Jack McDevitt - SEEKER

It’s currently headed outward from the sun and will reach aphelion at seven point two AUs.”

“Sounds like a comet,” said Alex.

“Albedo’s not right.” We were belting down, getting ready to make the jump. “It looks as if it would require approximately eighty years to complete an orbit.”

Alex finished the coffee he’d been drinking and put the cup in the holder.

“It appears to be metal. Ninety-eight percent probability.”

The jump got us within two days’ travel time, and after about four hours the scopes gave us our first real look at the object. It was, indeed, a derelict. Once we’d established that, Alex beamed. Knew it all along.

It was in a slow tumble, and its exhaust tubes were pointed in the direction of one of the gas giants, which was only a few million kilometers away.

Six hours in, we were able to make out details, the streamlined body, thrusters, sensor mounts. Amidships, it carried the soaring eagle that we’d seen on the cup.

Seeker! “How about that?” said Alex. “But what the hell is it doing out here?”

At nine hours, we were able to make out its name, in the now-familiar English characters, on the hull.

As we drew closer, we became more aware of the sheer enormity of the vessel. It was the size of a small city. Eight giant thruster tubes aft, any one of which could have swallowed the Belle-Marie. Six levels of viewports. A hull that would have taken twenty minutes to circle on foot. An army of pods and antennas.

And“Uh-oh.”

Alex turned my way. “What is it, Chase?”

Two of the eight thruster tubes looked bent. They jutted at odd angles, off a few degrees from the others and from a line drawn down the center of the ship.

I’d seen pictures of the Crossmeer years before, after its jump engines exploded.

Everybody had died, because the blast had ripped holes in the ship and the air supply blew out before the hatches could close. The exhaust tubes had looked like these.

“They had an accident,” I said.

Alex turned back to the monitors. “Yes. That’s what it looks like.” He exhaled, and asked an odd question. “Do you think anybody might have survived?” He was speaking as though it had happened yesterday and there was still a chance to do a rescue. Being off-world can induce a sense of timelessness. Things don’t change much when you get away from wind and rain.

“It’s a big ship,” I said. “I don’t know. Depends on whether it got punctured in the wrong places.”

“Not a good way to go,” he said. “Out here.”

I didn’t think there was a good way to go, but I didn’t say anything.

It was hard to understand how the Seeker had come to be where it was. There was no habitable world in the system. What was it doing there? “It’s been a long time,” said Alex. “Maybe it just drifted in from somewhere else.”

“From where?”

“From wherever Margolia is.”

“The closest star is almost three light-years out. That’s way too far for just floating over.”

“Chase, we’re talking nine thousand years.”

“It’s too far. Under power, without jumping, it would need twenty-five thousand years to travel that kind of distance. At least.”

He shook his head. “Well, maybe they were in hyperspace. The engines blew, and the pilot pulled them out.” He looked the way he always does when confronted with a challenge. “That must be the way it happened.”

“I suppose that’s as good a guess as any. But it seems unlikely.”

There was nothing to be done until we got there, so Alex announced he was going back to his cabin. “Let me know if you see anything more.”

“Okay.”

“I have to get back to work.”

“What work?”

“The Blackmoor Medallions,” he said. “Looted during a civil disturbance three centuries ago on Morinda. Never seen since. They’d be worth millions.”

“You know where they are?” I said.

“I’m working on it.”

We pulled alongside, and even Belle was impressed by the size of the thing. The English symbols spelling out Seeker must have been twenty meters high. The ship was probably three times the volume of the Madrid, which was the biggest vessel currently in service.

The explosion had blown off large chunks of the after section. Several of the exhaust tube mounts had been mangled. A cluster of cables drifted out into the dark.

Belle took us within sixty meters of the damaged area, matched the roll and tumble of the derelict so that all motion relative to us stopped, and inched forward along the hull.

I looked through blast holes into the interior.

“What causes engines to blow?” asked Alex.

“Any of a number of things could happen,” I said. “This thing is pretty primitive, and they probably didn’t have a lot of the safeguards we do. It might have been the fuel.

Might have been an imbalance that can get created if you try to jump before the engines are ready.”

“It was the star drive?”

“Can’t tell. Not from here. And I don’t know enough about these things that I could be sure from the inside either. But that’s where I’d put my money.”

The ship was pocked and torn. Belle trained a light on it, and occasionally it illuminated the interior through one of the holes, but we still couldn’t make out much.

We nosed past cargo hatches. Glided along rows of viewports. Past long narrow wings and a sail whose sole function would have been to serve as a mount for attitude thrusters.

The English letters, black and unadorned, slipped past. I saw a spate of other phrases and a splash of color. A flag symbol. I didn’t recognize the flag. It seemed out of character for the Margolians, but I guessed it came with the ship.

Then we were passing the main airlocks. There were six of them. All sealed.

Finally, we approached the bow.

Alex pointed at an open hatch immediately to starboard. Maybe it was the way the Wescotts got in.

“Alongside,” I told Belle.

Attitude thrusters fired briefly, and we edged in close until I could almost have reached out and touched her.

I looked up at the sheer dark bulk of the thing, and found myself thinking about Delia Wescott, and I understood why she’d been frightened.

We suited up and went over. Alex likes to take charge in these situations, so he instructed me that we were to stay together at all times. He’s entertaining when he gets like that. I’m not sure how much help he’d be if there were a real emergency, but it’s always nice to have a protective male around.

The hatch had not been opened. It was cut. Apparently the Wescotts had been unable to get the manual release to work. But after so much time, I’d have been surprised if anything worked.

They’d also taken down the inner airlock door. We looked through it into a narrow chamber. A bench was fastened to the deck. Bulkheads were lined with cabinets.

There was no gravity, of course. We were getting around in grip shoes.

Alex played his wrist lamp around the chamber, strolled over to a bank of cabinets, and tried to open one. But they were all warped. Frozen.

We moved out into a passageway. It had three doors on either side. Then it connected with a cross corridor with more doors. None of them would open.

Alex picked one arbitrarily and I used a laser to cut it down. When I pulled it clear of the frame, I saw movement inside. Alex jumped. I guess I did, too.

It was drifting debris, spread all over the room, and it took us several minutes to realize that it included a cadaver. Or what remained of one. We watched the pieces climb one bulkhead and start across the overhead as the ship rolled.

There wasn’t enough left to know whether it had been a man or woman, or for that matter adult or child. We stood for a long minute, trying to ignore it, shining the lamps around the room. Other objects were afloat, bits of plastic, pieces of furniture, a comb, shreds of God knew what.