"All right. Don't forget to check the radio with me before we go out. If
the radio doesn't work, then you stay here. Because I want us in
constant radio contact if we're both out there. Is that understood?"
"Yes, sir, captain," she said, and grinned. It was her old grin. He had
not seen her grin like that for a long time. He had almost forgotten
what that grin was like. It made her face seem younger and prettier, as
he had remembered it from what seemed so long ago but was only three
years. It was a wonderful grin and he watched it in the split-second
which remained before he swung the heavy helmet up and in place over her
shoulders.
Then he put on his own helmet awkwardly and fingered the outside radio
controls. "Hear me?" he said.
"I can hear you." Her voice was metallic but very clear through the suit
radios.
"Then listen. There shouldn't be any danger of getting lost. I'll leave
a light on inside the ship and we'll see it through the ports. It will
be the only light, so whatever you do, don't go out of range. As long as
you can always see it, you'll be O.K. Understand?"
"Right," she said as they both climbed into the Gormann '87's airlock
and waited for the pressure to leave it and the outer door to swing out
into space. "Ralph? I'm a little scared, Ralph."
"That's all right," he said. "So am I."
"What did you mean, it won't be pretty out there?"
"Because we'll have to look not just for series eighty Gormanns but for
any ships that look as old as ours. There ought to be plenty of them and
any one of them could have had a Gormann radarscope, although it's
unlikely. Have to look, though."
"But what--won't be pretty?"
"We'll have to enter those ships. You won't like what's inside."
"Say, how will we get in? We don't have blasters or weapons of any
kind."
"Your suit rockets," Ralph said. "You swing around and blast with your
suit rockets. A porthole should be better than an airlock if it's big
enough to climb through. You won't have any trouble."
"But you still haven't told me what--"
"Inside the ships. People. They'll all be dead. If they didn't lose
their air so far, they'll lose it when we go in. Either way, of course,
they'll be dead. They've all been dead for years, with no food. But
without air--"
"What are you stopping for?" Diane said. "Please go on."
"A body, without air. Fifteen pounds of pressure per square inch on the
inside, and zero on the outside. It isn't pretty. It bloats."
"My God, Ralph."
"I'm sorry, kid. Maybe you want to stay back here and I'll look."
"You said we only have ten hours. I want to help you."
All at once, the airlock swung out. Space yawned at them, black
enormous, the silent ships, the dead sargasso ships, floating slowly by,
eternally, unhurried....
"Better make it eight hours," Ralph said over the suit radio. "We'd
better keep a couple of hours leeway in case I figured wrong. Eight
hours and remember, don't get out of sight of the ship's lights and
don't break radio contact under any circumstances. These suit radios
work like miniature radar sets, too. If anything goes wrong, we'll be
able to track each other. It's directional beam radio."
"But what can go wrong?"
"I don't know," Ralph admitted. "Nothing probably." He turned on his
suit rockets and felt the sudden surge of power drive him clear of the
ship. He watched Diane rocketing away from him to the right. He waved
his hand in the bulky spacesuit. "Good luck," he called. "I love you,
Diane."
"Ralph," she said. Her voice caught. He heard it catch over the suit
radio. "Ralph, we agreed never to--oh, forget it. Good luck, Ralph. Good
luck, oh good luck. And I--"
"You what."
"Nothing, Ralph. Good luck."
"Good luck," he said, and headed for the first jumble of space wrecks.
* * * * *
It would probably have taken them a month to explore all the derelicts
which were old enough to have Gormann series eighty radarscopes.
Theoretically, Ralph realized, even a newer ship could have one. But it
wasn't likely, because if someone could afford a newer ship then he
could afford a better radarscope. But that, he told himself, was only
half the story. The other half was this: with a better radarscope a ship
might not have floundered into the sargasso at all....
So it was hardly possible to pass up any ship if their life depended on
it--and the going was slow.
Too slow.
He had entered some dozen ships in the first four hours turning, using
his shoulder rockets to blast a port hole out and climb in through
there. He had not liked what he saw, but there was no preventing it.
Without a light it wasn't so bad, but you needed a light to examine the
radarscope....
They were dead. They had been dead for years but of course there would
be no decomposition in the airless void of space and very little even if
air had remained until he blasted his way in, for the air was sterile
canned spaceship air. They were dead, and they were bloated. All
impossibly fat men, with white faces like melons and gross bodies like
Tweedle Dee's and limbs like fat sausages.
By the fifth ship he was sick to his stomach, but by the tenth he had
achieved the necessary detachment to continue his task. Once--it was the
eighth ship--he found a Gormann series eighty radarscope, and his heart
pounded when he saw it. But the scope was hopelessly damaged, as bad as
their own. Aside from that one, he did not encounter any, damaged or in
good shape, which they might convert to their own use.
Four hours, he thought. Four hours and twelve ships. Diane reported
every few moments by intercom. In her first four hours she had visited
eight ships. Her voice sounded funny. She was fighting it every step of
the way he thought. It must have been hell to her, breaking into those
wrecks with their dead men with faces like white, bloated melons--
In the thirteenth ship he found a skeleton.
He did not report it to Diane over the intercom. The skeleton made no
sense at all. The flesh could not possibly have decomposed. Curious, he
clomped closer on his magnetic boots. Even if the flesh had decomposed,
the clothing would have remained. But it was a skeleton picked
completely clean, with no clothing, not even boots--
As if the man had stripped of his clothing first.
He found out why a moment later, and it left him feeling more than a
little sick. There were other corpses aboard the ship, a battered
Thompson '81 in worse shape than their own Gormann. Bodies, not
skeletons. But when they had entered the sargasso they had apparently
struck another ship. One whole side of the Thompson was smashed in and
Ralph could see the repair patches on the wall. Near them and thoroughly
destroyed, were the Thompson's spacesuits.
The galley lockers were empty when Ralph found them. All the food
gone--how many years ago? And one of the crew, dying before the others.
Cannibalism.
Shuddering, Ralph rocketed outside into the clear darkness of space.
That was a paradox, he thought. It was clear, all right, but it was
dark. You could see a great way. You could see a million million miles
but it was darker than anything on Earth. It was almost an
extra-dimensional effect. It made the third dimension on earth, the
dimension of depth, seem hopelessly flat.
"Ralph!"
"Go ahead, kid," he said. It was their first radio contact in almost
half an hour.
"Oh, Ralph. It's a Gormann. An eighty-five. I think. Right in front of
me. Ralph, if its scopes are good--oh, Ralph."
"I'm coming," he said. "Go ahead inside. I'll pick up your beam and be
along." He could feel his heart thumping wildly. Five hours now. They
did not have much time. This ship--this Gormann eighty-five which Diane
had found--might be their last chance. Because it would certainly take
him all of three hours to transfer the radarscope, using the rockets
from one of their spacesuits, to their own ship.
He rocketed along now, following her directional beam, and listened as
she said: "I'm cutting through the porthole now, Ralph. I--"
Her voice stopped suddenly. It did not drift off gradually. It merely
ceased, without warning, without reason. "Diane!" he called. "Diane, can
you hear me?"
* * * * *
He tracked the beam in desperate silence. Wrecks flashed by, tumbling
slowly in their web of mutual gravitation. Some were molten silver if
the wan sunlight caught them. Some were black, but every rivet, every
seam was distinct. The impossible clarity of blackest space....
"Ralph?" Her voice came suddenly.
"Yes, Diane. Yes. What is it?"
"What a curious thing. I stopped blasting at the port hole. I'm not
going in that way. The airlock, Ralph."
"What about the airlock?"
"It opened up on me. It swung out into space, all of a sudden. I'm going
in, Ralph."
Fear, unexpected, inexplicable, gripped him. "Don't," he said. "Wait for
me."
"That's silly, Ralph. We barely have time. I'm going in now, Ralph.
There. I'm closing the outer door. I wonder if the pressure will build
up for me. If it doesn't, I'll blast the outer door with my rockets and
get out of here.... Ralph! The light's blinking. The pressures building.
The inner door is beginning to open, Ralph. I'm going inside now."
He was still tracking the beam. He thought he was close now, a hundred
miles perhaps. A hundred miles by suit rocket was merely a few seconds
but somehow the fear was still with him. It was that skeleton, he
thought. That skeleton had unnerved him.
"Ralph. It's here, Ralph. A radarscope just like ours. Oh, Ralph, it's
in perfect shape."
"I'm coming," he said. A big old Bartson Cruiser tumbled by end over
end, a thousand tonner, the largest ship he had seen in here so far. At
some of the portholes as he flashed by he could see faces, dead faces
staring into space forever.