In truth, Mac’s careful drift through the structure was tedium itself. It was quite obvious the station had been deserted for a long time. The polytanium hull was still mildly radioactive, its decay rate allowing an accurate dating on the explosion of two hundred eleven years. “So there can be nothing left alive in there. Or if there is, it’s a life-form very different from anything we know.”
The compartments weren’t particularly strange. Engineering principles were reasonably universal. The hull material was made up from sandwiched layers; the pressure wall, thermal insulation, structural reinforcement, cable ducts. First indications were that the cube Mac entered was a habitation section. Several internal walls had rectangular hatchways. “They are two meters across, larger than human ones, which indicate the Dysons might be bigger than us.” In case you couldn’t work that out for yourselves. There were times Dudley hated himself for what he had to do.
Almost every compartment had an opening into the broad tunnellike corridors that curved and twisted through the interior. Mac’s suit lights found octagonal mounting blocks in the compartments, jutting out of the walls at the apex of structural ribs. At one time they’d held large units of machinery. Now, there were just empty brackets and load pins. “It’s been stripped clean. Whoever won the battle must have taken their booty with them.”
Mac’s whole EVA was a record of empty chambers and long dark tunnels. The Watchtower had a sense of rejection about it rather than abandonment. Cold, dark, feebly radioactive, it was simply of no consequence anymore; both purpose and meaning had ceased when the lethal radiation pierced every corner.
It was an impression that was now strengthening in Dudley’s mind as he watched the horn of rock expanding across the starfield. Everything out here was gray, leaving very little difference between the rock and the alien station perched on it. He could just make out the other shuttle hovering above the cube, a silver and gold speck with green and scarlet navigation strobes flashing incessantly. Their light shimmered across the scuff marks on the perspex of the little port he was pressed against.
“Helmet.”
“Huh?” Dudley turned around to see Emmanuelle Verbeke on the other side of the aisle. She was putting her own helmet on.
“Time to put your helmet on,” she said.
“Right. Sure.” He gave her a thank-you smile, and retrieved his helmet from the fuseto patch on the side of the chair. He had gotten on quite well with Emmanuelle since leaving Anshun. Thankfully, since they were partnered up together in team A. Not that he got to socialize with her much outside duty shifts and training sessions. He was still somewhat conscious about his physical shape. Everyone else on board had been through a full rejuvenation, at most ten years ago. He was the starship’s official geriatric. Any early hope that would give him an air of distinction had quickly faded.
The shuttle’s small thrusters were firing almost continually as it maneuvered in for rendezvous, sounding as if someone with a hammer was knocking on the fuselage. Dudley accommodated the slight swaying motion it set up as he lowered the tough transparent bubble over his head. The liplike seals gripped tight, and he fastened the secondary mechanical seal. His e-butler immediately ran final integration checks, confirming the suit was fully functional.
He activated his suit’s force field as he went into the airlock. Team C and three of team A were already waiting on the fuselage grid that skirted the outer lock. Dudley took care to anchor himself before pulling his maneuvering pack out of its storage bin. It was McClain Gilbert himself who held the pack steady while Dudley pushed his arms through the straps. The unit stuck itself to his space suit, plyplastic straps contracting around him.
“You all right?” Mac asked. His helmet was very close to Dudley’s, allowing him to peer through the faint silvering.
“Sure.” However blasé he tried to sound, the reality of being out in open space within an alien star system was making his heart judder. The telemetry would be available to Mac. Dudley looked around to find the reassuring bright star that was Second Chance. Seeing it shining against the starfield made his breathing a little easier. He searched farther, trying to find familiar star patterns amid the strange constellations.
Team C began jetting over to the Watchtower a hundred meters away. Dudley held Emmanuelle’s maneuvering pack as she shrugged her way into it, receiving a thumbs-up in gratitude. He enjoyed that, it made him feel like a fully paid-up member of the team.
“Right, that’s everybody out,” said Francis Rawlins, the leader of team C. “Make sure you’ve secured your equipment bag before you leave the shuttle. You can freeflight in your own time. Head for the beacon they’ve put up on the alien station. We’ll regroup there, and move on in.”
Dudley made sure the cylindrical bag was fastened to his belt. The others were slowly lifting off the fuselage grid. Tiny squirts of white gas puffed out of their maneuvering pack nozzles, just visible in the dusky light of the distant star. His virtual hand gripped the pack’s joystick, and he tilted it forward. The gas produced a dull rushing sound, vibrating against his back. But his boots left the grid, and he was floating away from the shuttle. Once again his heart went yammering as adrenaline cut loose into his bloodstream. He couldn’t believe he was actually doing this. There was a holiday he’d taken in his first life when he’d signed up to go paragliding; trusting himself to a sheet of fabric and praying the straps held as he and the instructor jumped off the top of a mountain. The rush of tension and exhilaration that hit him simultaneously when he saw treetops below his feet was like nothing he’d ever known. Now here it was again, far more intense than the first time.
As before, he forced himself to relax into the inevitable. It just took a while to convince his body there was actually nothing wrong, that the suit and the maneuvering pack were working fine and taking care of him. Inside the helmet he was grinning like a madman. His free virtual hand tapped a microphone icon, then keyed in a privacy code.
“I’m approaching the strange alien station we’ve called the Watchtower. All of us agree now that it was misnamed. This is no guard outpost, simply the sad remnants of an industrial facility that was damaged during a conflict that went nuclear. I can’t help but feel regret that all the effort and cost which went into establishing such an enterprise should fall victim to this primitive lack of emotional control. Although the Dyson aliens have accomplished so much, and I concede some of their technological accomplishments exceed ours, I hope they can still learn from the way our society resolves conflicts and disagreements.” That would go down well back home. Always make the audience feel slightly superior.
The course graphic inside his virtual vision showed him heading off to one side of the beacon. He corrected. Overcorrected. Then had to tip the joystick firmly the other way. This was exactly what his skill training memory instinctively warned him against. He just couldn’t integrate that knowledge at an autonomic reflex level. So he wobbled his way forward, gas burping from every nozzle of his maneuvering pack in a seemingly random pattern, and keeping a cautious eye on his relative velocity.
Francis Rawlins was easing her way in through the gap beside the beacon as he finally came to rest just above her. The other members of team C followed. Dudley looked around eagerly once he was inside, but the compartment was something of an anticlimax: a simple box of blue-gray metal, flooded with vibrant pools of light by the suit beams. Nothing to hint at alien-ness.
“Now we’re inside I can’t emphasize enough to use caution,” Francis said. “The Ops office is watching out for us individually, but they can’t compensate for every mistake. The only solution is, don’t make any. We’re not in a race, we’ll keep searching around until we’ve acquired the data which the captain needs, so don’t rush anything. Now, teams B, D, and E have already explored down to level five, and radially they went as far as sections A3 and A8 on your charts. They’ve placed comrelays to cover that area, but when you go beyond them you need to set up your own, these walls are an effective block to our signals. Do not allow any communications dead zones, especially in the connecting tunnels. We stay in contact the whole time, understood? Okay, you’ve got your assignments. Move out.”