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Overall Design:Single cylinder, 1400 meters by 350 me-ters.
Propulsion: Matter/Antimatter.
Course:SETI Anomaly One. Galactic Core.
Political/Social Orientation:Multinational Japanese,Russian, English. Cited by
Beaulieu as "a colonialunit of exceptional promise, showing the
possibilitiesof international harmony through peaceful coopera- tion in
space." With the coming of the Holocaust thecitizens of
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voted to evacuate rather than be turned against each other by their
less-civilized ancestorsbelow.
"Jesus, what the hell is this!"
The jump-down from light speed was complete, but Ian was ignoring Stasz's
shouted questions because hewas still nauseated from the transition.
"Get on the board, Ian."
Convinced for the moment that dinner wasn't going tocome rushing back up, Ian
pushed forward to hover be-hind Stasz's shoulder.
"I'm getting a lot of debris," Shelley called from the Co's position. "I've
locked onto a beacon two thousand klicks ahead, declination five degrees off.
But there are no significant mass readings."
"Ian, look at this!" Shelley dialed the CRT up to ahigher magnification.
A human body was at screen-center slowly tumblingthrough space.
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"I'm picking up more, Ian, dozens of them. Do you want to look?"
He shook his head and turned away.
Within minutes Stasz was maneuvering the Discovery through a nightmarish
jumble of debris the twisted rem-nants of what had once been a vessel of
several hundredthousand tons. On a number of occasions hard maneu-vering was
required to avoid torn hunks of metal and, in one case, a mummified fragment
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that had once been hu-man.
"As near as I can estimate," Stasz reported, "a thincloud of debris is
traveling outward from Delta Sag at avelocity of just over 230 miles per
second."
Delta Sag was straight ahead of them and outshiningall the other stars in the
heavens. Another half hour's run would have jumped them within twenty A.U. of
the star. But the signal beacon had caused them to stop and jumpdown into a
floating funeral.
Ian scanned the trajectory backplot and passed it overto Stasz.
Stasz punched in the data and within seconds had aresponse. "Approximately
fifty-two years, six months outward bound from Delta Sag," Stasz reported,
"assum-ing constant velocity."
"I have the beacon source on visual," Shelley an-nounced.
The five of them huddled around the primary screen as the image came up. It
was a nondescript hulk of in-terstellar flotsam slowly tumbling end over end.
"Approximately a hundred meters long by fifty wide,"Stasz reported. "It looks
like the reactor core. It's stillhot, I'm picking up some trace readings."
Even as Stasz spoke, the Discovery lurched slightly as it weaved past a large
fragment that its shields could notvaporize. Stasz guided the vessel back onto
an intercept course and before the hour was over he was fine-tuningthe final
approach that would bring them up alongside thereactor unit.
"This is a waste, Ian," Ellen said, "whatever colonyunit this was, it's been
blasted beyond recognition."
The others murmured their agreement. They were flyingformation with a drifting
junk-yard torn metal, shreddedshielding, shards of glass, and mummified
bodies.
"I need to find out more," Ian replied coldly. "We startedout aimless, but
with each step farther out, the path seemedto point us into this direction,
and to that star." He pointedat Delta. "Now, damn it, we're only a fraction of
a light-year out from it and we find this. I've got to know why.Was this an
accident or was it something else?"
"You mean Smith's colony?" Richard asked.
"Isn't it obvious?"
"By my hairy butt," Stasz shouted. "There's someone aboard that hulk!"
They crowded forward to see where he was pointing.
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"There, in that window, I saw a light flashing. Look,it will roll into view
again in another couple of seconds.There, there it is!"
As the window came into view, a strobe flashed once,then again and again in
rapid succession, and in the flash-ing light Ian thought he saw a figure
waving.
After half a dozen passes they were convinced thatthere was somebody alive in
there. But how to get at him?
Twelve hours later they were still debating the ques-tion.
"Look," Stasz repeated yet again, as if they were ig-norant children. "First,
there's no docking port."
"But there does seem to be an airlock."
"We're not sure its functional," Stasz replied. "Second, there's only one
person in here who's had experience withan EVA propulsion device, and that's
me. And if you thinkI'm going out into that floating junkyard, you're
crazy.Remember, comrades, if I buy it, who the hell is going tofly you back
home?"
None of them liked to be reminded of that. Stasz wasall they had, and as such,
he was treated with special carewhen it came to dockings and explorations.
"So, who wants to go?" Shelley asked again, and allwere silent.
"We could always tie a tether line to someone, he couldpush out, and if he
runs into a problem we could reel himback in."
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