She saw a small blip on the screen quickly blossom into a larger blip.
"What is that?" she asked.
"Ah, my child, listen and I will tell you a poem. You like poems, right?"
She nodded, cautiously. Uncle Joh still recited poems and played practical jokes on her as he had done when she was a very small child. To be fair, though, he did the same thing to her parents, so she supposed it had more to do with who he was than with his perception of her. He began:
" 'Twas night just like always as it is in deep space We were scanning for salvage all over the place When what to my wondering scanners appeared But a derelict ship, off our port bow, right here!"
Uncle Joh stabbed at a button, and the blip bloomed until it filled the entire screen, revealing itself to be a large luxury space liner, its name clearly legible on its side.
"La Est-trail-a Blanket?" Khorii asked, unsure of how to say the words.
"La Estrella Blanca," he corrected her pronunciation, turning the sounds at the end of the words into long as. "It's Spanish, chica. Means 'The White Star.' Historically not the best choice of words, but probably the guy who named her was a businessman, not a space mariner or a historian."
"Why not a good choice?" she asked.
"It's very ancient history, but once upon a time on Old Terra, back when it was called Earth, some people built a huge ship-not a space vessel; it sailed on the water of the ocean, though maybe sailed isn't the right word, since it didn't have sails. It had motors. Anyway, they built a ship so huge that they said it couldn't be sunk. And it did. End of story."
"And the ship was called The White Star also? Like this one?"
"No, it was called the Titanic. But the company that built it was called the White Star Line. In Spanish, that ended up being translated into this ship's name. Naturally the Titanic's sinking didn't do the White Star Line any good. For one thing, it wiped out quite a few of the richest people on the planet, who were on that maiden voyage because it was the fashionable thing to do."
"What is 'fashionable'?" she asked. Her Standard was really pretty good, but every once in a while humans, Uncle Joh especially, came up with an expression that had not been covered in her lessons.
"Means all their friends were doing it and thought it was cool, so they wanted to do it, too."
"Ah." She thought about that for a moment, but it did not make a great deal of sense. If all of her friends were grazing on one patch of grass, she had always found it helpful to find another patch for herself, which would give her more food and not overgraze that particular area. But maybe that was just her.
Returning her attention to the screen, now filled with the starboard side of the ship, the portion that said "Blanca," she noticed a faint pulsing of the indicator light to the right of the scanner array.
"What does this mean?" she asked, touching it.
"Nuts!" he said, touching a volume control, "it's a distress beacon. Does look pretty old though." He studied the pulses for a moment, and said, "I guess they would have been in distress at some point or the ship wouldn't be wallowing around in space like this. We'll just pull alongside her with the tractor beam, board her, and see what's what. I don't wish those people any ill luck, mind you, but that ship would be some bodacious salvage if nobody's still aboard."
He fiddled with the com system and began talking to his prospective prize.
"Hey, there, you aboard the Estrella Blanca, this is Captain Jonas Becker aboard the Condor, flagship of Becker and Son Interplanetary Recycling and Salvage Enterprises, Ltd., of which I am the CEO. We received your distress signal and ask permission to board. Do you read me?"
After turning up the volume, waiting, and going through a number of other procedures, he flicked off the com signal, and said, "Guess nobody's home." He looked much happier.
After that, he ignored her while she watched him approach the much larger ship and attach the Condor to its docking bay hatch using the tractor beam. The tractor beam had been culled, like most of the Condor, from another larger and more powerful vessel. Khorii knew this because Uncle Joh was fond of telling her about the heritage of each and every sheet of metal, panel, nut, bolt, screw, and button he had adapted for his ship. Now he reversed thrusters and, with the pull of the tractor beam to override the electronic controls, the hatch opened the rest of the way of its own accord. Becker disengaged the tractor beam and flew into the outer airlock of the liner's docking bay. It irised smoothly shut behind the Condor, and the hatch leading to the bay irised open.
"Normally I might have to cut open the hull or extrude a boarding tube," Becker told her. "But this baby is large enough that I'll just drive on in there and find us a parking place." When the inner hatch irised shut behind them, the bay became dark as night, like space itself, without stars. Except for their landing lights, the deck was black and silent. Their lights slid over the hulls of what looked like many other sleek vessels, some larger than the Condor, as the ship settled into an empty berth among them. "The ship's atmosphere seems to be intact-normal O2 levels and reasonable air pressure, but no gravity out there. But I don't like the looks of it. I'm gonna suit up."
"Should I call my parents or Uncle Maak and Elviiz?" she asked.
"Nah. Your parents need their rest, and Maak is downloading some new programming to Elviiz, so they'll be all plugged in and disassembled and stuff. I'll take the camera to document the findings, in case the company that owns this bird contests my salvage claim. That way, I'll be transmitting back to our com screen and you can watch that and make sure I don't run into any trouble. If I do, then you can call the cavalry. But don't worry, honey, I do this stuff all the time. So does the cat. C'mon, RK. You wanna stink up a new place, here's your chance."
He clattered down the metal stairs to the lower deck, where the robolift and the first mate's intricately engineered cat hatch and airlock were located. She heard more clanking and banging and a couple of swear words, then the creaking of the robolift descending through the tail of the ship. Before the sound stopped, RK appeared through the viewport, floating through the zero G with his tail lashing like a rudder until he blended into the darkness. When he looked back, his eyes glowed like stars in the ship's lights. Khiindi mewed and jumped down from Khorii's chair.
"Khiindi, come back. The captain didn't say you could go, too!"
But almost before her words were out, the flap of the cat hatch announced his departure and he, too, made his appearance outside the hull of the Condor, somersaulting nose over tail three feet above the ground or so into the light illuminating the area in front of the viewport. He looked up, blinking at her before righting himself and pushing off after his sire, just as if he'd been in zero G all his life.
Uncle Joh, clad in full protective gear and helmet, lumbered into view, looked after the retreating cat paws and tail for a moment, then made a thumbs-up gesture in the direction of the viewport. She heard each breath he took.
"Uncle, why are you wearing both your night-vision goggles and carrying that huge antique infrared camera?"
"The goggles are so I can see what's here. The infrared detects heat, so if there are any survivors on this ship, which would mean I couldn't claim it as salvage, I'll be able to tell so you and your folks can help them, even though that would, in some ways, pain me. It's also very hard to tell from the pictures I take with this dinosaur what is valuable and what isn't. It gives me a few more … shall we say … gray areas, allowing for some flexibility in the salvage regulations."