Майкл Бишоп - The Final Frontier - Stories of Exploring Space, Colonizing the Universe, and First Contact

I let Turtle pass me. She goes back, using the same push-off points as before. As she does that, I realize she’s marked them somehow, probably with something her suit can pick up. My equipment’s not that sophisticated, but I’m glad hers is. We need that kind of expertise inside this wreck. It might take us weeks just to map the space, and we can expect each other to remember each and every safe touch spot because of it.

When we get back to the skip and I drop my helmet, Squishy glares at me.

“You had the gids,” she says.

“Normal excitement,” I say.

She shakes her head. “I see this coming back the next time, and you’re grounded.”

I nod, but know she can’t ground me without my permission. It’s my ship, my wreck, my job. I’ll do what I want.

I take off the suit, indulge in some relaxation while Squishy pilots. We didn’t get much, Turtle and I, just a few more meters of corridor mapped, but it feels like we’d discovered a whole new world.

Maybe that is the gids, I don’t know. But I don’t think so. I think it’s just the reaction of an addict who returns to her addiction—an elation so great that she needs to do something with it besides acknowledge it.

And this wreck. This wreck has so many possibilities.

Only I can’t discuss them on the skip, not with Squishy at the helm and Turtle across from me. Squishy hates this project, and Turtle’s starting to. Her enthusiasm is waning, and I don’t know if it’s because of her personal war with Squishy or because Squishy has convinced her the wreck is even more dangerous than usual.

I stare out a portal, watching the wreck grow tinier and tinier in the distance. It’s ironic. Even though I’m surrounded by tension, I finally feel content.

Half a dozen more dives, maybe sixty more meters, mostly corridor. One potential storage compartment, which we’d initially hoped was a stateroom or quarters, and a mechanic’s corridor, filled with equipment we haven’t even begun to catalogue.

I spend my off-hours analyzing the materials. So far, nothing conclusive. Lots of evidence of cobbling, but that’s pretty common for any ship—with FTL or not—that’s made it on a long journey.

What there’s no evidence of are bodies. We haven’t found a one, and that’s even more unusual. Sometimes there’re skeletons floating—or pieces of them at least—and sometimes we get the full-blown corpse, suited and intact. A handful aren’t suited. Those’re the worst. They always make me grateful we can’t smell the ship around us.

The lack of bodies is beginning to creep out Karl. He’s even talked to me in private about skipping the next few dives.

I’m not sure what’s best. If he skips them, the attitudes might become engrained, and he might not dive again. If he goes, the fears might grow worse and paralyze him in the worst possible place.

I move him to the end of the rotation, and warn Squishy she might have to suit up after all.

She just looks at me and grins. “Too many of the team quit on you, you’ll just have to go home.”

“I’ll dive it myself, and you all can wait,” I say, but it’s bravado and we both know it.

That wreck isn’t going to defeat me, not with the perfect treasure hidden in its bulk.

That’s what’s fueling my greed. The perfect treasure: my perfect treasure. Something that answers previously unasked historical questions—previously unknown historical questions; something that will reveal facts about our history, our humanity, that no one has suspected before; and something that, even though it does all that, is worth a small—physical—fortune.

I love the history part. I get paid a lot of money to ferry people to other wrecks, teach them to dive old historical sites. Then I save up my funds and do this: find new sites that no one else knows about, and mine them for history.

I never expected to mine them for real gold as well.

I shake every time I think about it, and before each dive, I do feel the gids. Only now I report them to Squishy. I tell her that I’m a tad too excited, and she offers me a tranq which I always refuse. Never go into the unknown with senses dulled, that’s my motto, even though I know countless people who do it.

We’re on a long diving mission, longer than some of these folks have ever been on, and we’re not even halfway through. We’ll have gids and jitters and too many superstitions. We’ll have fears and near-emergencies, and God forbid, real emergencies as well.

We’ll get through it, and we’ll have our prize, and no one, not any one person, will be able to take that away from us.

It turned this afternoon.

I’m captaining the skip. Squishy’s back at the Business , taking a boss-ordered rest. I’m tired of her complaints and her constant negative attitude. At first, I thought she’d turn Turtle, but Turtle finally got pissed, and decided she’d enjoy this run.

I caught Squishy ragging on J&J, my strong links, asking them if they really want to be mining a death ship. They didn’t listen to her, not really—although Jypé argued with her just a little—but that kind of talk can depress an entire mission, sabotage it in subtle little ways, ways that I don’t even want to contemplate.

So I’m manning the skip alone, while J&J are running their dive, and I’m listening to the commentary, not looking at the grainy nearly worthless images from the handheld. Mostly I’m thinking about Squishy and how to send her back without sending information too and I can’t come to any conclusions at all when I hear:

“…yeah, it opens.” Junior.

“Wow.” Jypé.

“Jackpot, eh?” Junior again.

And then a long silence. Much too long for my tastes, not because I’m afraid for J&J, but because a long silence doesn’t tell me one goddamn thing.

I punch up the digital readout, see we’re at 25:33—plenty of time. They got to the new section faster than they ever have before.

The silence runs from 25:33 to 28:46, and I’m about to chew my fist off, wondering what they’re doing. The handheld shows me grainy walls and more grainy walls. Or maybe it’s just grainy nothing. I can’t tell.

For the first time in weeks, I want someone else in the skip with me just so that I can talk to somebody.

“Almost time,” Jypé says.

“Dad, you gotta see this.” Junior has a touch of breathlessness in his voice. Excitement—at least that’s what I’m hoping.

And then there’s more silence… thirty-five seconds of it, followed by a loud and emphatic “Fuck!”

I can’t tell if that’s an angry “fuck,” a scared “fuck” or an awed “fuck.” I can’t tell much about it at all.

Now I’m literally chewing on my thumbnail, something I haven’t done in years, and I’m watching the digital, which has crept past thirty-one minutes.

“Move your arm,” Jypé says, and I know then that wasn’t a good fuck at all.

Something happened.

Something bad.

“Just a little to the left,” Jypé says again, his voice oddly calm. I’m wondering why Junior isn’t answering him, hoping that the only reason is he’s in a section where the communications relay isn’t reaching the skip.

Because I can think of a thousand other reasons, none of them good, that Junior’s communication equipment isn’t working.

“We’re five minutes past departure,” Jypé says, and in that, I’m hearing the beginning of panic.

More silence.

I’m actually holding my breath. I look out a portal, see nothing except the wreck, looking like it always does. The handheld has been showing the same grainy image for a while now.

37:24

If they’re not careful, they’ll run out of air. Or worse.

I try to remember how much extra they took. I didn’t really watch them suit up this time. I’ve seen their ritual so many times that I’m not sure what I think I saw is what I actually saw. I’m not sure what they have with them, and what they don’t.