The Salvagers (28 page)

             
"Yeah, and then some," Stacey said, as she shot down the hall.

             
"You could have been killed! I said to stay in high orbit!"

             
"We mutinied. All three of us agreed. We overrode your orders."

             
I smiled and gave Stacey a huge hug while noticing out the rear window of engineering that the bulk of the wreckage was now falling into Saturn, along with the crushed hulk of the
Cape Hatteras
. We moved closer to watch.

             
"Those are the gold bars," I said. "The haul is burning up."

             
It was strangely beautiful to watch my fortune burn away. I'd have nothing when it was all over. When the spectacle started to subside, I turned to my son.

             
"Mutinied," I said.

             
"Yeah, I finally agreed with Stacey on something."

             
"My own son mutinied."

             
"Don't I get a hug for mutiny too?"

             
"Yeah," I said, and hugged him, "but I have news."

             
"What?"

             
"We've got a new permanent crew member."

             
"Huh?"

             
"Your mother! We're back together."

             
He looked surprised and confused but not unhappy. "Well, that's great. How long will she be with us? Surely she has obligations back on Earth, teaching at the university and all."

             
"Well, I don't see us returning to Earth any time soon, at least until Ed Iron cools down."

             
"But. . . ," he said. It had begun to dawn on him what the implications of having his mother as a crew member might be.

             
"And, you know, she does have an advanced degree in engineering, and you don't. But there are plenty of things to do around here. The ship could certainly use a good cleaning."

             
"But. . . ."

             
"Don't worry, son," said Janet. "It'll only be a year or two, five at most."

Chapter 33     Day 332

             
"Office of Rear Admiral Jonah T. Carlin. Admiralty Administration Complex, Union of North American Governments, Montreal, Province of Verbec. February 26, 2258. Eyes only, HALCYON clearance required. To the Director of UNAG Intelligence, Dr. Augustin Sato, Los Angeles, Province of Calorwa. The sensitive nature of the findings of Halcyon necessitates the creation of a cover story. A gold-mining mission to the asteroid 974-Bernhard is to be promoted to the public as a methodology for reducing the Union's debt, taking advantage of the erstwhile public promotion of the asteroid by the late Dr. Walton. At the preplanned early completion of the mining mission, your operative, Salus, is to collect the crystalline material by whatever means he has at hand. We believe that a matter-dark matter weapon would give the UNAG a significant advantage in the marginalization of the Asian-African and Eurorussian unions."

              I would have to explain it all to Ed Iron in the morning. There wasn't any scenario I could think of in which things would turn out alright. Losing the derelict was one thing, but losing the gold was a different matter altogether. It was overwhelmingly unlikely that we'd be free to return to Earth any time soon—possibly for the rest of our lives. I expected that we'd have to make a run for it and hide out at Neptune and fend for ourselves. Maybe we could haul freight pods for the Triton mafia.

             
We all were looking for some diversion, anything to get our minds off the coming day. I had one idea that I knew would work. It was the one connection with our home planet that I could tie up neatly: the marriage of Kurt and Stacey.

             
I was hesitant at first because our immediate setting seemed somehow inappropriate. Kurt and Stacey assured me that getting married on the
Amaranth Sun
was a better idea than Florida anyway, but I thought they deserved something nicer.

             
I therefore suggested a wedding on one of the small deserted moons that circled Uranus. We'd be passing by that system anyway, and hardly anyone ever visits them. I also had heard they were uniquely beautiful—low-gravity spheres bathed in the planet's blue-green light. It would certainly be more romantic than the bridge. Eventually I was overruled, however, when Neil and Janet joined Kurt and Stacey in favor of the
Amaranth Sun
, so I gave in and dutifully donned a uniform.

             
Now, I hate uniforms. I'm the kind of person who's comfortable dressing in utilitarian jump suits and t-shirts. I have little interest in what amounts to silly costumes, especially after my dealings with the captain of the
Portsmouth
. I only own one set of formal attire, and I couldn't remember using it since I first tried it on when I bought it twenty years earlier. It was sickeningly classical—a white jacket complete with epaulets, a peaked cap with the merchant spacefarer's insignia in gold, and a navy blue shirt and tie. It even had my name embroidered on the jacket. It was just something to take a few pictures in and then toss in a closet after I made the rank of merchant captain.

             
Kurt and Stacey hadn't expected me to put it on; in fact, they didn't know I owned a uniform. After my Uranus idea was shot down, however, I figured that
I
had to surprise them. They undoubtedly were expecting me to show up in a jumpsuit and get the ceremony over with as fast as I could. I went to the bridge looking like the skipper of a lunar tourist cruiser. The get-up couldn't have been cheesier. I could just as well have been dressed to inform the passengers that the comedian's performance in the lounge had been canceled and that the dinner buffet would be open for an extra hour in compensation.

             
My attire wasn't lost on Neil and Janet. They saw me coming before the lovebirds did and snapped to attention in zero-G before flanking me as I passed through the door. I didn't know either of them could do that, its being something that takes a little practice, but they pulled it off brilliantly. Our grand entrance caused Stacey to have a rare meltdown. Tears flowing and holding Kurt's hand tightly, she seemed overwhelmed.

             
"Dearly beloved," I said, "we are gathered here today in the presence of these witnesses. . . ." I had memorized the whole thing beforehand to keep my mind off Ed Iron. Everything was going perfectly, if you don't count Neil's snort when Stacey came in wearing a chef's bib from the galley complete with a blood stain—it was the only thing we had that could serve as a wedding dress other than our usual blue jump suits. The wedding rings were simple plastic seals taken out during the
Amaranth Sun
's
refit. They would be proxies until Kurt and Stacey could buy real ones at a colony.

             
I'd never performed a wedding before, but I muddled through just fine. After I pronounced them man and wife, they kissed. We then celebrated before they retired to the honeymoon suite, which was their normal cabin decorated with some cans Neil had hung on the door and where he had written "Just Married" in engine grease.

             
I didn't sleep a wink that night, and not because of the newlyweds active in the cabin next to mine. I was used to those sorts of sounds already, though Janet tossed and turned so much that I had to tire her out by acting like a new husband myself. I didn't sleep because of the prospect of communicating with Ed Iron the next day. If discovering the
Cape Hatteras
had been my greatest moment, the aftermath was going to be my worst.

             
I tried to reduce the expected fallout with my usual written report to Ed as a prelude to speaking directly. However, my experience had been so extraordinary that I knew my usual method of downplaying the bad and focusing on the good wasn't going to work. I just had to be honest and matter of fact. Looking the report over, I recognized that it was all bad news for him: the gold was gone, the relic was gone, the ship he had bought was gone, and he now had a bunch of scientists stranded on Titan for whom he'd need to arrange transport home.

             
I expected nothing less than a tirade followed by endless messages from a team of lawyers ensuring that I would never make a living again. My house in Arizona would be sold, and I would be worse off than ever before. I spent much of the rest of the night planning the particulars of our escape to the outer solar system.

             
At 7:00 a.m. sharp came the incoming message ping. "We've got two ways to get past this, Cam," he said. "I'm satisfied with your story. It meshes with what everyone else has said. And I won't lie: I'm absolutely amazed at the quantum-pad recordings you sent. Our first communication with an alien species or something of the sort! Who'd have thought they'd do it through dreams? My people think your brain was manipulated on the subatomic level, imagine the power they must possess to control energy at such small scales and change how neurons behave.”

             
“Yours is a story worth money,” he continued, “but not enough. Let's not avoid the basics. It won't cover the money I’ve lost. I'm sure you understand that," Ed said with artificial calmness.

             
I was so nervous that I said "I do" in violation of the rule in long-distance space communication that one person talks all at once before the other person replies. That kind of thing was usually second nature to me, but I'd forgotten it entirely. Thankfully he couldn't hear me because the microphone was turned off.

             
"The first thing you're going to do is to write a book that will complement these recordings—a memoir telling the story of the discovery—and loss—of the
Cape Hatteras
." Ed’s statement was followed by an abrupt click. His comment didn’t offer a choice; it amounted to an order. I could do that much, I thought.

             
"I will," I said, ending that simple response with my own click. I hoped that he'd at least hire a ghostwriter for me, even if it was just a fourth-rate author of science fiction. I can't say I was too excited about having my dark-matter dreams published though. It seemed . . . voyeuristic. I ticked off the minutes until demand number two while staring at Janet.

             
"And while you're getting that done, the second thing you're going to do is to resupply at Mars. You'll need to stock a large amount of food and fuel in modular pods attached to your ship. You should even consider having some extra fuel tanks mounted just in case. I've got something big, and I need someone I can trust. I think that person is you, Cam. You might drop the largest concentrated quantity of gold in the solar system right into the goddamn atmosphere of Saturn, but at least you told me the truth. You're going to work my new salvage project, though at a smaller share than last time. It's the secret I mentioned to you a year ago, Cam. It's huge, and I'm confident it can be done. Will you do it?"

             
The end-of-message click came through. He had asked me whether I would do it, but it was just a courtesy. Deep down I knew it was really just another order.

             
"I'm in," I said after looking around at Kurt, Stacey, and the others and seeing nods of agreement. Waiting a few minutes for his response seemed a longer period of time than the last year had been.

             
"It's in the far outer solar system and comes from one of the earliest accounts of the Oort cloud when Captain Langley skirted the inner regions. He thought he saw a station or a ship out there. It was enormous, though, more the size of an asteroid than a ship. It wasn't like anything he'd ever seen, but he couldn't get close to it for lack of fuel. He just knew that it looked artificial and wondered whether one of the other unions had sent a high-tech secret mission out there before the UNAG. As far as I can tell, none of them had.

             
"Guiscard Van der Shark . . . er . . . Boort, also saw it, but he dismissed it as just a strangely shaped planetoid and never went close enough to investigate. Nevertheless, it gnawed at him when he got back to Earth. Eventually he came to believe that something wasn't quite right with it. He could never get the mystery out of his head and mentioned it in his memoirs. They were never published because he hadn't finished them before the shark ate him, but I obtained a copy. It cost me a small fortune, but who wouldn't want to be the first person to read about his adventures? Anyway, I pored over the instrument readings I requested from you. They were taken during that expedition. What I found convinced me to commission a long-range space telescope specifically designed to search for what he saw and photograph it in high resolution. But it's not what they thought, Cam. It's much bigger than that."

             
It must have been big. I can only imagine what a telescope like that cost him.

             
"Your mission will be to go to the Oort cloud. You will be travelling into an area of space where no one has ever been before. It’s so far out that it will take over two months for a communications signal to reach Earth. For all intents and purposes you'll be out of contact and totally on your own. You'll also travel faster than any person in human history. I've got the specifics of the mission and an engine retrofit for your ship waiting for you at Mars. I can't say much more under these circumstances. Can you guarantee on your end that you trust everyone implicitly and that they'll all be going on the mission? If you can, please have Janet input her MR-2.21 encoding protocols from the
Hyperion
's
secured communication frequencies to your ship and have her enter her command code."

             
I looked at Janet. She smiled and nodded her approval.

             
"I can, and she's doing it now," I replied, before ending the transmission. She entered the protocol in the computer. Minutes later a response came.

             
"I think it's an alien ship, but much bigger than anything you can imagine," said Ed, "a kind of artificial planet that has been coursing through space below the speed of light over millions of years. We don't know where it came from, or where it was going, but it looks as though something went wrong. It seems to be dead in space, and we think it's been there for a very long time. We want you to explore it."

             
Perhaps the
Cape Hatteras
hadn't been my greatest moment after all. I looked at Stacey, but I didn't have to say a word. She had already set a course for Mars.