The Salvagers (8 page)

Chapter 10     Day 207

              The next morning I appraised the wreck as I coasted across the gap for the third time. The
Cape Hatteras
looked profoundly different. With our lights shining through some of the portholes dotting the side of the ship, it seemed alive again, a place where living people worked instead of the dead and sterile place it had been the day before.

             
Neil and Sanjay had positioned more lights and there were now four engineers working onboard. The interior looked something like it might have 200 years ago. I could see various instrument panels every few feet down the corridor. They were still lifeless, but it wouldn't be long before they had power again. Seeing them gave me confidence that we would soon gain control of the prize.

             
I was struck by how much more technology the derelict had than a modern ship. The wreck had layer upon layer of automation. People were barely needed at all; they were almost a token presence in case something went wrong. The
Cape Hatteras
was three times the length of the
Hyperion
, yet it had a crew the size of the
Amaranth Sun
’s. Only five people were needed to mine that asteroid. But that same complexity led to accidents and malfunctions, and within fifty years after the loss of the
Cape Hatteras
designers began emphasizing simplicity.

             
I wanted to see the treasure in the new lighting, but I was hesitant to return to the hold. After my strange experience the ship itself didn't bother me, but the hold did. I felt as though someone were watching me whenever I was in there. I hadn't told anyone about the incident, nor did I plan to, but my feelings of dread when on that ship contrasted sharply with the enthusiasm of the others.

             
I planted my feet on the derelict's floor plating near the spot where I had dreamt my ghosts. I felt a sustained groan in the ship vibrating through the frame that made it seem as though the
Cape Hatteras
were a whale and I was in its belly. The vibration, I thought, was probably that of the engineers working inside the fuel tanks. Earlier they had informed of a welcome way to save time. They had devised a flexible fuel bladder, eliminating the need for constructing a metal tank. With a little luck it would be less than a day before we had partial electrical power.

             
"We need to access the engine room, Cam," my ex-wife said as she lumbered into the hold in her moon suit, complete with magnetic boots—she preferred not to float unless she had to. "We know you want to limit access to the hold. God knows why. It's not exactly easy to stuff a bar of gold down the pants of your moon suit. But your overactive imagination needs to get out of the damned way so that we can get this ship up and running."

             
"You know the bodies are probably in there, darling."

             
"Well,
darling
, get them out so we can go in."

             
"I can't. I have to supervise preparations for the gold transfer,” I said. “You'll have to do it yourselves. Be reverent toward any dead crew members you find, we don't want any bad publicity over that. You'll need to access from the port side. The starboard door is welded shut."

             
"You always were squeamish," Janet replied.

             
"I'm too busy to be squeamish."

             
Truth be told, I was squeamish. I hadn't been looking forward to dealing with the dead crew. When they were located, we were to arrange a service and proper burial in space. I knew that I'd have to officiate, but I didn't mind that. What bothered me was the prospect of having to view the corpses before we put them into the coffins. I couldn't dodge that. It was customary for a commander to identify the bodies for legal purposes.

             
I knew they'd probably be mummified and very much dead, unlike the case in my dream. That bothered  me even more. It was always possible that the same thing that killed them might one day get me. I was probably being superstitious again, but you have to be that way when you're dealing with something bigger and more powerful than you are, whether it's an ocean or the vast expanses of space.

             
Part of the engineering team filed past me. I knew that theft was unlikely, but even so I watched their every move as they passed the mountain of gold. I couldn't help myself. If I screwed things up, I'd have been finished. My investors were rich and powerful people, and if I didn't deliver, I'd spend the rest of my life hauling containers full of space station sewage with the
Amaranth Sun
.

             
I could see them preparing to work near the far bulkhead. No one had been back to that part of the ship, so I was also naturally curious . . . from a distance. Then came yet another surprise.

             
"Cam, this door is welded shut," one of the engineers said on the comm, "but from the outside."

             
"What? Why would they block access to their own engine room?" I asked.

             
"Hell if I know, but we're going to have to cut our way in."

             
It took six hours to cut the door loose. When they pulled it open, the greatest surprise and disappointment of the expedition to date smacked us squarely in the nose. In front of us was a wall of ice. For some incomprehensible reason the engine room had been flooded with water, ending any immediate hope for electricity. Worse, the ice was glowing bright blue, much like the flashes I had seen in my dream. One of the engineers called it Cherenkov radiation and said it had no business being there.

             
It took two weeks for the engineers to come up with a workaround. Ultimately, they cut the power mains running down the backbone of the ship and connected them to a small reactor located in one of the transverse corridors. It was designed to run mining equipment, but they said it would do what we needed. When they finally hit the switch, the lights and instrument panels in the corridor burst to life, along with a whole lot of flashing warning lights. If there had been an atmosphere on that ship, the alarms would have been deafening.

             
I went immediately to the bridge. Its computers were up and running, and they all had red decompression alerts scrolling across their screens.

             
Sanjay approached me and said, "Hi Cam. May I have a look at the computers now that they're working?"

             
"Be my guest. See if you can turn off all the flashing lights," I replied, returning to the hold.

             
I'm not certain what happened next. Sanjay never spoke about it after that day, but I'm guessing that he was scrolling through screens when he screamed. I heard it on the comm and shot to the bridge to find Sanjay struggling to get away from the computer station.

             
"Are you alright? What's wrong?" I yelled, fearing that he had cut his suit.

             
"Sorry, Cam. I . . . ," he said, looking panicked. "Turn off the open comms, Cam. I need to talk to you directly."

             
I set my frequency to that of his suit.

             
"Cam, this thing just spoke to me,"

             
"What?" I wasn't certain what he meant.

             
"The computer terminal. I was trying to view the engineering reports, and I got a message that access was restricted. I was wondering why when ten seconds later I felt ill, as though I were going to be sick. Then I heard someone speaking."

             
"Was it the others? Did you have open comms on?"

             
"No, this wasn't coming from a speaker. It was a real voice."

             
"That's not possible, Sanjay. There's no atmosphere in here, no sound."

             
"It was inside my helmet, Cam. Right next to my ear," he said.

             
"What did it say?"

             
"It said we weren't supposed to be out here yet."

             
"Was it male or female? What can you tell me about it?" I asked. I wondered whether Sanjay would ever want to set foot on the derelict again.

             
"It was strange, Cam. It spoke very calmly but haltingly. It was deep, like a man's voice, but the cadence wasn't quite right," he said. "It was as though it were
trying
to sound unnatural."

             
"Or didn't know what human speech sounds like?" I asked. "You know, just because we've never found alien life doesn't mean it's not out here hiding."

             
I quickly regretted blurting that out. Sanjay went silent for a moment to fathom my unfortunate bombshell. Everyone knew the legends from the earliest exploration of space about astronauts seeing unexplained phenomena: lights and discs following them to the moon, strange radio signals from deep space that never repeated, and even disembodied voices like what Sanjay had heard. Some people said that those stories indicated an alien presence of some kind. Others said that they were just stories. But with more people venturing out into the solar system, such reports had declined.

             
"Cam, I hold a Ph.D. I'm a rational man; I’ve been trained to be objective. It wasn't aliens, and ghosts don't exist. There must be another explanation," he said.

             
"Is it possible that you fell asleep and were dreaming?"

             
"Why do you ask?"

             
"Just eliminating possibilities," I said.

             
"I don't think so. I mean, I might have been. I don't know," he responded.

             
"Sanjay, keep all of this quiet. We don't need to spread fear among the crew. It's not just you. When we were bringing over the lights, I could have sworn that I saw something in the hold. There was writing on the gold telling me to leave, and then it sort of melted away. I think I had fallen asleep and was dreaming."

             
I didn't want to tell him that it was blood-red, and I definitely didn't want to mention the corpses.

             
"Fell asleep? I'm not narcoleptic, Cam."

             
"Neither am I. I don't know what's going on here. Maybe something's not right with space in this area, or, God forbid, a claim-jumper is messing with our heads to scare us off, maybe with electromagnetic waves. I've heard they can affect your thinking. Let's try to figure it out on our own. Keep it between us."

             
"Yeah, that's best. You're right," Sanjay said, still breathing heavily.

             
"Tell you what. I'm going to order a buddy system. Nobody spends time alone on this ship from now on. I'll also restrict access to the engineers and essential personnel. You can work the bucket brigade with me and continue your work. It will take time, and I know the other scholars won't like it, but I can't see any other way until we figure this thing out. I'll have Keating announce it on the
Hyperion
tonight and say it's for safety reasons."

             
He nodded in agreement.

             
"Did you have any luck with the computer?" I asked, changing the subject.

             
"No, it's locked on the decompression warnings."

              Just at that moment my ex-wife and a few of the other engineers entered.

             
"Is something wrong? We heard a scream on the comm, and then you two went silent," she said.

             
"It was nothing. Sanjay's suit is malfunctioning. It was giving the wrong oxygen reading. He was just on his way back to the
Hyperion
to have it checked out."

             
Sanjay and the other engineers left the bridge, leaving me and Janet alone.

             
"The computers are running," I said. "Sanjay found the engineering display, but he can't access anything."

             
"He's an archeologist. Let me deal with the engineering programs. It's probably just some common security protocol. Easy to get past if you know what you're doing."

             
I stayed with her for several hours while she tried to find a back door into the program. Apparently it wasn't as easy as she expected, but I didn't want to rub it in. I also didn't want her to be alone. Whatever was affecting us seemed only to do so when people were alone, and the last thing I needed was for her to get spooked too—if that were even possible. She was the type of person who would try pick an argument with the disembodied voice and convince it that it didn't exist . . . and then tell the entire crew about the incident.