John started moving more rapidly over the metal plate. He knew what he was looking for, now. What he had to find - some sort of control system or panel. A bump ahead caught his eye, and as he brushed his fingers over the thick coat of dust covering the small bulge, it began to glow. He worked more frantically to clear the dust away. It was about the size of a thick hardcover book, and looked like glass. Flickering neon green symbols flashed across it. He had no way to read them, no way to make sense of whatever it was trying to say.
John's breaths were coming in fast gasps. One green icon was not changing. All around it, the other symbols kept altering their shape, flowing from one form into another. But that one was fixed. He reached out and touched it with his finger.
A hatch opened in the hull beside him. He threw himself inside. The air was too thin. John was seeing spots flash over his vision as he tumbled into the small cubby inside the hull. It was about the size of a small closet. An airlock?
With the last of his strength he reached out for another panel on the inside of the door and tapped the same symbol there. The door snapped shut.
And then...nothing. He wasn't sure what he'd been hoping for. Some sort of miracle, maybe. But there was nothing besides the still flickering green lights of the panel illuminating the dark space he lay inside. It was a little big for a coffin, but John was struck with the sudden sense that this might well become his final resting place.
Darkness crept in around the edges of his sight. His breath was fast, despite his best efforts to control his breathing, to slow the rate. There simply wasn't enough oxygen left in his suit to keep him alive. He banged his fist against the wall in frustration, and it echoed with a metallic clang. To have come so close, only to fail! He was certain that if only his brain didn't feel like it was thick with fog, he could figure the problem out. If only that distracting hissing noise around him wasn't droning on, maybe he could think.
Hissing noise? John froze, working to concentrate as best he could. Yes, there was a clearly audible hissing sound. And he'd heard the clang when he struck the wall. But that was impossible. Sound didn't carry in a vacuum.
Which meant he was no longer in a vacuum. The hissing must be some sort of gas pumping into the space around him. It was some kind of airlock, after all, and it was cycling, pouring air in. But was it breathable? If this ship was made on Earth, then odds were that it would be. But those symbols he'd seen looked like no language on Earth. Nor did the technology look and feel like something any of the space agencies had used.
Which meant the vessel was probably from somewhere else, and the gas pumping in might be deadly to him.
"On the flip side," he gasped. "I'm dead anyway."
John undid the clasps holding his helmet in place. There was the smallest puff as the seals opened. The pressure outside his suit was almost the same as what was left inside it. The air didn't burn his eyes, so that cut out a number of problem gasses. There was only one real way to know for sure, though.
John exhaled what was left of the air in his lungs and took a deep breath.
John was back outside, waiting on the outer hull of the alien ship when Andrew returned. He knew his friend was almost there when the rope dropped soundlessly from the cliff. A few seconds later Andrew himself descended. John went over to stand beside him.
"Are you all right?" Andrew asked. "How's your oxygen?"
"Very low, but I'll manage," John said.
"How?" Andrew asked, confused. The young man's eyes darted down to John's leg. The tape he'd wrapped around the leg as a rough patch was gone, replaced by a far superior tape repair.
John had slid out of his suit, inside the alien ship, then used the tape to patch the hole from both the inside and out. It was the sort of fix he could only have done in an oxygenated environment, and he knew that Andrew would be aware of that.
"I've only got the air in my suit," John said. "I'll explain later, I promise - but can we get back to the ship first? I don't want to cut this any closer than I have to."
"I brought you a spare tank," Andrew said, holding out the canister.
John took it, clamped it to his suit, and activated the release valve. He sighed with relief as fresh air began pumping into his suit. He could breathe easily again. John toyed with the idea of going back inside the ship and exploring it more. He could show the thing to Andrew, and they could search the entire place together.
But no. Discretion was likely the better part of valor here. Best to come back later, with more preparation.
"That feels much better. But I'd still like to head back to the shuttle. No telling how long this patch will hold," John said.
"Of course," Andrew said. "Let's move, then. You first up the rope."
John began to ascend, his mind elsewhere. The ship below him still had power. He'd studied the rock around the ship. By his best guess, it had been buried there for at least a thousand years. That it was still functioning at all after so much time was remarkable. That it still had enough power to activate an airlock and fill it with breathable air was a miracle. A power source strong enough to last that long might solve all of Earth's energy problems.
Or it could catapult the planet into a final war that no one could possibly afford, every nation vying for control over the alien ship.
John made a silent decision as he climbed. He would keep the ship secret. He would build his base here, ostensibly to mine helium-3, and part of the base really would mine the precious fuel for Earth's fusion reactors.
But the rest of the base - the part he would keep hidden from all but a few trusted souls - would study the ship he had discovered. He would learn the secrets of its energy source. John vowed he would bring the best minds he could find in to learn all he could about the thing. Maybe, if he was very lucky and his team very good, he could get the thing to fly again. Wouldn't that be something, he mused?
He hadn't felt so excited, so eager to get started, in a long time.
"You OK, John?" Andrew asked for what felt like the tenth time, as he reached the top of the rope.
"Yes, just lost in thought. Near-death experiences do that to me, I suppose."
"I'm sorry this place didn't work out, but after the close call you had, I imagine we'll be looking for a different site for your base," Andrew said.
"No, I think this one will be perfect," John replied. He looked back over his shoulder, part of him longing to return to the ship, to begin the work as soon as possible. Patience, he told himself. It's been there a long time. A little longer won't hurt anything.
He couldn't shake the feeling of urgency, though.
Because once the airlock had finished pressurizing, the inner door had opened as well. He hadn't gone far into the interior of the ship. Bulkhead doors had cut off his access to most of it. But he'd been able to peer through windows into the sections that were sealed off. They were open to vacuum, holes in the hull venting any air inside them into space.
John had been able to see the damaged areas pretty well through those windows. The hull in those areas wasn't deteriorated with age. If anything, the entire ship seemed almost untouched by time. Twisted metal, melted slag on deck plates, and scorch marks on the walls told their own tale for him.
This ship hadn't been damaged in the millennia it had rested within the cave. It had more power and was better constructed than anything Earth had ever built. And it was covered with patches of what could only be battle damage.
Something had shot the ship down.
John shivered. Who had done it? Why? And perhaps most important of all - if there were multiple alien races out there in space, capable of building such ships and willing to wage war on one another...
When might they return?
* * *
My readers have asked for years now how the Satori series got its start. How did John first find the alien ship? What prompted him to keep it a secret? In this story, all of that is told at long last. The saga which starts here continues in Ad Astra - the first book o
f the Adventures of the Starship Satori series - and continues through a total of seven novels as of this writing, with plans for at least five more to come! You can find the next adventure here: http://mybook.to/satori1
I hope you’ve enjoyed this short story. I love getting feedback from readers. Please feel free to email the author any time at [email protected]. Thank you for reading!
Finding Satori: A Starship Satori Short Story Page 2