. He lay her flat and tugged off her soaking panties, losing them somewhere in the bed sheets. Hana spread her legs and Humphrey kissed slowly down the outside of her right thigh and back up the inside. Hana sighed deeply. The moisture of her pussy glistened in the artificial light. Its scent, the aroma of eager readiness.

But Humphrey passed over her pussy and kissed slowly down her left thigh, building her arousal with teasing denial.

The three-dimensional landscape had been a big sexuality peak for twenty minutes now, indicating that Hana had not left her trance.

"He's good," Hestia said. "Hana's having fun."

Humphrey teased Hana more, kissing around her pussy, occasionally brushing her pubic hair with his lips. She responded with short breaths and encouraging moans, her arms over her head, gripping the pillow, eyes tightly shut. He worked his way toward her pussy once more and Hana couldn't wait. She grabbed his head and held his mouth to her pussy.

Humphrey duly obliged her with his tongue, sending Hana into heaven.

Her back arched and her juices dribbled down his chin as Humphrey licked up a frenzy on her sweet pussy, his hands on her waist, holding her tightly.

Hana gripped the bed sheet and began to buck. Humphrey licked and licked. Hana moaned deeply. Still Humphrey licked. Hana panted and arched even further. Humphrey licked even more. Hana held her breath. She grabbed his head again and cried out: "Oh, God! Oh, God! Just ... like ... that!"

She came hard. The peak on the holograph hit the ceiling of the display as Hana's thighs shook. She flushed pink from her belly to her neck. The wave of pleasure tensed the muscles from her head to her toes. She felt the convulsions in her pussy, along the small of her back, in her hard nipples and her throat. The tingling, numbing, electric spasm made her go limp as it receded, leaving a warm afterglow. The sexuality peak on the graph sank back down. Hana sighed.

Humphrey expertly kept Hana on the boil. He sucked on her clitoris and pushed a finger into her pussy, pressing downward to give her a stretch. Hana writhed in ecstasy, her head shaking side-to-side. Humphrey pushed in a second finger. With his left hand, he massaged a tit, twiddling the nipple.

With Hana loving the penetration, Humphrey began to kiss his way back up her belly, thrusting into her sopping pussy with his middle two fingers and diddling her clitoris with his forefinger.

The dribble from her pussy ran down to her tight hole. Humphrey swirled the juice onto his little finger and pushed it into Hana's arse. She gasped. Now he was fucking her with his hand, going deeper and faster, two fingers in the pussy, one on the clit and one up the bum.

Hana's holograph was an entire mountain range.

Humphrey pushed the middle two fingers of his left hand into Hana's mouth and she sucked on them greedily. He took a tit into his mouth again and kept up the rhythm with his right hand. Hana had nowhere to go except more peaks and more orgasms. She stiffened, held her breath, neglected sucking his fingers, arched and came again, with shakes and moans.

Another beautiful climax made Hana cry out and now it was Humphrey's time. He lay on her, pressed their mouths together, held her shoulders and thrust in hard.

Hana gasped happily. Then Humphrey did what he was designed to do. He humped Hana senseless. She crossed her legs over his back and moaned sweet joy loudly in his ear, reaching a plateau as Humphrey kept up the rhythm.

He pushed himself up to make a steeper angle. Hana liked that very much. His hydraulic cock hit the sweet spot with every thrust. She arched even further, so only the top of her head was on the bed, her waist impossibly thin, her chest puffed up, ribs showing, firm tits pointed upward. Still Humphrey humped away, with an arm under her back to support her. Hana sighed deeply in between her gasping moans as his mouth found a tit again and sucked hard.

Hana's holographic read-out had registered only the sexuality peaks for the last forty minutes. But it was almost time for Humphrey's own peak. True to his program, Humphrey pushed himself up and thrust even more quickly. He gasped out:

"I'm there. I'm there. Choke me!"

Hana put her hands around Humphrey's neck and began to squeeze.

"I've got you now!" said Professor Erskine in triumph. "You're a wily one but I can see what you're up to!"

He stopped the lines of code cascading down the wall projected from his computer tab and highlighted a string. He told the computer to recognise similar strings and restarted the cascade.

"They're synchronised," Mary exclaimed, pointing at the holograph.

The sexuality peak was undulating with regular rises and falls in time with Humphrey's thrusts, registering Hana's joyful response. But the self-preservation module undulated in time as well.

"That's right!" Maurice enthused. "The harm/care module is completely flat but the sexuality and self-preservation modules are aligned. Every burst of sexual passion has an equal charge of self-defence. That's why she's strangling poor Humphrey."

"Does Hana believe she's being attacked?" Mary asked.

"No. Her self-defensive behaviour is a reflex under the control of the rogue program. She's not aware of it. Hana knows she's having sex."

As Humphrey's breathing was artificial, only for effect, Hana's throttling did no harm. He continued to thrust into her, shaking the bed with his vigorous humps. She squeezed harder.

In the original event, Raleigh had passed out by now but Humphrey was a sturdy robot. He continued humping away as his program looped the final few seconds of his instructions.

Hana, in a trance, misguided by the rogue program, squeezed Humphrey's neck with all her might.

Just as Humphrey at last achieved his peak, Hana snapped his head off. The headless robot arched backward and ejaculated. An arc of artificial semen landed on Hana's thigh and the bed as Humphrey's head clanged on the floor and his body fell limply forward.

Hana snapped out of her erotic trance and scooted up the bed in horror, crying and shaking. She held the pillow against her for protection. Her head sank down and she sobbed.

Hestia ran to comfort her. She climbed onto the bed and held Hana tightly, calming the robot, who shook with guilt and shame.

"Don't blame yourself," Hestia said. "He was only a machine. You didn't kill anyone."

"I'm only a machine," Hana said pitifully.

"No you're not. You're a person as well."

Hana put her arms around Hestia and held her tightly while she sobbed.

******

"We've got the beggar!" Professor Erskine said. "There's no doubt Hana was programmed to murder Mr. Raleigh, knowing his sexual proclivities, triggered by the words 'Choke me'."

"It's a clever little program. It hijacks the existing program by changing the start and end positions of a string of code. That's why a comparison with the original program can't see the difference. When it's triggered, it writes new code over the existing code, jumps to another string, puts the original code back and starts all over again."

"Can you tell who wrote the rogue program?" Arthur asked.

"No. Most programmers have a signature but I wouldn't be able to recognise one in this case. That doesn't mean we can't catch the culprit. I can tell you the precise moment that the new code was infiltrated into Hana's brain."

"You can? When did it happen?" Arthur asked. "We know when Hana left the Nakatani laboratory and joined Mr. Raleigh."

"I can't tell you yet, Arthur. I need to get Hana under the magnetoscanner. Even then, it will take a few days of gently probing through her program; but the evidence is there, now I know what to look for."

"You still need to take Hana away?"

"Yes."

"May I remind you that Hana is our property, professor," Ishikawa said. "You have no right to harm her."

"I won't harm her. If I was scanning her brain for the rogue code without knowing what I was looking for, then I might have scrambled her program or fried her circuits; but now I know what I'm seeking, I can be much more gentle. There will be no damage at all, I guarantee."

******

While the remains of Humphrey were cleared away by the deputies and the professor secured his data, Arthur reported to Mrs. Malkin.

"What's your theory for who the culprit is?" she asked.

"The program is sophisticated, Ma'am, so my guess is that an engineer at the Nakatani laboratory uploaded it to Hana. He would have the opportunity and the skill, but I assume he was paid either by a business rival of Mr. Raleigh or by a family member, presumably Carmen Raleigh."

"Carmen Raleigh had a strong motive," Mrs. Malkin said.

"She did, Ma'am. Raleigh cheated on her many times, often quite publicly. However, a dispute last year between one of Raleigh's companies and a subsidiary of the Nakatani Corporation also puts the engineering firm in the frame."

"The rogue program used Raleigh's sexual proclivities as a trigger," Mrs. Malkin said. "How well was this known?"

"I'm not sure. Carmen Raleigh likely knew but it's also possible that it's something Raleigh kept from his wife and revealed only to a mistress, who might have told anyone."

"I see. So what are the risks in transferring Hana to Professor Erskine's laboratory, to be examined under his magnetoscanner?"

"She'll need strong police protection because the only way to protect the guilty party now will be to destroy Hana's brain with a magnetic pulse gun."

Mrs. Malkin and Arthur discussed a plan of action, then she sent him to gather everyone to her office.

When everyone was gathered in the Head Mistress's office (except Hestia, who refused to leave the distraught robot, and the professor, who took his equipment back to his hotel room), Mrs Malkin made her announcement.

"I have authorised Constable Jeffries to arrange Hana's transfer to Professor Erskine's laboratory in Oxford. Meanwhile, Hana will stay powered off on a bench in the police station, which Arthur will keep locked whenever he's absent, until a police escort arrives from Earth. Any questions?"

There were lots of questions from Mr. Ishikawa and Mr. Festing, which the JP answered after dismissing Arthur and his deputies.

Mary, Hestia and Arthur took Hana to the police station. They had a long conversation on the way. At the station, Hestia took Hana into the shower and helped her dry off and dress. She brushed Hana's hair, made her drink some water and treated her as lovingly as she would a sister. The two sat together on the bench in the recess until it was time to go home.

With everyone gone, Arthur locked the door. He spent another hour working at his desk. He checked that his guest on the bench was peaceful before going upstairs to his welcome bed.

******

Two hours later, in the middle of the night, when all was peaceful and the street lamps turned off to save energy, a black-clad figure crept past the shadowy doorways along the East Causeway to the police station. He easily picked the lock and checked with night-vision glasses for an alarm or motion-sensors.

Satisfied he was undetected, the intruder walked the few steps to the dormant figure on the bench, put a black metal cylinder with a hand-grip against her temple and pressed the trigger.

The lights went on. Arthur and three of his deputies stood in the station, blocking the exits.

"Robert Festing," Arthur said, "you are under arrest for trespass with intent to commit a crime; with attempted destruction of property; and with attempted tampering with evidence."

"Attempted?"

Hestia stood up, stretching her arms and back, stiff after sitting motionless for three hours on the bench.

"I'll take that magnetic pulse gun, thank you," Arthur said, relieving Mr. Festing of the weapon he thought he'd used to fry Hana's brain.

"Hestia, how are you feeling?" Arthur asked.

"It was warm," she said, touching her temple where the gun had been placed. The magnetic pulse she received was harmless to her but would have destroyed Hana, making the evidence of her altered programming undetectable.

As the deputies marched Mr. Festing to a hotel room, to be securely locked in, Hestia stretched again.

"Ooh, my back's stiff," she complained.

"It would be after three hours sitting in the same position. Are you sure you're fine?"

"Completely fine. And Hana's safe. Was Mr. Festing the murderer?"

"Police on Earth will continue the investigation now but my guess is that Carmen Raleigh was behind it, with Robert Festing's help."

Hestia placed a call to Mary, who had taken Hana back to her hotel room after she and Hestia had swapped clothes in the bathroom.

"Did it go all right?" Mary asked.

"Yes, very well."

"I'm pleased. We were worried about you."

"Hana was worried?"

"Yes."

"Don't you mean that she exhibited the kind of mechanical behaviour that, were she human, you would interpret as showing signs of worry?"

Mary laughed.

"Yes, that's exactly what I mean."

6 Reset

It took less than a week for the police on Earth to wrap up the case because Carmen Raleigh and Robert Festing made plea-bargains. They implicated an engineer at the Nakatani laboratory, who was bribed to write and plant the code in Hana just before she was delivered to Ashmore Raleigh.

Carmen Raleigh admitted to negligence, saying that the rogue program was intended to frighten her husband, not to kill him. The tragic accident happened only because Hana was so much stronger than a normal robot.

Robert Festing's plea-bargain would see him disbarred from practising law in the Anglosphere. He would likely pay a fine for trying to destroy evidence but escape jail-time for conspiring to kill Ashmore Raleigh.

The Nakatani technician would get the worst treatment, no doubt: losing his job, unable to work in the computing world, maybe even a prison sentence.

The fate of Hana was left to the decision of Capella Space Station's Justice of the Peace.

Daisuke Ishikawa stayed on Capella at the orders of his company, to try to secure the release of Hana back to her owners. Professor Erskine was still on Capella because he was a lover of robots. He felt guilty about poor old headless Humphrey, so he had the wreckage taken back to the South Causeway workshop, where he helped repair the robot.

On the afternoon that Maurice got Humphrey to speak again, Mrs. Malkin invited him, Mary, Hestia, Mr. Ishikawa and Arthur to her study to discuss news of the case from Earth. She was unhappy with the result.

"I disapprove of plea-bargains on principle," she said. "The law should be the law. In this case, it's patently false that Carmen Raleigh was just trying to scare her husband with a practical joke that went wrong. I blame the police on Earth for not making a better case."

"Won't justice be served?" Arthur asked. "After all, Raleigh was a rat."

"So let his wife divorce him or take his money. He deserved whipping, not strangling."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Is it true that Hana is stronger than a regular robot, Mr. Ishikawa?" Mrs. Malkin asked. "Why is that?"

"It's a feature of Japanese robots, Ma'am," he explained. "We give them double the strength of an equivalent person. Robots are programmed to obey law officers, so the Japanese police have many willing and very strong deputies available."

"In Hana's case," he continued, "because she's such a valuable robot, her self-preservation module was enhanced and she was given about five times the strength of a woman her own weight."

"I see. So what do we do with her?" Mrs. Malkin asked the group.

"There's a small chance her rogue program can be triggered again," Maurice said, "unless it is removed, which might damage her."

"Normally a victim's family can ask the court to destroy a rogue robot," Arthur said, "but that won't happen in this case, where a family member is the culprit."

"Hana can't be destroyed," Hestia protested. "She's innocent!"

"She is also very valuable," Ishikawa said.

"Yet she left your factory in a defective state," Mrs. Malkin said unimpressed.

"Can Hana be reset to factory conditions?" Mary asked.

"Yes, she can," Professor Erskine said. "It will wipe all her training, memory, experience and basic program, including the hijacker. Then she can be reinstalled from scratch."

"But she'll lose her personality," Hestia said.

"Some of her personality will be lost," Maurice agreed, "including her guilty feelings, bad memories and shame."

This made Hestia pause. She felt sorry for Hana and didn't want her harmed; but if resetting her would wipe away her unearned guilt, then Hestia would rather Hana was reset than be in pain.

"Hana's basic program will be the same afterward, Hestia," the professor assured her. "The fundamental elements of her personality won't change. She'll have all her instinctive likes and dislikes. She'll even know her own name. And she'll have the fun of learning about sex again."