She does. The hands reappear, one still braced on the ship’s side.
“We’re probing,” he says. “Then we’re leaving.”
“Who put you in charge?” she grumbles, but she follows him to that hidden side of the ship. I see only their limbs as they move along the exterior—the human limbs against the pits and the dents and the small holes punched by space debris. Shards of protruding metal near rounded gashes beside pristine swatches that still shine in the thin light from Turtle’s headgear.
I want to be with them, clinging to the wreck, looking at each mark, trying to figure out when it came, how it happened, what it means.
But all I can do is watch.
The probe makes it through sixteen meters of stuff before it doesn’t move any farther. Karl tries to tug it out, but the probe is stuck, just like my team would’ve been if they’d gone in without it.
They return, forty-two minutes into the mission, feeling defeated.
I’m elated. They’ve gotten farther than I ever expected.
We take the probe readouts back to the Business, over the protests of the team. They want to recharge and clean out the breathers and dive again, but I won’t let them. That’s another rule I have to remind them of—only one dive per twenty-four hour period. There are too many unknowns in our work; it’s essential that we have time to rest.
All of us get too enthusiastic about our dives—we take chances we shouldn’t. Sleep, relaxation, downtime all prevent the kind of haste that gets divers killed.
Once we’re in the Business, I download the probe readouts, along with the readings from the suits, the gloves, and the handheld. Everyone gathers in the lounge. I have three-D holotech in there, which’ll allow us all to get a sense of the wreck.
As I’m sorting through the material, thinking of how to present it (handheld first? Overview? A short lecture?), the entire group arrives. Turtle’s taken a shower. Her hair’s wet, and she looks tired. She’d sworn to me she hadn’t been stressed out there, but her eyes tell me otherwise. She’s exhausted.
Squishy follows, looking somber. Jypé and Junior are already there, in the best seats. They’ve been watching me set up. Only Karl is late. When he arrives—also looking tired—Squishy stops him at the door.
“Turtle says it’s old.”
Turtle shoots Squishy an angry look.
“She won’t say anything else.” Squishy glances at me as if it’s my fault. Only I didn’t swear the first team to secrecy about the run. That was their choice.
“It’s old,” Karl says, and squeezes by her.
“She’s says it’s weird-old.”
Karl looks at me now. His angular face seems even bonier. He seems to be asking me silently if he can talk.
I continue setting up.
Karl sighs, then says, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
No one else asks a question. They wait for me. I start with the images the skip’s computer downloaded, then add the handheld material. I’ve finally decided to save the suit readouts for last. I might be the only one who cares about the metal composition, the exterior hull temperature, and the number of rivets lining the hatch.
The group watches in silence as the wreck appears, watches intently as the skip’s images show a tiny Turtle and Karl slid across the guideline.
The group listens to the arguments, and Jypé nods when Karl makes his unilateral decision to use the probe. The nod reassures me. Jypé is as practical as I’d hoped he’d be.
I move to the probe footage next. I haven’t previewed it. We’ve all seen probe footage before, so we ignore the grainy picture, the thin light, and the darkness beyond.
The probe doesn’t examine so much as explore: its job is to go as far inside as possible, to see if that hole provides an easy entrance into the wreck.
It looks so easy for ten meters—nothing along the edges, just light and darkness and weird particles getting disturbed by our movements.
Then the hole narrows and we can see the walls as large shapes all around the probe. The hole narrows more, and the walls become visible in the light—a shinier metal, one less damaged by space debris. The particles thin out too.
Finally a wall looms ahead. The hole continues, so small that it seems like the probe can continue. The probe actually sends a laser pulse, and gets back a measurement: the hole is six centimeters in diameter, more than enough for the equipment to go through.
But when the probe reaches that narrow point, it slams into a barrier. The barrier isn’t visible. The probe runs several more readouts, all of them denying that the barrier is there.
Then there’s a registered tug on the line: Karl trying to get the probe out. Several more tugs later, Karl and Turtle decide the probe’s stuck. They take even more readouts, and then shut it down, planning to use it later.
The readouts tell us nothing except that the hole continues, six centimeters in diameter, for another two meters.
“What the hell do you think that is?” Junior asks. His voice hasn’t finished its change yet, even though both Jypé and Junior swear he’s over eighteen.
“Could be some kind of forcefield,” Squishy says.
“In a vessel that old?” Turtle asks. “Not likely.”
“How old is that?” Squishy’s entire body is tense. It’s clear now that she and Turtle have been fighting.
“How old is that, Boss?” Turtle asks me.
They all look at me. They know I have an idea. They know age is one of the reasons they’re here.
I shrug. “That’s one of the things we’re going to confirm.”
“Confirm.” Karl catches the word. “Confirm what? What do you know that we don’t?”
“Let’s run the readouts before I answer that,” I say.
“No.” Squishy crosses her arms. “Tell us.”
Turtle gets up. She pushes two icons on the console beside me, and the suits’ technical readouts come up. She flashes forward, through numbers and diagrams and chemical symbols to the conclusions.
“Over five thousand years old.” Turtle doesn’t look at Squishy. “That’s what the boss isn’t telling us. This wreck is human-made, and it’s been here longer than humans have been in this section of space.”
Karl stares at it.
Squishy shakes her head. “Not possible. Nothing human-made would’ve survived to make it this far out. Too many gravity wells, too much debris.”
“Five thousand years,” Jypé says.
I let them talk. In their voices, in their argument, I hear the same argument that went through my head when I got my first readouts about the wreck.
It’s Junior that stops the discussion. In his half-tenor, half-baritone way, he says, “C’mon, gang, think a little. That’s why the boss brought us out here. To confirm her suspicions.”
“Or not,” I say.
Everyone looks at me as if they’ve just remembered I’m there.
“Wouldn’t it be better if we knew your suspicions?” Squishy asks.
Karl is watching me, eyes slitted. It’s as if he’s seeing me for the first time.
“No, it wouldn’t be better.” I speak softly. I make sure to have eye contact with each of them before I continue. “I don’t want you to use my scholarship—or lack thereof—as the basis for your assumptions.”
“So should we discuss this with each other?” Squishy’s using that snide tone with me now. I don’t know what has her so upset, but I’m going to have to find out. If she doesn’t calm down, she’s not going near the wreck.
“Sure,” I say.
“All right.” She leans back, staring at the readouts still floating before us. “If this thing is five thousand years old, human-made, and somehow it came to this spot at this time, then it can’t have a forcefield.”
“Or fake readouts like the probe found,” Jypé says.