Chapter 3

"What've we got?" Ross asked. It seemed to be the unavoidable question these days.

"A damned ship!" Pete yelled.

"A ship? No way, too big. Only some military unit would be running something that big. We haven't got anybody running military vessels that's interested in being out here."

"Well that's what it is," Pete argued. "Look out the damned view screen yourself if you don't believe me."

"Oh crap," Ross conceded with a moan a minute later. "Pete, that's a ship, no doubt about it, but there's also no doubt about another thing. That's no human ship."

"Aliens? Space me," Pete spat.

"Already tried my friend, it didn't stick, remember?"

"If that's an alien ship, what the hell's it doing just sitting there? Shouldn't it be hailing us or some such? Beaming us aboard? Taking us to their leader?"

"Maybe its a derelict."

"Crap, compared to us that thing looks pristine." Pete observed. "I mean look at it! And its huge! You could put Eudoxus in her and have trouble finding her afterward."

"Well, she'd fit inside, that I agree on. More than a few times over, I'd say."

As the Eudoxus approached the alien ship, Ross let her draw within a hundred meters of her before he canceled their current vector with judicious use of the thrusters. For a while, they just sat there and stared.

"Any sign of activity?" Ross asked.

"Nothing. No electronic signature, no heat signature. Anything else I could look for, would have required the main sensor array, but we have no power for that. Some of the array suffered damage anyway, so who knows what would still work even if we had power."

Another long, awkward moment passed as they continued to stare at the bulk of the alien ship in front of them.

"Well, one of us ought to suit up and go see if we can at least find some sort of access hatch or something, right?" Pete asked.

"Yeah, I suppose there's nothing else to do, not like we have to worry about the risk, right? Just cause this is the opening scene to every bad space movie ever written."

"Well there is that," Pete laughed at his partner's comment and Ross joined him.

"Flip for it?" Ross asked a moment later.

"Isn't it my turn?" Pete asked. "You had the last EVA."

"True, but you had the last stint of suit time."

"So I did. Okay, we'll flip. But we both suit up, just in case."

Their sensors, what remained to them from those that were part of the forward array were designed more as aids to navigation than anything else — negotiating through asteroid belts and debris fields. They were passive for the most part, and where they weren't they were pretty low power. Their anti-collision radar offered the longest range, and it had been what had found this wreck or relic or whatever it was, but it couldn't provide them with any more clues than it already had.

The infrared sensors were completely passive, as were the other EM band detectors. The ship wasn't radiating heat, was transmitting nothing in any of the radio bands, and had only the faintest of traces of radioactivity above the normal background level of space, and in this instance, what was normal wasn't. The Eudoxus and the rest of nearby space showed the same elevated levels.

Twenty minutes later, Ross was hanging off their longest tether and using his suits maneuvering jets to slowly move across the hundred feet that separated the two ships. They'd maneuvered the Eudoxus to within normal tether range once they'd decided the ship wasn't active, and Ross had won the toss. He did a well practiced rotation at the end of the tether once he was nearing the ship's hull so that it would be his suit's magnetic boots that touched first.

There was no noise when he touched, of course. He did feel the sudden pressure against the soles of his feet as the suit's built in soles absorbed the impact, gentle as it was. He bounced.

"Okay, the hull's not magnetic," he called to Pete. "I'll have to use the suit jets to move around.

"Anything visible up close?" Pete asked back.

"What, like a 'You are here' sign or something? Nothing visible. Minor pitting and scarring, but not much. Nothing that looks like writing or pictures or anything like that. No seams either for that matter."

"No visible welds?"

Nope. This damned thing looks like it would be capable of atmospheric flight if it weren't so big."

"Not much in the way of wings on it," Pete replied.

"True, but the whole thing could be a lifting body. Its more or less the right shape for it."

"Only if you're being pretty generous about it."

"Well, I feel like being generous," Ross laughed. "Its not like you or I are ever going to get to see it anyway, right?"

"So this relic gets the benefit of the doubt from the soon to be dead guys?"

"Yup," Ross answered. "Okay, I'm going to walk over the horizon here for a bit, so don't wig out on me, okay?"

"Copy," Pete slipped back into a more serious tone. They may be going to die, but they weren't dead yet, and no sense rushing it.

Ross maneuvered his way up the hull, working his way north, 'north' being the direction they had decided the Eudoxus faced when they'd brought it to rest at tethering distance. "This thing's bigger than I thought," he sent as he glanced back in Pete's direction. "I may run out of tether before I get far enough around her to lose line of sight.

"Getting close," Pete called out. "Fifty feet of tether left."

"Nope, just made it," Ross called out a minute later. "Can't see me, can you?"

"Nope. Just the tether against the hull. You've got twenty feet left."

"Might as well come back then. This sides a little different towards the back at least. I think I'm seeing engine blisters or something. Everything is still smooth and clean, but there might be a ding or something down near one of those blisters."

"All right, Hey! When you get your head back to where you can see me, flash me a ranging signal with your headlight. I'll paint you with the ranging laser so we can get a better idea of the hull's curvature."

"Good idea. We can guess her displacement pretty close if we get a good reading, even if the other side's got some slight variations."

Ross slowed to a stop as soon as the ship was visible to him and flickered his helmet's auxiliary light off and on a couple of times.

"Gotcha," Pete said over the comm. "Painting you now."

The ship's ranging laser blinked a couple of times in return. Its visible component was more of a safety feature than anything else. The effective segment of the light was invisible to human eyes, being in the middle of the ultraviolet band. A moment later, Ross thought he felt something vibrating against the skin of his suit.

"What the hell is that?" He asked aloud.

"What?" came Pete's reply. Then there was a flash of brightness that seemed to come from everywhere at once, then pain.

Then nothing.

"Ship, what in all space and time do you think you're doing!" Dar said as soon as he was able to focus on the console in front of him.

"The aliens were attacking us sir," it answered. "They fired a laser at us."

"So you pulsed the EG shields? My god, you've killed them, or will have. What were you thinking?"

"I'm sorry sir, I've just completed a system reboot. I"m not sure what earlier versions of me did during that time sir."

"Impossible," Dar relied with fury. "What were your orders!"

"Sir, I was given directive 'Lifeboat Zero', sir."

"And were you complying with that directive?"

"I was to the best of my ability sir. The reboot caused me to revert to ... other programming sir, even when I was able to access the Lifeboat Zero directive."

Dar gave up, partially in frustration and partially because he knew he had little time if he hoped to save the aliens, even if it was possible.

"Have you done any scans of these aliens, and of their ship?"

"Yes sir," Ship replied. She was managing to sound contrite, and if anything, that angered Dar more than her actions.

"Can we duplicate their ship's environment on the Kadamon?"

"No need sir, our environment is sufficiently compatible."

"Did they attempt to communicate?"