"We've got to get a look at the ship's logs," I said. "This wreck just gets stranger by the minute."
"I'll make it my top priority when we restore electrical power," Sanjay replied.
"Can we go and see the gold yet?" Neil asked.
"We should make a full circuit down the other corridor. It will take us to the hold," I said. I had the schematics of the Cape Hatteras memorized, having had a poster of them in my room when I was a kid.
We passed down the twin corridor on the other side. It was a mirror image of the other, with no sign of anyone. The only difference was that the doors to the crew's quarters were closed. That's standard, since no one leaves the door to their private space open. We left them unexplored as they were possible locations of the bodies.
"Once we get to the hold, we should be able to pass through the engineering compartment and come out the other side through a second door. We'll be in the same corridor we started in," I said.
We passed a transverse corridor that led to the other side of the ship. Its floor was cocked at an odd angle, the entry stoop sitting two feet above the level of the corridor, frozen where it had been when it lost power.
"What's down there?" Neil asked.
"Crew amenities. We're in a rotating gravity section. There's a gymn, recreation area, and dining hall."
"Do you think the crew could be in there?"
"Maybe, but I doubt it. You don't watch a movie when your ship is losing air."
"Unless you don't know it's leaking out," Sanjay said.
"We'll see several of these crossings. The next one leads to the secondary reactor rooms."
"Shouldn't we explore those areas?" Sanjay asked.
"I'll leave that up to you and your colleagues. You can be the first to explore them." I responded. Those rooms were of little importance to my goals that night. It was late, and we needed to move on and see the gold. We reached the door to the hold a short time later. Unlike doors elsewhere on the ship, this one was closed tight.
"We'll have to crank it open by hand. Stand back," I warned. It was well worth playing it safe. If the hold was still pressurized, the escaping air would be powerful and might carry debris, possibly even gold bars that could shatter a space helmet. It wouldn't be the first time that happened. A salvage crew was sent to retrieve a capsule left by the fifteenth manned mission to Mars, abandoned nearly four centuries ago. Everyone assumed its pressurization wouldn't have held up that long, but when they popped the hatch it blew plastic shards from a broken computer screen straight into a man's space suit, killing him. I wasn't going to take that chance, even if it was one in a million.
I stood to the side of the door and cranked the manual release. There was no rushing air, and the compartment door slid open easily. Then came that sudden flush of excitement you feel in your chest when something truly wonderful is about to happen. We must have moved faster than at any other time in our exploration that day to get ourselves inside that hold and shine our tiny lights on the cargo. We were not disappointed.
"It's still here!" I said, as both of my companions were struck speechless.
Row after row of gold bars flashed brilliantly in our miner's lights. It was more than a bank vault, it was a royal treasury. I'd never seen anything like it, even in old pictures of Fort Knox. The bars were stacked neatly, strapped to metal pallets across the forward quarter of the hold.
"We're so . . . rich," Neil said.
"And I thought my grandchildren would still be paying off the loan for my degree," Sanjay remarked.
I did some quick math in my head. Even after dividing it into shares, I was now one of the wealthiest men in the UNAG. We stayed for half an hour marvelling at the magnitude of the haul. We were looking at the fabled treasure of the Cape Hatteras. Fairytales were told to children about it. I'd bet every salvager in the solar system started their career specifically to look for it, and I was the one who had bagged it.
"It's late," I said. "We need to move on. Everyone's waiting for us, and we need to get back to the salvor and come up with a plan for tommorrow."
It was hard to stop staring, but when we finally moved on we ran into a problem: the doors to the engine room were welded shut from the inside. To go through them, we'd have had to cut our way in, and we weren't prepared for that. The path across the hold was blocked by a large mass of stowed mining gear, so we were left to return the way we had come until we found one of the transverse corridors.
"It's not unusual to weld a door shut if you don't need it. They had two and may have decided to install additional equipment and needed the extra wall space," I said.
"Is it possible the crew welded themselves into the engineering compartment to save themselves? Would there be any advantage to doing that?" Sanjay asked with a slight hint of India in his speech that I hadn't detected before. I suspected he was nervous.
"Well, the walls on ships are usually built thicker in the engine room in case something explodes, but it's probably no more airtight than the rest of the doors. It's just armored," Neil said.
I didn't think the crew would be in engineering either. It didn't seem like the place you'd go to spend your last moments. When you're losing your air, you don't need propulsion; you need rescue. You'd put on a moon suit to buy a few more hours and head for the communications room.
I paused for a moment, thinking that I should bring something out to excite the crowd. I unstrapped a bar of gold and pulled it along behind me. It would weigh over 200 lbs on Earth, but in zero-G it weighed nothing yet still required significant force to get it moving. Mass is mass.
"I'm sure everyone's still out there. I don't want to come out empty-handed," I said to my companions.
We made our way through the first transverse corridor and on to the entry cut. I followed close behind my companions. Our communications returned, and we could hear everyone talking. They were waiting for some confirmation of success. I didn't say anything but just pulled the bar around and let it float freely in front of me. Everyone erupted into cheers. For the rest of that night we were very happy people, spending what was left of the evening drinking champagne on the Hyperion and talking about how wealthy we were.
Even the most stoic academicians seemed to join in and contemplate how much money their percentage worked out to be. We had a rough idea, but everyone wanted to know exactly how rich they were. I'd counted one of the facing stacks in the hold and made an estimate. It was beyond anyone's expectation. We believed that the ship was carrying more gold than had been assumed. We weren't just wealthy; we were filthy rich. Every one of us, or so I thought.
Amid the excitement I wish that someone had stopped for a moment to look around before we went merrily rocketing back to the Hyperion. No one had bothered. But if they had, they might have noticed that a new star had appeared. It would have been bright enough for anyone who navigates in space to have noticed. It marked the full-throttle engines of a ship, distant and weeks away, heading straight for us.
Chapter 9 Day 206
We spent the next morning coming up with a method of unloading the gold over coffee. The ideas ranged from floating it across freely to ferrying the bars between the ships using transport pods. The engineers had the best suggestion: a bucket brigade and a conveyor line. It seemed be the fastest way and involved little risk.
The plan was to use a pair of pulleys, one attached near the hole in the Cape Hatteras and the other outside the cargo hatch of the Hyperion. We would number and catalog each bar before sending it across in a bag attached to the line. The people on the other side would wheel it around, unload it, record it in the ship's manifest, and strap it down securely in the salvor's hold. Then they would return the empty bag on the other side as a new bar arrived. With any luck we hoped to move as many as 50 bars a day.
Cataloging would be the most important part. I couldn't just toss the bars in the hold and be on my way. It wasn't my personal gold; it belonged to the investors and employees too. We would get our fair share wh
en the time came, but we had to be meticulous to avoid disagreements. Once the treasure was cataloged, the hold would be sealed and guarded, with only myself and Keating having access. When we reached Earth, we would unload the cargo at an old orbital dock colloquially known as "Waterloo." We chose it because that's where the Cape Hatteras had launched its mission. It seemed appropriate for our expedition to return home to Waterloo Dock 4b.
When we arrived at Waterloo, we would check each bar against the records again, accumulate a good-looking pile, and then call the press in for photographs and holograms. We would need serious security, so Ed Iron had contracted a private firm in Kathmandu that specialized in guarding transports to the outer solar system. It was made up of Gurkhas, still the toughest and most capable warriors in the solar system.
We studied the gold bar I had brought over the night before. It was interesting how meticulous the Cape Hatteras project had been. The bar was neatly assayed and stamped with its exact weight recorded on top. Impressive work for something done in space.
I couldn't help but think what might have happened if the UNAG had recovered the gold. History might have been different. At the time Earth was still using fiat currency, trading paper instead of something valuable. It was hard to imagine that from my perspective. The world had operated on a gold standard before paper currency, and then it had returned to gold afterward.
By afternoon we had finished installing the pulleys and lines. It was time for me to get back inside the Cape Hatteras. I chose Sanjay and Neil to accompany me again. They knew the terrain already, and we weren't yet ready to fill the derelict with sightseeing historians.
Before going over, Neil and Dr. Maheshtra had to prepare for moving a fusion generator to the Cape Hatteras for running the portable lights. Once we did that, we could send engineers to work on restoring power. If the ship was out of fuel, we'd need to fill the helium tanks. As it turned out, they were completely dry.
We then had to figure out some way of transferring helium from the Hyperion to the derelict. I left that to the engineers, but even I knew that connectors from 200 years ago were much different than those of today. The engineers would also have to build a smaller tank inside one of the five monsters on the Cape Hatteras rather than filling the whole thing. We didn't need the engines, just electrical power.
"I'm going over ahead of you," I said to Neil and Sanjay. "I'll get the lights in position and run the power lines. I'd also like to look around a bit more, unless you need help moving the generator."
"We've got it, I think, but be careful," Neil said.
I took three sets of lights with me. They were originally designed for the deep ocean but worked just as well in space. Their frames had magnetic feet, so I could set them up anywhere on the ship. I intended to put one in the hold, one at the entrance looking down the corridor, and one on the ceiling of the bridge.
I slipped through the cut, set up the first light near the opposite wall, and plugged in the line that would supply the bridge lighting. I was delighted to find that each individual light swiveled—the older models did not—so I could light up the corridor from two different directions and cover everything.
I had brought a tube of low-temperature rubber and applied a coating on the edge of the entry cut. Sharp edges and burrs are dangerous things in space; one accidental swipe could easily cut a hole in a moon suit. That was such a worry that nearly all ships designed over the last few centuries had no sharp edges anywhere. While I was slathering the entry cut, I examined the derelict’s construction.
It was very old-fashioned. Instead of a microcomb hull behind the outer plating, a lightweight design that allowed comm signals to penetrate, it was built of solid steel. That was the first thing I'd seen that betrayed the age of the otherwise spanking-new appearance of the Cape Hatteras. I figured that it must weigh five times what a comparable ship of its size would today, but that didn't mean it was weak. On the contrary, old does not necessarily mean bad, and if Finley Pace had rammed it, I think it would have pushed back.
When I was satisfied that I had applied a good coating of rubber, I made my way slowly toward the bridge, feeding out electrical line as I went. Moving backwards was a little disconcerting. If a body floated up and bumped me, I'd turn to see a 200-year-old face sporting milky frozen eyes.
I wondered how a micrometeorite could have done any damage to the Cape Hatteras. The hull was thick. At most a collision would have made a little crater that probably wouldn't have left a corresponding dent on the inside, much less cause an air leak. What I saw stood in direct contradiction to the assertions of the official investigation.
Once on the bridge I pushed myself to the ceiling and positioned the next light. I took a moment to look around. No theory I'd heard fit what I was seeing. Unless the leak was on the bridge itself, there should have been some sign of activity. The swivel chairs all pointed forward, there were no closed-top coffee cups, papers, or computer pads lying around. It looked as though someone had cleaned the bridge before leaving, as though the ship had been mothballed for storage.
I stopped to look at the panel in front of the captain's station. When we restored power, I hoped that would tell us everything. His logs would have been stored on its computer, and there was no good reason why a ship that well preserved wouldn't have all the data intact. I thought of the commanding officer of the Cape Hatteras, Captain John Andrew Nelson.
He was an interesting man, one of the last people to command both ocean and space vessels. His first command was one of the final warships to sail Earth's seas. His last assignment was the Cape Hatteras, and if he had survived he might have led some of the great missions of the following years before a quiet retirement after making fleet admiral. Instead, his end came mysteriously in the cold of deep space.
I made my way back down the corridor to the hold. I was in new territory and found the door open on that side. If this section was consistent with how we'd found the rest of the ship, when the lights came on we should see an open engineering door. I shone my light toward it but couldn't make anything out. I didn't want to go any closer and find a body on my own.
I set the light up near the entrance, feeling silly for being scared. I was like a schoolboy in an abandoned house, reinforcing his own fears by thinking about them. I stayed with the most comforting thing on the ship—the gold. I trained my light on it, hoping to switch mental gears and get back to planning. I intended to keep that six-inch spotlight right there until Sanjay and Neil got on board.
I felt my foot touch the floor’s plating. I must have been moving slightly on residual momentum. When I directed the miner's light to my feet, I instantly felt nauseated and weak. I knew that feeling: I once had fainted from drinking cold water on a scorching hot day, and that's what it felt like before going black. I tried to think of a cause, but my mind began flitting in and out of consciousness.
I shook my head and sobered briefly, enough to focus. It had to be low oxygen. I panicked and tried to assess the condition of my suit. I tried to check my air gauges, but before I could the feeling passed. I was abruptly fine again and looking at my feet, though I didn't recall moving my head back in that direction.
I glanced back up at the gold. There is a difference between true fight-or-flight scared and helplessly frozen terrified. I felt the latter kind. I was like an animal in headlights, locked on what I was seeing but not quite capable of comprehending the imminent danger.
On the edge of a gold bar in front of me was scrawled the words, "You're not supposed to be out here yet." I thought someone had written it there to frighten me, but I realized it wasn't possible. I had been looking at that same brick just moments before. The writing transmogrified into the color of blood and liquefied, boiling and subliming away in a puff of red steam.
I turned to flee only to be confronted by a dead man. He was wearing no moon suit. His flesh was dried and reduced, his paper-thin lips contracted into an unnaturally wide grin. Instinctively I glanced upward, expecting
desiccated and sunken eyes, but they were still brown and bore life in them. He was looking at me. I could hear his labored breathing in the dead of space—impossible without air and through a thick helmet. My suit filled with the smell of simultaneous life and rot.
As I jolted back in stunned shock, my miner's light falling on his jumpsuit revealed the name Nelson embroidered on its breast. It was the captain of the Cape Hatteras. Like a thought placed in my head by someone else, it became powerfully clear that I had to get out, abandon the wreck, and never return. Otherwise I would become like him.
The cargo bay suddenly was illuminated in flashes of unearthly blue light. I could see more bodies of the dead coming toward me. The scene went black. I closed my eyes in terror and held them tightly shut. They would take me in the darkness. The light returned, rising stronger and whiter, painfully bright through my eyelids.
Then I felt the moment of waking. I opened my eyes; I had somehow fallen asleep. I knew the comfort you feel when you awake from a terrible dream and experience the epiphany that it wasn't real. The light in my eyes was the superlight, Neil and Sanjay were onboard plugging them in. I moved to look past it. The dead were gone, leaving only a lighted cargo hold filled with treasure and mining equipment, but the dream's vividness left me trembling.
I shot down the corridor until I bumped squarely into Sanjay, banging my helmet against his.
"What's wrong?" yelled Neil on the comms.
"I just. . . . I'm sorry, Sanjay," distancing myself so that he couldn't feel my shaking. I didn't tell them about what had happened. I figured that it was better to look foolish for going too fast rather than look crazy for seeing a ghost in a dream and being terrified of it.
"You're too used to your own ship and getting impatient in your old age," Neil said as he helped Sanjay get his bearings again.
The Salvagers Page 6
