The Salvagers (10 page)

             
I was preparing for a meeting to update the
Amaranth Sun
's crew when a message came through. "Hunter, nice trick, spinning the
Cape Hatteras
like that!" Finley Pace said as he broke radio silence and made his presence known. Apparently he had maneuvered in behind us after I had transferred to my ship. For a second time we hadn't been on the lookout and were caught off-guard. I had left the job of detecting approaching ships to the
Hyperion
's superior equipment. That proved to be my biggest mistake of the entire salvage operation.

             
"Not much you can do now. It's mine. We've got two ships to your one, and I've got directional thrusters on the
Cape Hatteras
," I said. "You won't win this one."

             
Keating’s voice then came over the radio. "I'm sorry, Cam. Ed signed a bad contract. Most of my cut would have gone to the owners of my ship. My core crew would have received little more than peanuts from those greedy bastards. I can't let that happen."

             
Keating had defected. I probably should have suspected when the day before he had asked to dismantle the corridor between our ships. I had assumed that he simply wanted better maneuverability. The tiny
Amaranth Sun
could do nothing against two salvors. Even worse, the scholars had made it less than halfway through Nelson's logs, and I had never bothered to transfer a copy to my ship. With the
Hyperion
gone, I had no access to them.

Chapter 12     Day 217

             
"December 8, 2259. Log of Captain John Andrew Nelson, Commanding Officer, UNAG Mining Vessel
Cape Hatteras
. In synchronous orbit with the asteroid 974-Bernhard. Seventeen days from completing operations. The mission is a success. We have already begun preparations for the voyage home."

              Keating spent most of the day transferring the remaining academicians and much of his crew to the
Cape Hatteras
using his pressurized corridor. I could hear his announcements on the radio. He convinced them to go freely by declaring that I had opened the ship, and he suggested a tour for all personnel to be led by Dr. Webb. Webb fell for it. He was always ready for an opportunity to pontificate.

             
I couldn't contact anyone.The
Cape Hatteras
lacked working communications, and Finley had our transmissions jammed. I tried in vain to send a Morse message with the
Amaranth Sun
's
spotlights, but no one was watching. All I could do was observe as the traitor marooned most of the expedition's unsuspecting personnel. When he was finished, Keating was left with a few loyal crew members and most of the gold.

             
I wasn't worried about the safety of the people aboard the
Cape Hatteras
, other than the possibility of someone else disappearing. They would be fine until Ed Iron's tow ship arrived. I don't think Keating wanted them dead: I saw his crew transferring supplies to the derelict.

             
The whole thing was a set-up from the moment Ed rented that ship. Pace knew most of the captains in the business, including David Keating. He also knew that the
Hyperion
was the most likely ship for Ed Iron to rent, being the newest and the best. All Pace had to do was to contact Keating and cut a deal over a secured channel.

             
But there was still one problem remaining: me. I was on the bridge of the
Amaranth Sun
with Stacey, Kurt, and Neil trying to figure out what to do when another message came through.

             
"Alright, Cam, you've got a choice. I know you haven't been able to contact Earth, and by the time that tow ship gets here, we'll be rich and retired in the outer solar system. You can let us board your ship so we can disable your engines, or I can ram you. Either way, no one will ever know where this gold went. I'd prefer option two, but I'll give you the chance to save your crew," Pace said.

             
"You'll just have to kill us, Finley, and dent up that pretty ship of yours."

             
He didn't respond but just rolled his ship in our direction. I had to act fast. He was much closer than in our previous encounter.

             
"Stacey, engines, full thrust, any direction!"

             
"I have a reinforced bow for ramming," announced Pace, "and I've tossed out every bit of extra weight. I'm a fast accelerator now, and your little exploration scow isn't. This is your last chance."

             
"Not going to happen, Finley" I said. "When I get done trashing your name, they wouldn't commission you to haul iron from the moon."

             
"I won't need it. I'm as good as retired," he responded.

             
"We'll see about that."

             
You're supposed to accelerate a ship like the
Amaranth Sun
incrementally, but you've got more power if you need it for towing and other heavy jobs. We'd already exceeded its design guidelines the first time we escaped Finley Pace, and I knew its frame wouldn't tolerate too many more fast punches of speed. We were no longer pulling anything, so when Stacey slammed the throttle to 110%, it sent us all against the back walls of the ship.
Hard
.

             
I smacked my head squarely against a light fixture. Shaking it off, I realized that Pace had missed us. If we didn't slow down, he couldn't catch us once we were at full speed. Next came something terribly painful to watch: the NASA probe had broken loose from that jolt of acceleration and was floating freely. It looked helpless, like a small animal about to get run over by a bus. A small jet of hydrazine fired from Finley's ship, signalling that he had altered course to make sure he hit it. The probe pancaked across his bow and slid off.

             
I had no idea what I'd tell the Smithsonian. The weren't going to be happy, and I prayed that they'd be satisfied with the probe's chemical rocket assembly still strapped to the
Amaranth Sun
’s stern
.

             
The immediate question was where we should go. If we went back to Earth, Pace would have the
Hyperion
in the safety of the outer planets before we could intercept him with a military patrol. We couldn't go back to the derelict. There wasn't much we could have do there except dodge Finley's salvor until he eventually got lucky and smashed us. Worse, he might threaten to ram the
Cape Hatteras
and kill everyone onboard. No amount of gold was worth taking that risk, so I knew I had to stay away—at least for the time being.

             
The only thing I could think to do was to stay ahead of him. I knew the
Hyperion
had enough fuel to return to Earth with that load, but Pace didn't have enough to make it much further. If he were going to reach one of the rogue colonies, he would have to refuel. There were only two places he could do that, Jupiter and Saturn, and by pure chance they were lined up with each other in their orbits.

              Our best chance was to catch him at Jupiter. If we went there and hired thugs, we could get him when he made his stop. If he slipped past us, we might have another try at Saturn if I could find ships fast enough to overtake him. I wanted to be wherever he stepped off his ship, backed by 50 guys with crowbars at the ready.

             
Jupiter has two major colonies: Europa and Callisto. Io was never colonized, and Ganymede's settlement consisted of an isolationist religious cult. Because Callisto was a major UNAG outpost, I knew that Pace wouldn't go there. They'd want to do an inspection, and the gold was bound to raise interest. That left Europa.

             
The Europans would never search him on principle. They were pariah drug dealers who had their own problems with their ships being searched. They would sell him fuel without any questions asked, so I had Stacey set a course for Europa. I didn't think there would be a problem finding ships. Most cargo vessels are faster than an empty salvor, and I might even be able to find an armed one, since many of the Europan ships had been carrying laser weaponry ever since the mysterious pirates robbed them. Pace's ship might have become lighter and faster, but the
Hyperion
was weighed down with the gold. Pace wouldn't let that ship out of his sight, so that effectively slowed both of his ships down.

             
Pace had jammed our signal by using some kind of high-energy beam to haze over the optical coatings on our transmitter, cutting our outgoing signal strength to almost nothing. Europa would have a paycomm location, and their people could fix the transmitter, but it still took three weeks to get there, and I knew that Ed would be very anxious after losing contact. The first message he would get from me would be terrible news. I wasn't looking forward to dealing with that, but then again it was Ed, not I, who had hired Keating.

             
When we arrived at Europa, I figured we had a two-week window to prepare. I contacted the surface. They barely received our transmission, leading to a long exchange of garbled statements and requests for repeats. They said they'd have a robotic repair drone out to fix the transmitter within a few days. It took them hours to send a tender to pick us up, and when it did arrive the pilot appeared intoxicated.

             
"I'm Randy, boys, and I'll be your pilot," he said with a slur.

             
"I'm a girl," Stacey said.

             
"I hadn't noticed," he said before launching into a boisterous laugh. He had long, gray hair in a loose ponytail, an unkempt beard, and thick glasses. I'd never seen anyone wear glasses other than in photographs from centuries ago.

             
We boarded the tender, leaving Kurt to mind the
Amaranth Sun
. I looked forward to visiting the colony. They had recently renamed it New San Francisco, and despite its reputation it was one of the more interesting places in the solar system.

             
"Care for a little toot?" Randy asked, hitting a button on his console that dropped masks from the ceiling which emitted smoke instead of emergency oxygen. I didn't have to guess what it was.

             
"No thanks!" I said.

             
"Well, more for us," Randy said as he hit the button again, stowing the other masks. From the well-used one in front of his face he took a hit, pushed it out of the way, pulled a flask from his front shirt pocket, and handed it to me. "How about a little heart of the tarpotch?"

             
I took a sip out of politeness. It was potently alcoholic.

             
"Well, here I go again. Hold on," Randy said, with a hint of anxiety in his voice. He hit the gas and started moving away from the
Amaranth Sun
. "I get this right most of the time," he muttered.

             
"Now hold on," I said, trying to sound good-humored while still posing a serious question. "What happens when you don't get it right?"

             
"Oh hell, nothing. I'm not dead at the bottom of a crater yet. I just don't want to tear off a part of your ship," he said as he looked backwards past us, frantically changing views to see the
Amaranth Sun
through the portholes of his ship.

             
"Parallel parking was not my strong point," he added.

             
He flicked a switch that pushed us back into our seats. Europa doesn't have much of an atmosphere, so we careened toward it with nothing to slow us down. We could see the colony approaching fast. Just when it appeared certain that we would crash, Randy let out another boisterous laugh and braked so hard that anyone not smart enough to wear a seatbelt might have ended up with a permanent imprint of a control panel on their face.

             
We settled into a hangar situated to the side of a small structure in front of the largest dome.

             
"Well, there we be," Randy said, holding his hand out for the fare. I gave him 30 UNAG dollars in gold foil. He put it in his pocket and held out his hand again for a tip. He grunted approvingly when I gave him 20 percent.

             
"Enjoy! Be sure to drink the water!" he said, following it with another obnoxious laugh as we stepped into the corridor leading to the dome.

Chapter 13
    
Day 238

             
"December 18, 2259. Log of Captain John Andrew Nelson, Commanding Officer, UNAG Mining Vessel
Cape Hatteras
. Excavating the asteroid has proven easier than projected, and we have reached the ship's cargo limit seven days early. We will use the extra week to explore the rocky portion of the asteroid and collect samples for the scientists back home."

              Europa is an unusual moon. On the surface it looks like an ice-skating rink floating in space. You wouldn't think it was one of the most vibrant worlds in the solar system. The surface is just a shell that covers a warm saltwater ocean full of volcanoes and aquatic life.

             
An enormous hulk of a man with salt-and-pepper hair, a reddish complexion, and a smile the size of Jupiter met us in the reception dome. "Welcome to New San Francisco!" he boomed. "I am the
Very
Reverend Mirador T. Stunt, Mayor of the sovereign colony of Europa and member of the Council of Colonial Governors—
in absentia.
Would you like some hot water?"

             
We nodded, and he started filling closed-top mugs and handing them out. The Europans had the odd habit of drinking plain hot water. They claim it's full of minerals that give it a flavor all its own. They also admit it's an acquired taste. I sipped. It tasted like water with garden soil in it.

             
"Can you add tea to it?" Stacey asked, seemingly as unimpressed as I was.

             
"If you want to ruin it! But if you must, we do have a nice blend grown here on Europa," he said as he bounced behind a desk in the tiny reception module. Europa is just a bit smaller than Earth's moon, so you don't walk but bounce. That requires the ceilings there to be rather high.

             
Mayor Stunt grabbed a few packets of tea, opened our hot-water containers, and popped them in. "If you want sweetener, just use these controls," he said, pointing out a set of buttons on the mug marked Sweet, Sweeter, Sweetest, and Desweeten.

             
None of us bothered to consider what else might be in the tea. You just assume that tea is tea, but that wasn't necessarily true on Europa.

             
"What brings you to our great colony?" Stunt asked.

             
"Commercial business."

             
"What sort of commercial business?"

             
"Waste hauling," I said hesitantly while inventing a cover story. I didn't want to come out and say I was there to hire thugs.

             
"We don't have waste," boasted the Mayor. "We recycle everything."

             
"That's not entirely true. Your reactors produce waste gases. Are you venting them into space?

             
"Well, I suppose something gets vented. Mainly heat, but. . . ."

             
"Environmentally unfriendly!" I proclaimed. "That gas could easily disarticulate and recombine into something that might end up sealed forever in Europa's ocean. The damage could be catastrophic! And Mayor, it won't ever stop harming your world," I remarked, making it all up as I went.

             
"Well, I hadn't thought of that, but. . . ."

             
"I need to speak to your engineers. An arrangement could be made that won't cost you a gram of gold."

             
"Won't cost, eh?"

             
"Not a cent."

             
"Well, I can arrange for you to speak to someone. But. . . ."

             
"And there are also the home fusion reactors. Anyone with one of those will need us too. But I can't get started without checking the prices for lithium waste on Earth. I'll need access to a communications array," I said.

             
"That won't be a problem. There is a paycomm in the main dome. But as I was saying, we're hydrothermal. We don't have any reactors at all."

             
"None?" My hype deflated. I was proud of my charade up until then.

             
"Not a one, but don't you worry, Mr., umm, Hunter," he said as he glanced at the
Amaranth Sun
's
registration papers. "As long as you're not here to steal our crop and are not with any of the unions, we won't bother you. But that means too that you don't bother us."

             
"We have no intention of creating any kind of problems for you."

             
"The main dome is entirely public," the Mayor explained, "and you're welcome to everything in there. We just ask that you avoid the private habitation modules and the growing domes. After the pirate attack we've had to be more security-conscious. Before I was elected, they used to give tours of our agricultural projects. I'd love to give you one now because we're very proud of them, but I hope you understand that we can't any longer."

             
"That will be fine. We respect what you do here, but our business is the reason for our visit. We have a schedule, and once we're finished we'll be leaving immediately."

             
"Fair enough, and welcome again! If you need
anything
do come to my office and speak to me or my lovely secretary, Sister Mary Joanna." The aforesaid smiled from behind him and waved sheepishly with a high-pitched giggle. I'd never seen a nun in a bikini before.

             
We bounced past the greeting desk and through a very high doorway. Beyond it was the central dome. It had a main street aptly named Ashbury running the length of the structure. New San Francisco was arranged much like any other city in a standard grid pattern, so we made our way down Ashbury Street admiring the shops. We stopped to peruse a clothing store that sold entirely domestic plant-fiber products. Most of them had the feel of burlap.

             
I was struck by how the merchants lived above their shops. In a way the place had an anachronistic feel, something like a cross between a modern space station and an old European city, but with obvious differences. On Europa you could bounce more than ten feet in the air, making stairways unnecessary. The nicer buildings had barber poles that you could climb up or down, but some of the simpler ones had openings with stout netting to grab onto and pull yourself into the rooms above.

             
At the intersection of Haight and Ashbury was a square with a large fountain. An inscription said that the water was piped directly from the ocean below the ice floor. The fountain was at least 60 feet in diameter. It had to be in order to catch all the globules of water falling back down in the slow motion of low gravity. The whole thing was quite beautiful, but then the scene begin to shimmer.

             
"Cam," Stacey remarked, "I think there was something in that tea."

             
"I think you're right," I replied.

             
"I gotta sit down," Neil said.

             
We plunked ourselves down on the edge of the fountain and didn't move for three hours. My mind is usually churning, but for that period of time I was drawing a blank. It took effort to think about anything, so I found myself perfectly happy to just sit and stare, occasionally giggling at the open-mouthed looks on my companion's faces.

              Neil was the first to stand up and say something: "I feel as though my brain is made out of rocks."

             
"Mine is. . . ." I said, stopping to clear my throat. "Mine is starting to work again." I put my hand on my forehead and rubbed it.

             
"Strong stuff," commented Stacey.

             
"We'd better get moving," I replied.

             
We ventured sluggishly down a side street. They really did have everything, much more than you'd think for such a low-population settlement. A trading post sold most kinds of things, though apparently their biggest seller was rolling papers. There were organic vegetable stands and several street vendors selling fried tarpotch.

             
The tarpotch is the only complex animal in the solar system that didn't evolve on Earth, though no one knew what lay in the unexplored subterranean oceans of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The tarpotch is something like a jellyfish, black and formless with no eyes and an almost gelatinous feel. Breaded and fried it was delicious, particularly if you'd been drinking Europan tea.

             
At one of the stands we bought some tarpotch and bounced along one of the busier streets until we spotted the paycomm building. Stacey and Neil stayed outside, still a little orbital from the tea, while I spent a few hours inside. I wasn't over it either, but I had work to do and thought I could still write a decent letter to Ed. He told me later that it was so full of misspellings and grammatical errors that he had a linguist look at it to make sure I wasn't writing in code. I collected my companions and started looking for somewhere to spend the night.

             
The only hotel was called t
he Jupiter Rising,
but it was run more like a bed-and-breakfast. The proprietor was a 60-something robust lady named Reeda, who had a naturally warm personality. I'd recommend that hotel to anyone. It was spotlessly clean, and they didn't bleed your bank account for every little amenity as they do on Earth. The best part was the free breakfast.

             
Reeda rose at 4:00 a.m. sharp, a schedule she kept regardless of whether there were any guests or not, and set out the greatest breakfast spread you've ever seen. Europa is far from Earth, and traditional items like bacon and eggs are prohibitively expensive. A typical breakfast there consists of fried squash, homemade kelp-bread, and a spicy tarpotch sausage ground by a man who could only be happy on Europa. He popped in halfway through our meal. Everyone called him "Sausage." He ground tarpotch, made moonshine in a still, and grew gigantic watermelons and peppers.

             
"I've been here for years. I'm the last of the real hillbillies," he said as he handed a package of fresh meat to Reeda. "Tennessee has lost its way. It's too modern. Buildings and corporate parks everywhere; even the country isn't the country anymore. I say to Hades with that. Give me the good old days. Here on Europa I've got my own habitat dome. I call it
100 Miles from Memphis
, and I pretend I'm in the old days, listening to radio recordings and watching monochrome movies. I love it here. You can be who you are, do whatever you want, and there's never any pressure."

             
"Did you have a still in Tennessee?" I asked.

             
"Heavens no," Sausage said with a broad smile. He seemed to turn into a completely different person. "I was the CEO of a corporation. Three decades of 16-hour days, occasional heart attacks, and not a single vacation the whole time. The last coronary got me thinking, so I retired. Haven't had an event since. Tarpotch has the highest cholesterol content in the solar system, they say. It's a bunch of hooey. Stress is what gets us."

             
"Sausage grows the most amazing peppers," Reeda interjected. "They'll burn your mouth out. You'll see. I added them to the country gravy."

             
It was the hottest gravy I've ever had.