“Hell,” Turtle says. “It shouldn’t be here at all. Space debris should’ve pulverized it. That’s too much time. Too much distance.”
“So what’s it doing here?” Karl asked.
I shrug for the third and last time. “Let’s see if we can find out.”
They don’t rest. They’re as obsessed with the readouts as I’ve been. They study time and distance and drift, forgetting the weirdness inside the hole. I’m the one who focuses on that.
I don’t learn much. We need more information—we revisit the probe twice while looking for another way into the ship—and even then, we don’t get a lot of new information.
Either the barrier is new technology or it is very old technology, technology that has been lost. So much technology has been lost in the thousands of years since this ship was built.
It seems like humans constantly have to reinvent everything.
Six dives later and we still haven’t found a way inside the ship. Six dives, and no new information. Six dives, and my biggest problem is Squishy.
She has become angrier and angrier as the dives continue. I’ve brought her along on the seventh dive to man the skip with me, so that we can talk.
Junior and Jypé are the divers. They’re exploring what I consider to be the top of the ship, even though I’m only guessing. They’re going over the surface centimeter by centimeter, exploring each part of it, looking for a weakness that we can exploit.
I monitor their equipment using the skip’s computer, and I monitor them with my eyes, watching the tiny figures move along the narrow blackness of the skip itself.
Squishy stands beside me, at military attention, her hands folded behind her back.
She knows she’s been brought for conversation only; she’s punishing me by refusing to speak until I broach the subject first.
Finally, when J&J are past the dangerous links between two sections of the ship, I mimic Squishy’s posture—hands behind my back, shoulders straight, legs slightly spread.
“What’s making you so angry?” I ask.
She stares at the team on top of the wreck. Her face is a smooth reproach to my lack of attention; the monitor on board the skip should always pay attention to the divers.
I taught her that. I believe that. Yet here I am, reproaching another person while the divers work the wreck.
“Squishy?” I ask.
She isn’t answering me. Just watching, with that implacable expression.
“You’ve had as many dives as everyone else,” I say. “I’ve never questioned your work, yet your mood has been foul, and it seems to be directed at me. Do we have an issue I don’t know about?”
Finally she turns, and the move is as military as the stance was. Her eyes narrow.
“You could’ve told us this was a Dignity Vessel,” she says.
My breath catches. She agrees with my research. I don’t understand why that makes her angry.
“I could’ve,” I say. “But I feel better that you came to your own conclusion.”
“I’ve known it since the first dive,” she says. “I wanted you to tell them. You didn’t. They’re still wasting time trying to figure out what they have here.”
“What they have here is an anomaly,” I say, “something that makes no sense and can’t be here.”
“Something dangerous.” She crosses her arms. “Dignity Vessels were used in wartime.”
“I know the legends.” I glance at the wreck, then at the handheld readout. J&J are working something that might be a hatch.
“A lot of wartimes,” she says, “over many centuries, from what historians have found out.”
“But never out here,” I say.
And she concedes. “Never out here.”
“So what are you so concerned about?”
“By not telling us what it is, we can’t prepare,” she says. “What if there’re weapons or explosives or something else—”
“Like that barrier?” I ask.
Her lips thin.
“We’ve worked unknown wrecks before, you and me, together.”
She shrugs. “But they’re of a type. We know the history, we know the vessels, we know the capabilities. We don’t know this at all. No one really knows what these ancient ships were capable of. It’s something that shouldn’t be here.”
“A mystery,” I say.
“A dangerous one.”
“Hey!” Junior’s voice is tinny and small. “We got it open! We’re going in.”
Squishy and I turn toward the sound. I can’t see either man on the wreck itself. The handheld’s imagery is shaky.
I press the comm, hoping they can still hear me. “Probe first. Remember that barrier.”
But they don’t answer, and I know why not. I wouldn’t either in their situation. They’re pretending they don’t hear. They want to be the first inside, the first to learn the secrets of the wreck.
The handheld moves inside the darkness. I see four tiny lights—Jypé’s glove lights—and I see the same particles I saw before, on the first images from the earliest probe.
Then the handheld goes dark. We were going to have to adjust it to transmit through the metal of the wreck.
“I don’t like this,” Squishy says.
I’ve never liked any time I was out of sight and communication with the team.
We stare at the wreck as if it can give us answers. It’s big and dark, a blob against our screen. Squishy actually goes to the portals and looks, as if she can see more through them than she can through the miracle of science.
But she doesn’t. And the handheld doesn’t wink on.
On my screen, the counter ticks away the minutes.
Our argument isn’t forgotten, but it’s on hold as the first members of our little unit vanish inside.
After thirty-five minutes—fifteen of them inside (Jypé has rigorously stuck to the schedule on each of his dives, something which has impressed me)—I start to get nervous.
I hate the last five minutes of waiting. I hate it even more when the waiting goes on too long, when someone doesn’t follow the timetable I’ve devised.
Squishy, who’s never been in the skip with me, is pacing. She doesn’t say any more—not about danger, not about the way I’m running this little trip, not about the wreck itself.
I watch her as she moves, all grace and form, just like she’s always been. She’s never been on a real mystery run. She’s done dangerous ones—maybe two hundred deep space dives into wrecks that a lot of divers, even the most greedy, would never touch.
But she’s always known what she’s diving into, and why it’s where it is.
Not only are we uncertain as to whether or not this is an authentic Dignity Vessel (and really, how can it be?), we also don’t know why it’s here, how it came here, or what its cargo was. We have no idea what its mission was either—if, indeed, it had a mission at all.
37:49
Squishy’s stopped pacing. She looks out the portals again, as if the view has changed. It hasn’t.
“You’re afraid, aren’t you?” I ask. “That’s the bottom line, isn’t it? This is the first time in years that you’ve been afraid.”
She stops, stares at me as if I’m a creature she’s never seen before, and then frowns.
“Aren’t you?” she asks.
I shake my head.
The handheld springs to life, images bouncy and grainy on the corner of my screen. My stomach unclenches. I’ve been breathing shallowly and not even realizing it.
Maybe I am afraid, just a little.
But not of the wreck. The wreck is a curiosity, a project, a conundrum no one else has faced before.
I’m afraid of deep space itself, of the vastness of it. It’s inexplicable to me, filled with not just one mystery, but millions, and all of them waiting to be solved.
A crackle, then a voice—Jypé’s.