I was twenty-four when I got a berth as Second Officer under Captain Belford on the old Dido. And right now I'll tell you there wasn't a better man sailing the system; whatever they said about him afterwards. They didn't know him, most of 'em; I did. And when you've been a year in a space-ship with a man there's not much you don't know about him. What happened to him was just a bit of bad luck, such as might have happened to any man on the same job.
He was a big man, such as you don't often find in spaceships; well over six foot, big shouldered, strong as a couple of the rest of us; but he was worth his extra weight, every ounce of it, and in spite of it he could move as fast and sure as a cat. He'd a record as clean as a baby's. If he hadn't he'd not have been there because it cost the Company a pretty penny getting space-suits and suchlike specially made for him.
The Company was the R.R.R.; gone long ago now but in those days it meant something—Red Ribbon Rocketlines— and the Dido was a queer old tub that wouldn't even get a spaceworthiness certificate nowadays. She wasn't on the regular lines, never had been. She was built as a salvage ship, and handy for the job she was. In those days nearly all the regular rocket lines ran salvage ships. It was a profitable sideline, not only for getting your own ships out of trouble, but because there were plenty of wrecks drifting about. Ships weren't safe the way they are now. All manner of things could happen to them and, apart from the danger to liners, it wasn't sense to leave valuable ships and cargoes hanging around out there if there was any way of getting them back.
Of course, there wasn't the organisation about it that there is today. That didn't happen till the Dutch got their salvage and towing service fixed—funny, isn't it, how they developed the best space tugs, just as they did the best sea-going tugs?— but there was a lot of work done, a Central Salvage Register Office and all that. Trouble was rivalry between the lines. If we'd only co-operated then, maybe the Dutchmen would never have got a look in.
Well. I was telling you about the old Dido. I don't know why she was called Dido 'cept that the line named all its ships after women and would have them end in 'o,' which made the choice pretty narrow when you come to think of it—perhaps that's why they went out of business a few years later; couldn't find any more women ending in 'o,' so couldn't have any more ships. Anyway, she was a forty-eight tube ship, less than half the size of a modern Dutch tug, carrying eleven of us all told, well found and, for those days, not too tricky to handle. At least Captain Belford could handle her as well as they manage nowadays with all their modern improvements.
The First Officer was a man called Sinderton. He was a silent sort of chap but good at his job. The crew of eight were all experienced men—there was no room for greenhorns on a salvage ship.
The trip when the trouble occurred started as usual. We took off from the Caledonian Rocket Yard and called in at the Moon to refuel, the same way the tugs do nowadays—a tug, you know, still can't carry enough fuel to get her away from Earth and do her job in space without replenishing somewhere.
When that was done we set out on a course which paralleled but lay to one side of the traffic lane to Jupiter—or rather to the moons of Jupiter, for no one had at that time made a successful landing on the giant himself.
Life on a salvage ship consisted, and probably still does, of spells of complete inaction and rushes of exacting work with no telling how long each is likely to last. It was one of the harder things to get used to and one of the main reasons why a seasoned crew was necessary.
This time we began placidly enough. For over two weeks (Earth-time) we coasted along with the rocket tubes shut off; just being on hand if anyone should need us. But it seemed that nobody did. At regular intervals we would call up all our ships on the Company's lightband wave and ask how things were, and all of them would give us an okay. We began to wish something would happen—and when it did we should wish we had been left in peace. That's the way of it. But just at present nobody was burning out tubes, developing air leaks, getting holed by meteorites or doing any of the hundred and one inconvenient things they so often did do.
It was not until the sixteenth reckoned day that we got a message which started our tubes roaring again and sent us scurrying across space. The liner Sappho, homeward bound from Ganymede with a cargo of high-yield pitchblende had sighted a presumed derelict. It was a good, clear direction, giving the positioning of the derelict at the time and her speed and direction, with confidence. We acknowledged, altered course and started up in a few minutes.
Time meant a lot on such jobs. We had got to reach the derelict before anyone else spotted her. The ruling was that salvage rights could be claimed by the first ship to establish contact with the wreck. Immediately that was done, the office back on Earth was informed, the claim was then checked and registered, and an announcement of its validity broadcast. The principle seemed fair enough, though more than once two or even three salvage ships informed of the chance at more or less the same time had pelted across space, half-killing their crews with acceleration in their efforts to make the claim. On this occasion there was no one else in on it so far as we knew, but it was always risky to waste time.
Two days later, close on the position we had calculated the wreck to have reached, we were decelerating as violently as we had speeded up. Captain Belford was at the controls while the First Officer and I were swivelling telescopes from one point of light to another, desperately searching the star-pricked blackness for the one little gleam which was a rocket-ship. Of course, that was no way to find her, but there was just the several-millions-to-one chance that we might catch a glimpse of her: it is said to have been done once or twice.
Belford called Sinderton away from his telescope and handed over the controls to him. While we were still decelerating he set up the sensitive screens ready for use when we should come to a stop. On the screens, as you probably know, moving bodies trace lines of light and though all the bodies in the heavens are moving, those which are closest appear to travel fastest. In our position there could be nothing nearer than the derelict—except the unlikely presence of a second derelict—so that it was necessary for us to scan each section of space for the fastest moving line of light. If we could find it among the rest—no easy task in itself—we should have found the ship. Well, we did: it took us a good twelve hours of screen studying before we located her, but that wasn't bad. It might easily have taken three days or more. I've known it do that.
Chapter Two
WRECK OF A TREASURE SHIP
As soon as we'd made certain of the derelict we turned and steadied the Dido on her side tubes, then one brief burst on the main propeller tubes was enough to send us sliding in her direction. As we closed, another short burst on the forward rockets brought us to rest within a couple of hundred yards of her. (When I say 'brought us to rest' I use the term figuratively, of course, to mean that we and she were travelling in the same direction at the same speed.)
Captain Belford picked up his telephone and spoke to two men already wearing space-suits and waiting in the air-lock.
'All right. Let 'em go,' he said.
We watched from the windows as the men heaved out an electro-magnet. We couldn't see the men, of course, but we saw the magnet float out slowly and deliberately with its leads and cable looping behind it in slow-motion. A few seconds later another followed it. The Captain waited, hands on two rheostats, until they were over half-way to the wreck.