The Salvagers (9 page)

             
Eventually she found a way past the lockout. There was an emergency feature hidden in the programming that allowed the captain to input a code and go anywhere he needed. The code was ultra secret at the time, known only by the commanding officer of the ship and the admirals on Earth. It was still redacted when Ed Iron's people looked into it, but with some difficulty they were able to convince the archivists to release it, probably with a monetary incentive.

             
Janet put in the code and then spent fifteen minutes studying the numbers on the screen. Finally she turned to me and said, "Cam, this ship was decompressed on purpose."

Chapter 11     Day 208

             
"Intentionally? That's absurd!"

             
So exclaimed the eminent naval historian Dr. Lawrence Webb aboard the
Hyperion
, team leader of the academic contingent. He was already reeling from my order to restrict academic access before anyone other than Sanjay had been aboard. The idea of an engineer revealing a major discovery rather than a scholar sent Webb over the edge.

             
"First, we have the commission records. Second, we have the telescope footage. With all due respect, Janet, you're an engineer, not a historian."

             
"I know how to interpret technical data. Your views are at odds with everything we've seen on that ship," she responded.

             
"Your whole argument hinges on the commission's work," I interrupted. "We already know that the telescope footage didn't exist, and the commission had far less information than we do right now. She's right, that ship was set to decompress!"

             
"You're indulging in conspiracy theory," Webb said dismissively.

             
"I don't think a computer record that's been in cold storage for two centuries is going to lie. It's as authoritative as things get," my ex-wife interjected. The rest of the salvage personnel listened to her intently. She obviously had cultivated respect among them on the journey from Earth. "It's right there, irrefutable engineering data proving that the ship was ordered to vent its air. We've got everything except a picture of a finger pressing the button."

             
"Data can be corrupted," Dr. Webb retorted.

             
"Or falsified," I said.

             
"By whom? The crew? You haven't found them yet. You don't know what they were doing  at the time of the disaster."

             
"They were UNAG military," I said.

             
"That doesn't mean anything. Not
everyone
was dishonest in the government of two hundred years ago, though I'll admit that many of them were."

             
"Yet you're willing to trust the findings of a UNAG commission," Janet added.

              "We're going in circles," I said, hoping to steer the conversation away from the speculative. "We don't have enough information. We need to find those crew members and get a look at Nelson's logs. Has there been any progress in thawing out engineering?"

             
"It's going to take another week, probably longer," Janet replied. "Remember, the temperature over there is still near absolute zero. Water behaves like solid rock in that kind of cold. Melting it requires powerful directional radiant heaters, and we have only two."

             
"Is it possible to restore heat and atmosphere to the ship? Would that speed things up?" I asked, hoping to finally get an atmosphere on the derelict.

             
"Definitely, but I'd have to divert everyone away from the effort in engineering."

             
"Seems like a good gamble. If we can do that, the ice would melt on its own. We then could adjust the bucket brigade to work through the airlock. That way we could seal up the entry hole," I said.

             
"No issues maybe, but still a pain in the ass and a delay," Neil added. "Especially if they're just going to haul the ship back to Earth. Why not study it there? Why do we need to get into engineering to finish the salvage?"

             
He had a good point, and he liked working in moon suits.

             
"It's pristine. We need to document it as it was," answered Sanjay. "Modifications, people working, and movements from towing will destroy information. It's best to be methodical. Besides, the bosses at home want this thing to turn a profit in more ways than one. They want a sensation ready for reporters and the public. They won't want to wait for us to finish a study."

             
He was right too. Ed Iron's response to my report had been little more than a flurry of excited musings about how we were going to unveil the find and squeeze every drop of profit we could from it.

             
"That's true. There's also the fact that we need to find the crew," I said. "It's not in the best taste to haul them back to Earth in a salvaged-for-profit venture. They need to be buried at space, with Ed's public-relations people pumping up how reverently we treated them. They're heroes. He sent coffins and flags for that very reason."

             
The engineers worked for two weeks modifying another small fusion reactor
to increase available power. After Neil welded the entry cut closed, we ran a hose from the
Hyperion
to the
Cape Hatteras
, pressurizing the derelict quickly. We sealed off the crew quarters and other rooms that didn't need oxygen, using helium to equalize the pressure. It was safe enough to breathe if any leaked.

             
The derelict still had abundant liquid oxygen and nitrogen reserves. Using a spare air recycler from the
Hyperion
, eventually we intended to open each of the doors and allow the helium to be scrubbed out and new air added. Within a few months we'd have a complete atmosphere on the derelict, with the recycler producing its own oxygen.

             
We would also finally lay the decompression question to rest. If it had been decompressed intentionally, the ship should be airtight, provided that Neil's welds were okay. If it had been an accident, on the other hand, the air escaping through the hole would be immediately apparent. I ordered everyone on the
Cape Hatteras
to remain suited until we knew for certain. It would be up to me to test the air.

             
"Geezer, I'm reading a breathable atmosphere with no loss of pressure," Neil said, as we floated near the sealed entry cut. We had been monitoring for several hours.

             
"I'm not a geezer. I'm getting younger. I think I noticed gray in your stubble yesterday."

             
"No, you didn't, and if there was it's Stacey's fault," he responded.

             
"Don't mind her. You know she marches to a different drummer. All pilots do."

             
"So do engineers, but at least our drummer has rhythm."

             
"You're just flustered because there aren't any unattached girls on the
Hyperion
," I said.

             
"You might be right about that," he said with a chuckle. "All that wisdom you've got comes from being older than the solar system."

             
"Yes, I was salvaging when Earth was a baby."

             
I loved my son. I just wished that he didn't think he was immortal.

             
"Well, here goes," I said, as I flipped the three latches on my helmet and lifted it off. I stood there for a moment breathing while Neil watched my lips for blueness. Even with the warm air from the
Hyperion
, it was cold enough to see my breath. "Looks good," I said. "I think you can remove your helmet."

             
“It smells like the inside of a refrigerator," Neil said, as he lifted it off.

             
"And metal. It's all this frost and space-smell," I said. Something that's been exposed to space acquires a very peculiar metallic odor.

             
It took a few days for the ship to warm up. When we began to move gold, Sanjay and I served as the bucket brigade, with Neil in his moon suit manning the airlock. The job went slower than I had hoped. The airlock was designed for automatic operation, and using the handcrank was inefficient. Nevertheless, it was nice to work in a short-sleeve shirt. The only drawback was the inability to escape easily. I hadn't forgotten my dream, and the engine compartment door had been left open to release the water, allowing that eerie blue light to flicker out.

             
The water floated out in globules. There was nothing sensitive in the hold, so we just let it accumulate. It would either coalesce on the walls, or sometimes a blob the size of a basketball would jellyfish past to be captured by an engineer named Roberts. He'd net them in bags and leave them in the airlock to be disposed of when we were conveying gold. He must have done that a thousand times before the engine compartment finally stopped leaking.

             
When it did, Roberts volunteered to go in first. I don't know whether he had more guts than the others or whether they felt he deserved it for being the waterboy. Whatever it was, what happened next has bothered me ever since.

             
"He's ready to go in," Janet said as we gathered near the steel door leading to the engineering compartment.

             
The Cherenkov light was a warning. There might be more dangerous forms of radiation inside, so Roberts donned a moon suit to take advantage of its shielding. He pulled the heavy door open. The interior had the eerie look of a fish aquarium in a room with no other lights on. I grabbed a moon helmet and switched on its comms, hoping we could receive him through the thick bulkhead.

             
"It's laid out as in the ship’s blueprints," he said. "I'm in a room with three doorways. The left leads to the exhaust nozzle feeds, the center to the engine access panels, and the right to the main engineering control compartment. The Cherenkov light is coming from there. I'm going through the door. Reading no dangerous radioactivity. There is. . . ."

             
And that was it. The blue light went out, and he fell silent. Worried that he might have been injured, Neil and I suited up and charged in. We found nothing. He had disappeared without a trace.

             
We presumed him dead three days later and held a service. I never really knew anything about him other than the idle conversations you have while working on a ship with someone. We had nothing to commit to space, so we took the only thing from his quarters that seemed to have meaning to Roberts: a well-worn copy of
Ulysses
by James Joyce, with copious notes written in the margins. I suspected that there was more to Roberts than anyone knew.

             
In the weeks that followed we carefully explored the engineering compartment. Whatever took Roberts wasn't there anymore. There was also no trace of the crew. We had seen every part of the ship, at least at a glance, and one thing was clear: there were no crew members on that ship when it decompressed. However, if Roberts could disappear mysteriously, they might have too.

             
We were out of our league. People do not simply vanish into thin air. Janet suggested that a malfunctioning reactor could vaporize a person, but there was no evidence of that, and none of the reactors in that room had power. No one liked suggestions of a new phenomenon in nature, and all we had left that might provide an answer was Nelson's logs.

             
Unfortunately, we couldn't find them. Like everything else in the databanks, they were hidden in some obscure folder, probably in the middle of a program file. Rather than spending months combing through the computer's files, we hoped there would be something in the government records on Earth that might help.

             
I contacted Ed Iron, who sent his researcher to the archives and got back to us after a few days. As it turned out, hiding files was standard military procedure at the time of the ship's loss. They sent us a key, but it wasn't necessary. They hadn’t told anyone that they possessed the logs themselves from the beginning to the end of the mission. They sent a copy to the
Hyperion
.

             
That stood in direct contradiction to the commission report, which claimed that the logs were never transmitted home. It confirmed that there was indeed a cover-up, and it also explained why the communications equipment on the derelict was set to transmit.

             
With the scholars busy poring over the logs, I was able to enjoy a reprieve from their insistent requests to be allowed on the derelict. I didn't have time to read the logs. I needed to focus on removing the gold, though I was astonished that the UNAG had given them to us. I guess they figured that we'd eventually ferret them out of the computer anyway.

             
We had removed most of the gold by the beginning of the month. Only a relatively small amount remained onboard the derelict, so I left the job of transferring it to Sanjay and Janet while Neil and I returned to the
Amaranth Sun.
There had been no further manifestation of the blue light or other strange occurrences. It would only be a few more days before I had little choice except to unleash the academic specialists for the study phase of the mission. Webb would have Ed Iron countermand my orders if I didn't. I didn't mind, though. My part of the mission was nearly over, and I could relax while academicians completed their study under Webb's leadership. It would be his baby after the gold was unloaded.