Except for the communication antennas, none of these differences showed on the outside. McAndrew and I knew that, but all the same we peered curiously at our display screens as the object ahead of the Merganser grew steadily from a tiny point of light almost lost against the background of stars, to a defined disk, and finally to a lumpy Christmas ornament adorned with the bright spikes and knobs of gantries, antennas, thrusters, exit locks, lifeboat davits, space pinnaces, and docking stations.
“This is the Merganser, at eighteen kilometers and closing.” I sent the signal, wondering why the Ark ahead had stopped broadcasting its Mayday. “Are you receiving us?”
I hardly expected an answer, so the woman’s voice that replied within seconds was a surprise.
“We are — receiving — your messages,” she said. Her speech was jerky, as though she was hard-pressed to force out each word. “We need your — assistance. Urgently. Approach — this world — and — come aboard.”
McAndrew leaned across and turned off the microphone. “Damn it, Jeanie, what are we going to do? They think we can help them, and we can’t. This ship doesn’t have the resources.”
“We knew that before we started,” I said. “Mac, the only thing we can do is find out what’s wrong, and send a message back to Director Rumford. He’ll have to take it from there.”
I turned the microphone back on. “The Merganser is a small experimental ship. We can’t do much to help. What sort of assistance do you need?”
The woman said again, just as though she had not heard me, “We need — your — urgent assistance. Approach — and come aboard. An entry port is — already — open. Proceed through to the — interior.”
We had been closing steadily as we spoke until the Ark loomed to fill the sky ahead. The blue-white glare of the Cassiopeia supernova, far brighter in this location than our own diminished Sun, threw hard shadows on the external surface of the converted asteroid. I could see the trusses of each individual gantry and the lattice work of the robot arms that handled external cargo loads. An entry lock formed a dark well next to one giant manipulator.
I stopped the Merganser two kilometers short of the Ark. “This is as far as we go.”
“Jeanie!” He was outraged. “We can’t find out what their trouble is unless they tell us, and they don’t seem able to. We have to go inside. There’s no possible danger. None of the Arks had a weapons system.”
“I know that.” I wondered why I was feeling uneasy, and relented. After all, even if I were the captain this had been his idea and it was really his expedition. “All right. We can go closer if we use suits. But the ship stays here.”
“Sure.” McAndrew was already moving across to the locker. By the time that I had sent word back to the Institute giving our current location and status, he was suited up and in the air lock.
“Go slow, Mac,” I said. “There’s no hurry. Don’t go outside without me!”
He took no notice. As I say, he has never learned the meaning of the word restraint. The air lock was cycling before I had my suit out of the locker.
I watched McAndrew as I removed my loose outer clothing and slipped the suit over my legs and lower body. He was outside, and moving toward the Ark. I was glad to see how slowly he was taking it. I could be in my own suit, through the lock, and catch up with him well before he reached the Ark.
In the final moment before I placed my suit helmet in position, I noticed something off toward the left-hand limb of the Ark. It was shaped like a crumpled and deformed space pinnace. Instead of hanging in the usual davits it sat between the metal jaws of a cargo manipulator.
“Mac, take a look on the Ark at about ten o’clock.” I spoke over my suit’s radio link. “See it? Looks like a lifeboat. Head over there, and I’ll follow you.”
I set the Merganser to hold position a steady two kilometers from the Ark and headed for the air lock. It was long experience, not intelligence or sense of foreboding, that led me to tuck a power laser into a pocket on my suit. Once outside, I found myself doing what I had told McAndrew not to do — hurrying.
As I thought, it was a lifeboat. McAndrew turned as I came closer. I could not see his face behind the visor, but his voice was unsteady.
“Take a look through the ports, Jeanie. There’s been a terrible accident here.”
Rather than doing what he suggested I moved along to the middle of the lifeboat. It had been torn open by the jaws of the cargo manipulator, which still held it. I could enter the little ship through a great two-meter gash in the hull.
The bodies had been there for a long time; twenty-eight of them, dry corpses desiccated by years of exposure to vacuum. Not one had on a space suit.
“They must have been trying to go and get help,” McAndrew muttered. He had entered the lifeboat right behind me. “They lost control before they were even on their way, and ran into the cargo manipulator.”
“It looks that way.” I was puzzled and disturbed. Even an inexperienced pilot would know not to turn on the engines until the lifeboat had drifted well clear of the Ark. Otherwise, you would endanger the Ark as well as yourselves. Only the Amish, after a lifetime of shunning all modern mechanical devices, would make such a basic and fatal blunder.
But the Amish, more than anyone else, would not have abandoned the bodies of their dead. They would have recovered them and provided appropriate space burial. If they had not, that meant they could not. For many years — how old were those freeze-dried corpses? — the surviving Amish must have been confined to the body of the Ark and unable to venture into space.
That had me equally confused. Every Ark carried hundreds of space suits. If the Amish were not able to come outside, then how could McAndrew and I go in? Approach, the woman said, and come aboard. An entry port is already open. And it was. We had seen it, standing wide next to another of the manipulators.
McAndrew went on, “The accident was unlucky, and not just for them. It was unlucky for everyone else on the Ark, too.”
He was leaving the lifeboat and heading on toward the gaping lock. I followed, more slowly. A lifeboat was meant for use close to a planet. What dreadful danger would make you launch one so far away from any world, where the chance of survival was negligible? One basic question was unanswered, despite our questions to our female contact: What had gone wrong?
The Amish disdained some forms of technology, but they were hard-working and hard-headed people. Their Ark, more than any other, had been designed to survive and operate using minimal resources. But more and more I had the feeling — a ridiculous feeling, given that I had talked to someone on the Ark within the past hour — that the structure in front of me was a dead hulk.
McAndrew was already inside the lock, using his suit lights because the Cassiopeia supernova no longer provided illumination. Following, I saw that the inner door was also open. It suggested that the whole corridor beyond was airless.
I was watching McAndrew, otherwise I might not have caught it. On the wall of the corridor, above him and to his right, a small monitor camera began turning to track his movements. I switched my suit from local to general circuit. What I said would be picked up at the Merganser, and rebroadcast back to the Ark.
“I see that you are following our progress. Where are you inside the Ark? And what kind of trouble are you in?”
A moment of silence, and then the woman’s voice again. “We need — assistance. Proceed as — you are — doing. The corridor will lead — you — to us.”
No fluency. Instead, the strained precision and hesitations of someone speaking a foreign language. I looked around and up. I had noticed only one monitor camera, but now that I was seeking them I saw that they were everywhere on the walls and ceiling. Floor, walls, and ceiling also held pressure pads every few yards, to register any slight contact that might take place in the negligible gravity of the Ark. Ahead of McAndrew, another door stood cracked open just a fraction. As he moved toward it, the hatch smoothly slid wide to reveal a chamber beyond as dark, airless and empty as space itself.