Devil to the Belt (v1.1) (2 page)

It was no pretty picture when they finally had it lit up in their spots.

“One hell of an impact,” Ben muttered. “Maybe a high-
v
rock.”

“Could be. God, both tanks are blown, right there, see? That one’s got it right along the side.”

“Those guys had no luck.”

“Sudden. Bad angle. Lot of
g
‘s.”

“Bash on one side. Explosion on the other. Maybe it threw them into a rock.”

“Dunno. Either one alone—God help ‘em—maybe 10 real sudden
g
‘s.”

“Real sudden acquaintance with the bulkhead. Rearrange your face real good.”

“Wouldn’t know what hit ‘em.”

“Suppose that ‘driver did bump a pebble out?”

“Could be. Cosmic bad luck, in all this empty. Talk about having your name on it. What do they say the odds are?”

“Hundred percent for these guys.”

Another image capture. White glared across the cameras, a blur of reflected light, painted serial designation.

“Shit, that’s a One’er number! One’er Eighty-four Zebra…”

Not from their Base. Outside their zone. Strangers from across the line.

The tumble carried the lock access toward their lights. Bird said, “Hatch looks all right.”

“You got no notion to be going in there.”

“Yep.”

“Bird, love of God, there’s no answer.”

“Maybe their receiver’s out. Maybe they lost their radio altogether. Maybe they’re too banged up to answer.”

“Maybe they’re dead. You don’t need to go in there!”

“Yep. But I’m going to.”

“I’m not.”

“Salvage rights, Ben-me-lad. I thought we were partners.”

“Shit.”

It was a routine operation for a miner to stop a spin: and most rocks did tumble—but the tumble of a spindle-shaped object their own size and, except the ruptured tanks, their own mass, was one real touchy bitch.

It was out with the arm and the brusher, and just keep contacting the thing til you got one and the other motion off it, while the gyros handled the yaw and the pitch—bleeding money with every burst of the jets. But you did this uncounted times for thirty-odd years, and you learned a certain touch. A trailing cable whacked them and scared Ben to hell, and it was a long sweaty time later before they had the motion off the thing, a longer time yet til they had the white bullseye beside the stranger’s hatch centered in their docking sight.

But after all the difficulty before, it was a gentle touch.

Grapples clicked and banged.

“That’s it,” Bird said. “That’s got it.”

A long breath. Ben said reverently: “She’s ours.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Hell, she’s salvage!”

“Right behind the bank.”

“Uh-uh. Even if it’s pure company we got a 50/50 split.”

“Unless somebody’s still in control over there.”

“Well, hell, somebody sure doesn’t look it.”

“Won’t know til we check it out, will we?”

“Come on, Bird,—shit, we
don’t
have to go in there, do we? This is damn stupid.”

“Yep. And yep.” Bird unbelted, shoved himself gently out of his station, touched a toe on the turn-pad and sailed back to the locker. “Coming?”

Ben sullenly undipped and drifted over, while Bird hauled the suits out and started dressing.

Ben kept bitching under his breath. Bird concentrated on his equipment. Bird always concentrated on his equipment, not where he was going, not the unpleasant thing he was likely to find the other side of that airlock.

And most of all he didn’t let himself think what the salvage would bring on the market.

“Five on ten she’s a dead ship,” Ben said. “Bets?”

“Could’ve knocked their transmission out. Could be a whole lot of things, Ben, just put a small hold on that enthusiasm. Don’t go spending any money before it’s ours.”

“It’s going to be a damn mess in there. God knows how old it is. It could even be one of the Nouri wrecks.”

“The transmitter’s still going.”

“Transmitters can go that long.”

“Not if the lifesupport’s drawing. Six months tops. Besides, power cells and fuel were what Nouri stripped for sure.”

Ben’s helmet drifted between them. Ben snagged it. “I’m taking the pry-bar. We’re going to need it getting in. Lay you bets?”

Bird picked his helmet out of the air beside him and put it on: smell of old plastics and disinfectant. Smell of a lot of hours and a lot of nasty cold moments.

This might be the start of one, the two of them squeezing into the wider than deep airlock, which was claustrophobic enough for the one occupant it was designed for.

It truly didn’t make sense, maybe, insisting both of them get rigged up. It might even be dangerous, putting shut locks between them both and operable systems; but you chased a ghost signal through the Belt for days on end, you had nightmares about some poor lost sods you’d no idea who, and you remembered all your own close calls—well, then, you had to see it with your own eyes to exorcise your ghosts. If you were going to be telling it to your friends back at Base (and you would), then you wanted the feel of it and you wanted your partner able to swear to it.

Most of all, maybe you got a little nervous when your partner started getting that excited about money and insisting they owned that ship.

Most especially since Nouri and the crackdown, and since the company had gotten so nitpicking touchy—you wanted witnesses able to swear in court what you’d touched and what you’d done aboard somebody else’s ship.

Bird shut the inside hatch and pushed the buttons that started the lock cycling. The red light came on, saying
DEPRESSURIZATION
, and the readout started spieling down toward zero.

“Sal-vage,” Ben said, tinny-sounding over the suit-com. “Maybe she’ll still pitch, do you think? If those tanks are the most of the damage, hell, they’re cans, is all. Can’t be that expensive. We could put a mortgage on her, fix her up—the bank’ll take a fixable ship for collateral, what do you think?”

“I think we better pay attention to where we are. We got one accident here, let’s not make it two.”

The readout said
PRESSURE
EQUALIZED
. Ben was doing this anxious little bounce with his foot braced, back and forth between the two walls of the lock. But you never rushed opening. Oxygen cost. Water cost. Out here, even with all the working machinery aboard, heat cost. You treated those pumps and those seals like they were made of gold, and while the safety interlocks might take almost-zero for an answer and let you open on override, it was money flowing out when you did. You remembered it when you saw your bills at next servicing, damn right, you did.

The readout ticked down past 5 mb toward hard vacuum, close as the compressor could send it. Ben pushed the
OUTER
HATCH
OPEN
button, the lock unsealed and retracted the doors and showed them the scarred, dust-darkened face of the opposing lock. The derelict’s inside pressure gauge was dusted over. Bird cleared it with his glove. “760 mb. She’s up full. At least it didn’t hole her.”

Ben banged soundlessly on the hatch with the steel bar and put his helmet up against the door.

“Nada,” Ben said. “Dead in there, Bird, I’m telling you.”

“We’ll see.” Bird borrowed the bar and pried up the safety cover on the External Access handle.

No action. No power in the ship’s auxiliary systems.

“No luck for them,” Ben said cheerfully. “Pure dead.”

Bird jimmied the derelict’s external leech panel open. “Get ours, will you?”

“Oh, shit, Bird.”

“Nerves?”

Ben didn’t answer. Ben shoved off to their own lock wall to haul the leech cord out of its housing. It snaked in the light as he drifted back. Bird caught the collared plug and pushed it into the derelict’s leech socket. The hull bumped and vibrated under his glove. “She’s working,” he said.

“Sal-vage,” Ben said, on hissed breaths.

“Don’t spend it yet.”

Rhythmic hiss of breath over suit-coms, while the metal vibrated with the pump inside. “Hey, Bird. What’s a whole ship worth?”

A man tried to be sane and sensible. A man tried to think about the poor sods inside, an honest man broke off his prospecting and ran long, expensive risky days for a will-of-the-wisp signal, and tried to concentrate on saving lives, not on how much metal was in this ship or whether she was sound, or how a second ship would set him and Ben up for life. The waiting list for leases at Refinery Two meant no ship sat idle longer than its servicing required.

“130 mb. 70. 30. 10.” The pressure gauge ticked down. The vibration under his hand changed. The valves parted.

Ice crystals spun and twinkled in front of them, against the sullen glow of borrowed power. Ice formed and glistened on the inner lock surfaces—moisture where it didn’t belong.

“Doesn’t look prosperous,” Ben said.

Bird pushed with his toe, caught a handhold next to the inner valves. His glove skidded on ice. Ben arrived beside him, said, “Clear,” and Bird hit the
HATCH
CLOSE
toggle.

“Going to be slow.” He looked high in the faceplate for the 360° view, watching the derelict’s outer doors labor shut at their backs.

“You sure about that battery?” Ben asked.

Bird hit
CYCLE
2. The pumps vibrated. “Hell of a time to ask.”

“Are you sure?”

“Thirty years at this, damn right I checked.—Whoa, there.”

The HUD in the faceplate suddenly showed a yellow flasher and a dataflow glowing green. The one on the airlock wall glowed a sullen red.

“
CONTAMINANTS
.” Ben let go a shaky hiss of pent breath. “It’s not going to be pretty in there.—Bird, do we have to go through with this? There’s nothing alive inside.”

“We’re already there. Can you sleep without knowing?”

“Damn right I’ll sleep, I’ll sleep just fine.—I don’t want to see this, Bird. Why in hell do I got to see this?”

“Hey, we all end up the same. Carbon and nitrogen, a lot of H
₂
O…”

“Cut it out, Bird!”

“Earth to earth. Dust to dust.” The indicators said
740/741 mb
. and
PRESSURE
EQUALIZED
. “Lousy compressor,” Bird said, pushed the
INNER
HATCH
OPEN
button. Air whistled, rushing past the pressure differential and an uneven seal. The doors ground slowly back. External audio heard it. 10° C, his HUD said about the ambient. Not quite balmy. “Heater’s going down. Heater’s always next to last.—You do know what’s last, don’t you, Ben-me-lad?”

“The damn beeper.” Ben’s teeth were chattering—nothing wrong with Ben’s suit heater, Bird was sure. Ben’s breath hissed raggedly over the suit-com. “So Mama can find the salvage. Only this time we got it, Bird, come on, I don’t like this. What if that leech pulls out?”

“Plug won’t pull out.”

“Hell, Bird!”

Inner doors labored to halfway open. Bird caught the door edge and shoved himself and his backpack through into the faintly lit inside.

A helmetless hardsuit, trailing cables and hose, drifted slowly in front of them, spinning in a loose, cocoon of its attachments. A cable went from its battery pack to the panel, last sad resort: the occupants had had time to know they were in trouble, time to drain the main batteries and the leech unit, and finally resort to this one.

Bits and pieces of gear drifted in the dimmed light, sparked bright in their suit-spots, cords, clips—everything a tumble could knock free. Fluids made small moons and planets.

“Mess,” Ben’s voice said. “Isn’t it?”

Bird caught the hose, tugged gently to pull the suit out of his way, and checked the suit locker. “One suit’s missing.”

“I’m cutting that damn beeper,” Ben said. “All right?”

“Fine by me.”

Stuff everywhere. Cables. A small meteor swarm of utility clips flashed in the light. Globules of fluid shone both oily-dark and amber. A sweater and a single slipper danced and turned in unison like a ghost.

“Lifesupport’s flat gone,” Ben said. A locker banged in the external audio, while Bird was checking the spinner cylinders for occupants. Empty. Likewise the shower.

A power cell floated past. Dead spare, one from the lock, one guessed.

A globule of fluid impacted Bird’s visor, leaving a chain of dark red beads.

“Come on, Bird. Let’s seal up. Let’s get out of here. They’re gone. Dead ship, that’s all. Don’t ask what this slop is that’s floating. The ‘cyclers are shot.”

Drifting hose. More clips. A lump of blankets under the number two workstation, spotted in Bird’s chest-light. “Looks like here’s one of them,” Bird said.

“God! Let it be! Bird!”

“Carbon and water. Just carbon and water.” Bird held the counter edge and snagged the blanket.

The body drifted past the chair, rolled free as the blanket floated on to dance with the sweater.

Young man in filthy coveralls. Straight dark hair and loose limbs drifted in the slow spin the turnout gave him.

Not much beard.

Bird caught a sleeve, stopped the spin, saw a dirty face, shut eyes, open mouth. Dehydration shrank the skin, cracked the lips.

“Don’t touch him!” Ben objected. “God, don’t touch him!”

“Beard’s been shaved, maybe three days.”

“God knows how long ago—he’s dead, Bird. That’s a dead body.”

Bird nudged the chin-lever over to sensor array, said, “Left. Hand.”

The HUD showed far warmer than the 10° ambient.

Pliable flesh.

“Isn’t a body, Ben. This guy’s alive.”

“Shit,” Ben said. Then: “But he’s not in control of this ship. Is he?”

Long, long door closing, with an unconscious man crowding them three to the lock, and the underpowered motors going slow and threatening breakdown. Then they could Mode 2 Override their own airlock, mixing air supplies and keeping pressure up for their passenger’s sake. “Go ahead and seal it behind us,” Bird said. “Keep it just the way it was, in case Mama asks questions.”

“God, we got a
CONTAMINANTS
flashing in
our
lock now. Why the hell don’t we have a transfer bag? God, this guy’s all over crud.”