ground. I hate to askyou, because it won't be pretty out there. But it might be our onlychance."
"I'll go, of course. Ralph?"
"Yes?"
"What is this sargasso, anyway?"
* * * * *
He shrugged as he read the meters on the compressed air tanks. Fourtanks 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 ashe 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 afew ships. Then more. And more. Trapped by mutual gravity. It got biggerand 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 soon. 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 shipsonly, and maybe a couple of hunks of meteoric debris in the beginning.Another theory says there may be a particularly heavy small asteroid inthis maze of wrecks somewhere--you know, superheavy stuff with the atomsstripped of their electrons and the nuclei squeezed together, weighingin the neighborhood of a couple of tons per square inch. That couldaccount for the beginning, but once the thing got started, the wreckedships account for more wrecked ships and pretty soon you have--asargasso."
Diane nodded and said, "You can put my helmet on now."
"All right. Don't forget to check the radio with me before we go out. Ifthe radio doesn't work, then you stay here. Because I want us inconstant radio contact if we're both out there. Is that understood?"
"Yes, sir, captain," she said, and grinned. It was her old grin. He hadnot seen her grin like that for a long time. He had almost forgottenwhat that grin was like. It made her face seem younger and prettier, ashe had remembered it from what seemed so long ago but was only threeyears. It was a wonderful grin and he watched it in the split-secondwhich remained before he swung the heavy helmet up and in place over hershoulders.
Then he put on his own helmet awkwardly and fingered the outside radiocontrols. "Hear me?" he said.
"I can hear you." Her voice was metallic but very clear through the suitradios.
"Then listen. There shouldn't be any danger of getting lost. I'll leavea light on inside the ship and we'll see it through the ports. It willbe the only light, so whatever you do, don't go out of range. As long asyou can always see it, you'll be O.K. Understand?"
"Right," she said as they both climbed into the Gormann '87's airlockand waited for the pressure to leave it and the outer door to swing outinto 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 forany ships that look as old as ours. There ought to be plenty of them andany one of them could have had a Gormann radarscope, although it'sunlikely. 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 anykind."
"Your suit rockets," Ralph said. "You swing around and blast with yoursuit rockets. A porthole should be better than an airlock if it's bigenough 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 losetheir 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. Butwithout air--"
"What are you stopping for?" Diane said. "Please go on."
"A body, without air. Fifteen pounds of pressure per square inch on theinside, 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, blackenormous, the silent ships, the dead sargasso ships, floating slowly by,eternally, unhurried....
"Better make it eight hours," Ralph said over the suit radio. "We'dbetter keep a couple of hours leeway in case I figured wrong. Eighthours and remember, don't get out of sight of the ship's lights anddon't break radio contact under any circumstances. These suit radioswork like miniature radar sets, too. If anything goes wrong, we'll beable 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 hissuit rockets and felt the sudden surge of power drive him clear of theship. He watched Diane rocketing away from him to the right. He wavedhis 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 suitradio. "Ralph, we agreed never to--oh, forget it. Good luck, Ralph. Goodluck, 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 derelictswhich were old enough to have Gormann series eighty radarscopes.Theoretically, Ralph realized, even a newer ship could have one. But itwasn't likely, because if someone could afford a newer ship then hecould afford a better radarscope. But that, he told himself, was onlyhalf the story. The other half was this: with a better radarscope a shipmight not have floundered into the sargasso at all....
So it was hardly possible to pass up any ship if their life depended onit--and the going was slow.
Too slow.
He had entered some dozen ships in the first four hours turning, usinghis shoulder rockets to blast a port hole out and climb in throughthere. 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 theradarscope....
They were dead. They had been dead for years but of course there wouldbe no decomposition in the airless void of space and very little even ifair had remained until he blasted his way in, for the air was sterilecanned spaceship air. They were dead, and they were bloated. Allimpossibly fat men, with white faces like melons and gross bodies likeTweedle Dee's and limbs like fat sausages.
By the fifth ship he was sick to his stomach, but by the tenth he hadachieved the necessary detachment to continue his task. Once--it was theeighth ship--he found a Gormann series eighty radarscope, and his heartpounded when he saw it. But the scope was hopelessly damaged, as bad astheir own. Aside from that one, he did not encounter any, damaged or ingood shape, which they might convert to their own use.
Four hours, he thought. Four hours and twelve ships. Diane reportedevery few moments by intercom. In her first four hours she had visitedeight ships. Her voice sounded funny. She was fighting it every step ofthe way he thought. It must have been hell to her, breaking into thosewrecks 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 nosense at all. The flesh could not possibly have decomposed. Curious, heclomped closer on his magnetic boots. Even if the flesh had decomposed,the clothing would have remained. But it was a skeleton pickedcompletely 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 alittle sick. There were other corpses aboard the ship, a batteredThompson '81 in worse shape than their own Gormann. Bodies, notskeletons. Bu
t when they had entered the sargasso they had apparentlystruck another ship. One whole side of the Thompson was smashed in andRalph could see the repair patches on the wall. Near them and thoroughlydestroyed, were the Thompson's spacesuits.
The galley lockers were empty when Ralph found them. All the foodgone--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 wasdark. You could see a great way. You
The Graveyard of Space Page 2