'Make connection and stand by,' he told the radio operator, then he turned the knob.
It's a fascinating thing to watch coupling-magnets come to life, so to speak. One moment they are drifting idly along, the next they appear to awake and suddenly discover a purpose. They veer a little and surge gently forward towards the nearest mass of metal while the looping lines which hold them gradually straighten out. The Captain gave them a minute's power to pull them towards the derelict, and then shut off and waited. As the first magnet made gentle contact with the hull he switched on again and it glued itself to the metal side. A moment later the second magnet gripped.
'Make the claim,' he told the operator.
Two space-suited figures left our ship, pulling themselves along the magnet cables to the other at great speed. The Captain took up a micro-wave headset and listened. One of the men in space-suits reached the wreck and pushed himself off the magnet so that he floated round to her bow.
'Excelsis,' said the Captain suddenly. 'Tell the Register Office.'
'Aye, aye, sir,' acknowledged the operator.
'Haul in,' ordered the Captain, putting down the microwave set.
A small motor began to whirr and the cables between the two ships started to tighten.
'Cut,' said Captain Belford as we started to drift together.
We waited while the two ships slowly approached one another.
It began to be possible to get a better idea of the Excelsis's size. The proportion of our space-suited men against her had told us she was big, but we did not fully realise how big until we came closer alongside. She'd have made ten of the old Dido.
'Excelsis, that'll be a Three Star ship,' murmured the Captain. 'I seem to remember something about her, but I can't recall it at the moment.'
'Third of three sister ships on the Three Star service, sir,' said the First Officer. 'Supposed to be the last word in safety in their day. She and the Isis were both lost. The other, the Artemis, was broken up several years ago. I'm afraid I can't remember anything else offhand. It'll be in the book, sir.'
'Never mind, we'll know soon enough.'
A minute or two later the operator announced:
'Claim of Captain Belford of the Dido, to salvage of Excelsis, Captain Whitter, registered and approved subject to confirmation. Work may proceed. Excelsis, 250 tubes, lost in space 12 years ago, homeward bound from Ganymede. Reported serious damage to propeller tubes. Unnavigable. Search vessels unable to find her. 60 passengers. 20 officers and crew, mixed cargo. Gold, patchatal oil, tillfer fibre, ganywood, 3 bags of mail. Property of Plume Line, successors to Three Star Line, yards at Lough Swilly, Ireland.'
The Captain looked half-elated, half-dubious as he listened to the radio operator's message. If the cargo mentioned was in any quantity it looked as if we should net something like a record salvage payment—if we could get it home.
'Gold,' he muttered, 'and ganywood. The two heaviest things they could find. There's some sense in ganywood, at least it's useful. But gold, what's the good of that? You can't use it for anything.'
'Except money.' I said.
He looked at me contemptuously.
'Nobody's used gold as money for God knows how long. You never see it except in jewellery. It's pretty near useless, and yet they're forever digging it out of mines all over the system. And what for? Just to take it to Earth and bury it somewhere where no one ever sees it. Then they all look bright and pleased and say their credit's gone up. Damned nonsense, I call it. Trying to get gold from one planet to another has cost more lives and money than anything else in spacework.'
'And yet,' said I, 'if everybody wants it, that means it has a value.'
'Fictitious value,' he snorted.
'Fictitious or not, it'll mean a lot to you and to us if we get it back all right,' I said.
'Maybe, but I still say it's not worth the fuss they make about it. It might as well be lying about out there,'—he pointed to the starry blackness beyond the window—'just floating around in space as locked up in a vault on Earth. If I had my way that's where it would be, and a lot of good space sailors who are going to lose their lives handling it would keep them. There's some heavy stuff you've got to handle, but it's not gold.'
All the time he was talking the two ships were slowly coming together. I was paying more attention to them than I was to the Captain. The 'gold menace' was one of his hobby-horses. I'd heard it all before and a lot more. And however he felt about it the fact remained that he'd do his damnedest to get it safely to Earth and we should all be rewarded for assisting him.
As the two ships gently touched he resumed his official manner.
'Mr. Fearon, you will attend to the grappling and conduct a preliminary survey of the ship, please.'
'Aye, aye, sir,' I said.
I had put on my space-suit in readiness. It did not take long to add the helmet and with two of the crew I passed out of the air-lock.
We three, with the help of the two men already on the Excelsis, manoeuvred with cables until we had brought the two locks conveniently close, and then made fast. I reported over the micro-wave, there came a gentle flare from the Dido's stern tubes, and as the two ships started to move we turned our attention to examining our capture.
I find that Worldsmen often find it difficult to grasp space conditions, so it may help if I explain a little.
It must be understood that a derelict in space is never stationary. Very often she is travelling at a considerable speed and quite possibly in an altogether different direction from the one the salvage ship intends her to take. The first thing to be done after making fast is therefore to ease her gently on to the right course, for it is easy to see that as long as she is allowed to continue on her own, time which cannot be made up is being wasted.
It is a ticklish bit of work this, for, however strong your steel coupling hawsers, the strain must come on them gradually and not too intensely at any time. Set on the right course the tug begins to apply a cautious acceleration, perhaps of not more than a few feet per second, if a big ship is in tow. This means time is being saved, but causes no inconvenience to men working on the derelict. In space there is no subjective difference between travelling at seven miles a second or at one mile an hour; acceleration is what you feel and an increase of a few feet per second is negligible in practice.
The only risk is of a man losing his hold and being left behind, and that is slight; for one thing he should be using a life-line, but even if he is not, the recoil from a shot or two with a hand pistol should easily enable him to catch up.
When we saw the rockets start, all five of us clipped lifelines to our belts and began our preliminary survey, reporting back on the micro-wave as we went.
It was clear enough pretty quickly what had happened. Something had struck the Excelsis's tail, carrying away three quarters of her tubes and mangling the rest. The stern was just a mess but the rest of her seemed intact. I heard the Captain grunt as I reported, and though he made no comment I knew what he was thinking.
It was going to be a nasty business. It is better, far, far better to find a derelict which has been finished off quickly. When a meteorite has knocked away part of the habitable quarters, or when it has gone right through and the air has rushed out, you know it was all over quickly. Death is never too good to look at, though if it's sudden it's usually pretty clean. But when the living quarters are undamaged and the people in them have had to wait and see death come slowly, you'll find that some pretty horrible things have happened before the end. I could tell you some things—but I shan't: I don't care to think of them even now.