Rick peered past her out of the open lock. He saw what he had expected to see, the little maintenance module and beyond it the massive cylinder of CM-31. But there was something else. Off to the left, small but steadily growing, was a feathery plume of brightness.
Should he mention it, or would he seem like an idiot? He glanced at the others, and realized that Vido had seen it, too. They stared at each other, and said in unison, “What’s that?”
“It’s a ship,” added Vido. “Isn’t it?”
“Can’t be,” Jigger said. He was still busy with the two survivors of the accident. “Not for another thirty-six hours.”
“But it is.” Gina had looked where Rick pointed. “It’s not one of ours—it’s an Avant Mining vessel.”
Rick told himself he ought to have realized that. He had seen such a feathery exhaust before, the result of the pulsed fusion drive used by Avant. But it was so unexpected, out here far from anywhere.
And then he realized that it should not be unexpected at all. This was the very place where you might think to meet an Avant Mining ship—out in the broad region of the valuable metal-bearing asteroids.
The other ship was closing steadily, heading right for the Vantage. Rick heard a voice in his headset.
“This is Morse Watanabe, captain of the Avant Mining vessel, Scarab. We happened to be in a compatible orbit, and we picked up a Mayday signal on a broad frequency band with these coordinates. Do you need assistance?”
Jigger Tait and Gina Styan said nothing. It was Tom Garcia’s voice that sounded in the headsets. “Thanks for the offer, Scarab. As you can see, we’ve had a major accident here, but everything seems to be under control.”
“Glad to hear it.” There was a pause, then Watanabe continued, “Unless proprietary elements are involved, would you tell us what happened?”
“We are still in the process of determining that. However, it seems certain that the integrity of the containment cylinder was breached, suddenly and violently. The melted ore spewed out into space in all directions. Unfortunately, the main crew habitat was impacted and destroyed.”
Rick heard a grunt in his headset. It came from one of the two women picked up by Jigger Tait and Gina Styan. This must be their first direct evidence that their friends and co-workers were dead.
“I am truly sorry to hear that,” Watanabe said. “Any idea what caused the rupture?”
“Not yet. We are working on it. Our preliminary assumption is impact by another body.”
“That would have been my guess. Lots of material in this region. Something pretty big, that somehow got past the radar.” Watanabe sighed. “Again, our regrets and sympathy. Since we can’t help, we’ll be on our way.”
The feathery plume of the Scarab’s exhaust appeared again. The other ship slowly receded. Rick watched it until it was no more than a tiny spark of light, no different from one of the silent stars.
The incident had changed his whole view of Avant Mining. It was a terrible shock to hear Jigger Tait, cycling the lock to fill it with air, mutter to himself, “That slimy bastard. ‘Regrets and sympathy’—like hell.”
“They were just trying to help,” protested Vido. “Weren’t they?”
“You can think that if you like.” Jigger glared at him, and the two rescued women did the same.
“If you hadn’t come along in time,” one of them said. “We’d have been dead in another hour or two. With no survivors, CM-31 would have been a derelict. The Scarab would have taken possession and filed for full or partial ownership.”
“And they’d have got it, too,” growled Jigger. “That’s space law. Watanabe can say he’s glad that things are under control here as often as he likes, but I’ll never believe it. He’s been robbed of a big gain, and he knows it.”
“But the ore’s all gone,” Rick said. “It was thrown all over the place by the accident.”
“Not the ore. That’s not what Watanabe wanted. He was after technology. “Jigger jerked his thumb at the hovering cylinder. “Avant Mining has nothing like that. They still mine using the old bore-and-scoop method. There’s nothing they’d like better than a good look at the inside of CM-31. The general technique may sound simple, but the details aren’t. Watanabe’s out there now, gnashing his teeth—and wishing that the whole lot of us had died on CM-31.”
Chapter Fourteen
The two survivors quickly came back to normal health; the bodies of the dead, such as could be found scattered within ten thousand kilometers of CM-31, were given decent space burial; the Vantage continued on at a quarter gee to its original destination; and Rick thought that the whole awful episode was over. He was wrong. The worst was still to come. It began late on the second night, when someone slipped into his cabin without knocking. He was lying awake in his bunk, and he sat up pleased. Alice had told him that she had an evening session scheduled for a review of drive mechanisms with Tom Garcia, and would not be able to pay Rick a visit. Something must have changed.
The person who entered was Deedee Mao. “I have to talk to you,” she said.
“If it’s about—”
“I was told not to talk about this to anyone. But I have to. It’s eating me up inside.”
She sounded desolate and desperate, in a way that Rick had never heard before. He started to say something, decided that it was a bad idea, and made room for her beside him on the narrow bunk. “I’m listening, Deedee. But if you promised not to talk. . .”
“It’s a promise I can’t keep.” She drew in a deep breath. “Do you know what I did when we got to CM-31?”
“I think so.” They had all talked about their roles in the hours that followed. According to Barney French, they had performed better than anyone could have expected. Each of them would receive a note of praise in the record. “You went over near the main cylinder, didn’t you? With Marlene Kotite.”
“That’s right. We were really there to look for bodies. I was picked because I was once in a bad accident myself, and I’ve seen some pretty gruesome stuff.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“There’s a lot we don’t know about each other, Rick. That’s a pity.” She tried to smile at him, and failed. “Anyway, we found one part of the work crew habitat, smashed to pieces by flying jets of molten metal. Seven bodies. They made me feel like throwing up, because they were in pieces. We had to hunt for arms and legs and heads and try to put them together. Two of them were so badly burned I couldn’t tell if they were men or women.”
“That’s terrible, Deedee.” Rick put his arm around her shoulders. “I had it easy, but I didn’t know it. I didn’t have to deal with anything like that.”
“I haven’t got to the bad part. We came to one bit of the habitat that had been smashed open by flying metal, and then somehow sealed itself back together. It was airtight, but molten iron had splashed all over the place. We found a man there. He was alive.”
She paused. Rick, sensing that it was not the time to speak, waited sympathetically.
“He was alive,” she went on at last, “but he had no right to be. The iron had burned him, head and body. He must have actually sat for a while in a pool of molten metal. When we found him he was conscious. I didn’t know what to do, but Marlene crouched down beside him. ‘You’re safe now,’ she said. ‘I’m Marlene Kotite, pilot of the ship Vantage. We’ll have to move you, so I’m going to give you a shot to knock you out first.’