The Salvagers (7 page)

             
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 when 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.

             
"Treasure hunters, you're all just big kids! I'll be on the bridge playing with my toys," Sanjay said with a good-natured grin.

             
I had no idea what had happened. Maybe a moment of low blood pressure or worse. I made a pact with myself to have the medic onboard the
Hyperion
take a discreet look at me. I never followed up on that resolution.