Judith Merril - The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 7

Gerald’s a good lad though. He has the authentic Troon yen for space without being much of a chancer; besides, Psyche isn’t too far from the inner rim of the orbit — not nearly the approach problem Ceres is, for instance — what’s more, he’d done it several times before.

Well, he got into the Belt, and jockeyed and fiddled and niggled his way until he was about three hundred miles out from Psyche and getting ready to come in. Perhaps he’d got a bit careless by then; in any case he’d not be expecting to find anything in orbit around the asteroid. But that’s just what he did find — the hard way…

There was a crash which made the whole ship ring round him and his crew as if they were in an enormous bell. It’s about the nastiest — and very likely to be the last — sound a spaceman can ever hear. This time, however, their luck was in. They discovered that as they crowded to watch the indicator dials. Nothing vital had been hit.

Gerald turned over the controls to his First, and he and the engineer, Steve, pulled spacesuits out of the locker. When the airlock opened they hitched their safety-lines on the spring hooks, and slid their way aft along the hull on magnetic soles. It was soon clear that the damage was not on the airlock side, and they worked round the curve of the hull.

One thing was evident right away — that it had hit with no great force. If it had, it would have gone right through and out the other side, for the hold of a freighter is little more than a single-walled cylinder: there is no need for it to be more, it doesn’t have to conserve warmth, nor contain air, nor to resist the friction of an atmosphere, nor does it have to contend with any more gravitational pull than that of the moon; it is only in the living-quarters that there have to be the complexities necessary to sustain life.

Another, which was immediately clear, was that this was not the only misadventure that had befallen the small ship. Something had, at some time, sliced off most of its after part, carrying away not only the driving tubes but the mixing-chambers as well, and leaving it hopelessly disabled.

Shuffling round the wreckage to inspect it, Gerald found no entrance. It was thoroughly jammed into the hole it had made, and its airlock must lie forward, somewhere inside the freighter. He sent Steve back for a cutter and for a key that would get them into the hold. While he waited he spoke, through his helmet radio to the operator in the Celestis’s living-quarters, and explained the situation. He added:

“Can you raise the moon-station just now, Jake? I’d better make a report.”

“Strong and clear, Cap’n.”

“Good. Tell them to put me on to the Duty Officer, will you.”

He heard Jake open up and call. There was a pause while the waves crossed and recrossed the millions of miles between them, then a voice:

“Hullo Celestis! Hullo Celestis! Moon-station responding. Go ahead, Jake. Over I”

Gerald waited out the exchange patiently. In due course another voice spoke.

“Hullo Celestis! Moon-station Duty Officer speaking. Give your location and go ahead.”

“Hullo, Charles. This is Gerald Troon calling from Celestis now in orbit about Psyche. Approximately three-twenty miles altitude. I am notifying damage by collision. No harm to personnel. Not repeat not in danger. Damage appears to be confined to empty hold-section. Cause of damage…” He went on to give particulars, and concluded: “I am about to investigate. Will report further. Please keep the link open. Over!”

The engineer returned, floating a self-powered cutter with him on a short safety-cord, and holding the key which would screw back the bolts of the hold’s entrance-port. Gerald took the key, inserted it in the hole beside the door, and inserted his legs into the two staples that would give him the purchase to wind it.

The moon man’s voice came again.

“Hullo, Ticker. Understand no immediate danger. But don’t go taking any chances, boy. Can you identify the derelict?”

“Repeat no danger,” Troon told him. “Plumb lucky. If she’d hit six feet further forward we’d have had real trouble. I have now opened small door of the hold, and am going in to examine the forepart of the derelict. Will try to identify it.”

The cavernous darkness of the hold made it necessary for them to switch on their helmet lights. They could now see the front part Of the derelict; it took up about half the space there was. The ship had punched through the wall, turning back the tough alloy in curled petals, as though it had been tinplate. She had come to rest with her nose a bare couple of feet short of the opposite side. Steve pointed to a ragged hole, some five or six inches across, about halfway along the embedded section. It had a nasty significance that caused Gerald to nod somberly.

He shuffled to the ship, and on to its curving side. He found the airlock on the top, as it lay in the Celestis, and tried the winding key. He pulled it out again.

“Calling you, Charles,” he said. “No identifying marks on the derelict. She’s not space-built — that is, she could be used in atmosphere. Oldish pattern — well, must be — she’s pre the standardization of winding keys, so that takes us back a bit. Maximum external diameter, say, twelve feet Length unknown — can’t say how much after part there was before it was knocked off. She’s been holed forward, too. Looks like a small meteorite, about five inches. At speed, I’d say. Just a minute…Yes, clean through and out, with a pretty small exit hole. Can’t open the airlock without making a new key. Quicker to cut our way in. Over!”

He shuffled back, and played his light through the small meteor hole. His helmet prevented him getting his face close enough to see anything but a small part of the opposite wall, with a corresponding hole in it.

“Easiest way is to enlarge this, Steve,” he suggested.

The engineer nodded. He brought his cutter to bear, switched it on and began to carve from the edge of the hole.

“Not much good, Ticker,” came the voice from the moon. “The bit you gave could apply to any one of four ships.”

“Patience, dear Charles, while Steve does his bit of fancy-work with the cutter,” Troon told him.

It took twenty minutes to complete the cut through the double hull. Steve switched off, gave a tug with his left hand, and the joined, inner and outer, circles of metal floated away.

“Celestis calling moon. I am about to go into the derelict, Charles. Keep open.” Troon said.

He bent down, took hold of the sides of the cut, kicked his magnetic soles free of contact, and gave a light pull which took him floating head-first through the hole in the manner of an underwater swimmer. Presently his voice came again, with a different tone:

“I say, Charles, there are three men in here. All in spacesuits — old-time spacesuits. Two of them are belted on to their bunks. The other one is… Oh, his leg’s gone. The meteorite must have taken it off…. There’s a queer— Oh God, it’s his blood frozen into a solid ball…!”

After a minute or so he went on: “I’ve found the log. Can’t handle it in these gloves, though. I’ll take it aboard, and let you have particulars. The two fellows on the bunks seem to be quite intact — their suits, I mean. Their helmets have those curved strip-windows so I can’t see much of their faces. Must’ve— That’s odd…. Each of them has a sort of little book attached by a wire to the suit fastener. On the cover it has: ‘Danger — Perigroso’ in red, and underneath: ‘Do not remove suit — Read instructions within,’ repeated in Portuguese. Then: ‘Hapson Survival System.’ What would all that mean, Charles? Over!”