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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] But slowly the ship began to emerge from the piled-up, fused rubble. Joss had asked the workers to leave the door areas for last they weren't a priority and to concentrate on the engine end; he was interested to see just what had happened to this ship. At one point, George said to him, "What are you expecting?" Joss touched helmets with the man, to keep it private. "Listen," he said, "do you ever hear stories of military vessels in these parts? " George looked at Joss warily. "Sometimes. A ship will SPACE COPS 133 come to grief, and we'll find out there was some kind of Space Forces thing going on out in the Belts. Some kind of 'organized maneuver,' they'll say. And we'll demand to know what happened to our ship, and we'll never find out. It hasn't happened in a long time not for years now. But it used to happen quite a bit, before things got more settled out here." Joss thought of old stories of fishing boats getting their nets caught by cruising submarines. At best, they were dragged ten or a hundred miles; at worst, they were never seen again, and their fates were never revealed, since security forbade even admitting that the submarines had been there at all. / wonder, Joss thought, how much of what we're investigating could be attributable to that? Has the SP sent us on some kind of wild goose chase for political purposes? But what was in front of them needed investigating, politics or not. Joss turned his attention back to the ship's pod, which was coming free. The boxy shape was partly hidden by dust from the drilling, but there was a long scooped-out sort of walkway down to where the side of the craft went into the ground. Joss went down and stood as close as he dared. Lara, the Eastern European, was standing there with a small drill, hunched over, alternately breaking the stone away in short bursts and scraping loose bits away with an old entrenching tool. Joss picked up the tool and nodded at her. Lara blasted and Joss picked and shoveled for a few minutes. Then he stopped her with an arm on her suit, and said, "There. See that flange sticking up?" It was a sharp, curved piece of metal, protruding at almost a forty-five-degree angle from the ship's hull. Joss could see no expression inside Lara's polarized faceplate, but she held quite still for a few seconds, and finally said, "Blowout hole, huh?" "Looks that way, yes, ma'am," Joss said. "But let's get a closer look." Together they began to work around the edges of the hole, and, when it was defined, down the 134 SPACE COPS front of it. The hole in the ship's side turned out to be at least three feet wide; flanges of metal bent out from it all around. Lara looked in sadly at the twisted and burnt cables and burst batteries inside. "Fuel cell," she said. "They blow often. I think they build them wrong. Not enough compartmentalization, not enough protection for these damn things." Joss said nothing for the moment, just patted Lara on the arm and said, "Keep working, I'll be back." He went around to the front, where George and Joe and Vanya were working. Vanya in particular was busy at the vessel's front hatch. "Let's see if we can get inside," Joss said, and started to help him. It took them about half an hour to finish clearing the rubble and fused rock away from the door. When it was free, all work stopped for a few moments while Joss and Vanya worked, first with crowbars, then with a drill and a crowbar, to pry the door open. Inside was dead dark, dusty, and in utter disorder. Hek's ship had been fairly roomy inside, for all that it was small; there was room enough for quite a few belongings. Now they lay all over the floors, stained and blackened by smoke; books, tools, a spare suit, plates, a blanket, a lacquered tray for tea. The teacups lay shattered. On top of them lay Hek's body, in its pressure suit. No one moved for that first moment. Then Joss stepped forward, and slowly and carefully turned the body over. It was like a board not surprising, considering how long it had been exposed to vacuum. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |