"I mean out there. If we find a series eighty cruiser--and we might--and
if I'm able to transfer the radarscopes after we find out they're in
good shape, then we have a chance."
Diane nodded slowly. "If there are any other minor repairs to make, I
could be making them while you look for a series eighty Gormann."
But Ralph shook his head. "We'll probably have only a few hours of air
to spare, Diane. If we both look, we'll cover more ground. I hate to ask
you, because it won't be pretty out there. But it might be our only
chance."
"I'll go, of course. Ralph?"
"Yes?"
"What is this sargasso, anyway?"
* * * * *
He shrugged as he read the meters on the compressed air tanks. Four
tanks full, with ten hours of air, for two, in each. One tank half full.
Five hours. Five plus forty. Forty-five hours of air.
They would need a minimum of thirty-five hours to reach Mars.
"No one knows for sure about the sargasso," he said, wanting to talk,
wanting to dispel his own fear so he would not communicate it to her as
he took the spacesuits down from their rack and began to climb into one.
"They don't think it's anything but the ships, though. It started with a
few ships. Then more. And more. Trapped by mutual gravity. It got bigger
and bigger and I think there are almost a thousand derelicts here now.
There's talk of blasting them clear, of salvaging them for metals and so
on. But so far the planetary governments haven't co-operated."
"But how did the first ships get here?"
"It doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference. One theory is ships
only, and maybe a couple of hunks of meteoric debris in the beginning.
Another theory says there may be a particularly heavy small asteroid in
this maze of wrecks somewhere--you know, superheavy stuff with the atoms
stripped of their electrons and the nuclei squeezed together, weighing
in the neighborhood of a couple of tons per square inch. That could
account for the beginning, but once the thing got started, the wrecked
ships account for more wrecked ships and pretty soon you have--a
sargasso."