Beltrunner

by O’Brien, Sean

  “You are in debt nine hundred and fifty-five thousand, three hundred two point seven seven metals.”

  “Yeah. That’s a lot of money. What do you suppose is going to happen if I can’t pay it back?”

  Sancho didn’t answer.

  “I had to make a deal. With Starcher. I had to put up Dulcinea as security.”

  Sancho replied slowly. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means … it means if we don’t make some kind of strike on this trip, the ship won’t belong to me anymore. But I also made a deal that you would be saved.”

  “How would that work?”

  “I’m not an expert in the technical aspects, but I made sure that your personality and essential hardware would be preserved.” Collier sighed. “You wouldn’t be part of Dulcinea anymore, though.” He paused, then added with difficulty, “Unless you want to be. I could renegotiate, if you want. Make it so that if I lose the ship, you stay intact with her.”

  “I don’t want to be repossessed,” Sancho said simply. “I want to stay with you.”

  Collier swallowed in relief. “Okay, then,” he managed to say.

  “You okay, Skipper? Voice sounds funny.”

  “Shut up. I’m fine.

  *

  “Asteroid showing a disc now,” Sancho said as they made their approach. “It is tumbling pretty quickly, Skipper. Might be a bit tricky.”

  “Never mind. After what we did last time, landing on the Wild Goose will seem like child’s play.”

  “Wild Goose?

  “Yes. Designate target as ‘Wild Goose.’”

  “Confirm, please.”

  “‘Wild Goose.’”

  “Wild Goose confirmed. That’s not going to be accepted by the Authority’s cataloging computer, Skipper.”

  “It’s just for us. We can designate call numbers once we confirm it’s an M-class. Are we ready to hover?”

  “Be about twelve and a half minutes, Skipper. Be ready for hover maneuvering. Manuel control on standby?”

  Collier lay back in his couch, strapped loosely at the chest. “Nah. You’ve got it.”

  Twelve minutes later, Sancho announced, smugly, “Hover established. Relative velocity to Wild Goose axis of rotation 0.00014 meters per second. Relative distance from axis, one hundred meters. Ready for scouting. Fueling Rocinante.”

  “Good work, Sancho. I’ll fly Rocinante, though. You’ve been doing all the work this trip — I feel like I should do something.”

  “Fine with me. Transferring control.”

  Collier expertly maneuvered the blocky craft near the surface of the asteroid, keeping a sharp eye on the rotation of the rock. He flew Rocinante down to the surface, peering into craters and crevasses, sending back telemetry and scans of all kinds for Sancho to analyze.

  “Okay, I think I’ve seen enough. I’m returning Rocinante back to her stable.”

  “Skipper, if you wouldn’t mind, can you head back to these coordinates? I think I have some corrupted data from there.”

  Collier stuck out his lower lip as he studied the display. “Running a little low on fuel, Sancho.”

  “I know. But I want to get this cleared up. Shouldn’t take more than a few seconds.”

  Slightly surprised at his computer’s insistence, Collier maneuvered the scouter to the indicated coordinates and hovered a few meters above the surface. To his trained eye, there was nothing particularly unusual about the area under observation — a typically pockmarked surface, some smooth protuberances here and there — but perhaps Rocinante’s repaired antenna had acted up and sent faulty data back to Sancho.

  “Good enough?” Collier said after half a minute.

  “It’s still coming back strange.”

  “How strange?”

  “Subsurface density readings are … well, I’m getting a zero reading for an area down there. Not a huge one, maybe a pocket one hundred cubic meters, but big enough to register.”

  “A subsurface cave?”

  “That’s what the data says.”

  Collier thought for a moment. “I’m going to bring Rocinante back and go down myself, take a look at it. Transferring control to you. I’m going to suit up.”

  “Aye aye. Control transferred. Rocinante on return vector.”

  Thirty minutes later, Collier left the Dulcinea and headed down to the asteroid. He had to time his descent properly to match with the rock’s spin and land on the proper coordinates, but he and Sancho managed it perfectly.

  “Touchdown. I’m on the surface. How close to the coordinates am I?” Collier radioed back to Sancho.

  “Dead on the money, Skipper.”

  “Good. I’m setting a beacon and a line here.” He fired his pitons and established his foothold on the Wild Goose. “How far down do you estimate the pocket is?”

  “Difficult to say, Skipper. It varies a little, but I estimate three to five meters.”

  Collier chewed his lip. “And you’re still getting the same readings? No mistake?”

  “Same readings, Skipper.”

  Collier had never heard of this. Not only had he never run across any phenomena like this, nor heard stories of it, what he knew of asteroid composition made it all but impossible. Even if there had been, somehow, a pocket of underground ice that had become exposed to the sun and vaporized in a plume, there would be an exhaust vent. Also, the asteroid’s spin did not match a vent on this portion of the rock. Maybe, though, there had been a vent long ago, then the asteroid had collided with another, and the vent had sealed up. That could account for the asteroid’s new spin.

  But underground ice? On such a small body? The Wild Goose was not even roughly spherical, and even on its long axis was not more than seventy meters long.

  Was this a rogue comet that had once been much larger and all that remained was the rocky core? And somehow it had become captured in the Belt?

  Collier shook his head. It didn’t add up. Maybe the Jovians would be interested in it for purely scientific reasons, but he was here to look for P, not try to unlock how this particular piece of space dirt came to be where it was.

  Still, it would be interesting to see what was in the pocket.

  “Okay. I’m going to set the autominer up and let her go. See what’s down there.”

  “I suggest you back away, Skipper. There might be some venting.”

  “I agree. I’ll be a long way away. Setting up the autominer.”

  Collier deftly removed the pieces of the autominer from his backpack and assembled it with the ease of long practice. It took him less than an hour to create the spidery robot and set it down on the surface. Once complete, he toed off and floated away from the robot, setting himself fifty meters away and at an angle away from the robot. If there was going to be any venting, it would miss him entirely. The Dulcinea was not in danger, one hundred meters away. The worst that could happen was she might be pushed away gently by any residual vapor.

  Collier radioed the autominer to begin, and the little robot started its work. In a matter of minutes, a cloud of rubble, composed mostly of fine sand, gently drifted away from the work site and dispersed into space. The autominer slowly descended into the surface of the asteroid as it dug deeper and deeper.

  “In case you’re interested,” Sancho said, “I’m getting some assay reports from the autominer. Based on those, I’m going to classify the Wild Goose as a type S asteroid. Some magnesium, iron, and nickel, but not enough to be exceptional. I would judge that we could… Stand by. The autominer is asking for instructions.”

  Collier could hear the same thing in his helmet. “I hear. I think it’s broken through.” He ordered the autominer to stop work, and tugged on his grounded tether to return to the work site.

  As he came closer, he could see the autominer’s running lights spinning lazily against a
black background. The cloud of sand still floating about the area rapidly dispersed when Collier used his suit thrusters to check his speed as he approached the surface.

  There was no doubt about it: the autominer had indeed broken through into a cavern of some kind in the interior of the asteroid. “If I didn’t see it myself, I wouldn’t believe it. Are you getting this, Sancho?”

  “I read you five by five. And I’m with you. There’s nothing like this in my reference banks.”

  Collier tossed a firefly toward the hole and set another one to stay behind and above him. The first firefly descended into the hole, avoiding the helpless autominer, and illuminated the space therein.

  “As far as the firefly can see, it’s just … like a cave. I don’t see any ice down there, or anything that could suddenly vent out. I’m going in to see for myself.”

  “Use caution, Skipper. There’s no precedent for this.”

  “I hear you,” Collier said, then used his suit thrusters to descend into the hole. He pushed the autominer ahead of him as he went, and bumped into the edges of the opening. “I’m a little too big. I’m going to try to excavate around the opening, make it a little easier to fit through.” He unslung his handheld vibrohammer and started knocking away pieces of the asteroid from the edges of the opening. He was a little surprised at how crumbly the rock was: his v-hammer made short work of the edges of the opening and he found himself floating free in the hole, bits and pieces of rock and sand floating all around him.

  “Okay, that’s better. Continuing descent.” He reactivated his thrusters and gently flew into the cavern.

  The light from the two fireflies was enough to illuminate the entire space: Sancho had overestimated when he had said the space was a hundred meters in volume. “I’m in the cavern. Do you read me, Sancho?”

  “I read you. Can you see anything I can’t? Because I don’t find anything remarkable about it. Except that it’s there at all, of course.”

  “I agree. Let me take some samples.” Collier removed his handheld sampler and started pressing it into the rock walls of the cavern at random intervals. He surveyed the results each time.

  After the fifth sample, he said to Sancho, “I’m not seeing anything unusual here. Just magnesium, nickel, and iron. And not even in unusual concentrations.”

  “I confirm that.”

  Collier swiveled around in the space, as if something would reveal itself if he snuck up on it. The sense of frustration was almost too much to bear. He had made a discovery no one else had ever made, but it had no value that would mean anything to him. The Jovian research stations would be fascinated by the find, but that wouldn’t pay Starcher. He was mostly angry at himself — angry that he had gotten himself into a situation where such an awe-inspiring discovery meant nothing to him. The time had been when he would have been able to appreciate the beauty of the cavern for its own sake, but beauty was a luxury he was finding he had no budget for.

  He slammed the sampler into the rock wall again and again and again, not bothering to give the dedicated computer time to analyze the results but ejecting the material it collected as soon as he withdrew it. He was spinning madly about, each impact on the cavern wall sending him toward the opposite side.

  “Skipper, you’re going too fast. The sampler isn’t—”

  “Shut up!” Collier shouted. The futility of the whole situation had hit him hard.

  On one of his barbarian swipes at the rock wall, the sampler didn’t penetrate. It buzzed queerly at him and Collier was in mid-swipe when he heard it. He managed to stop himself and examined the sampler. It didn’t appear to be damaged, though he might have broken it in one of his mad attacks on the asteroid. He looked back toward the spot where he thought he had last struck the wall of the cavern. In the bright light of the fireflies, he could see a small white circle that was the same size of the handheld sampler striking plate.

  “Skipper? Everything okay?”

  “Stand by, Sancho,” Collier said absently. He raised the sampler again and pressed it against the circle. Again, the sampler did not penetrate but gave off the same buzz. He tried again, but this time missed the circle slightly. Again, the buzz, but the white area grew slightly, marking the new impact area.

  “I think I’ve hit something,” Collier said. With his free hand, he reached for the white area. As his fingers brushed against the surface, more and more of the whiteness underneath was exposed. He put away the sampler and braced himself, looking for purchase so he could more effectively scrape away the material covering up the find. The loose dirt and dust gave way fairly easily, and within three minutes he had revealed a perfectly straight section of glossy whiteness about half a meter long and perhaps ten centimeters wide.

  “Sancho,” Collier said quietly, as if worried he would somehow disturb his findings, “are you seeing this?”

  “I think so. What is it, Skipper?”

  “Damned if I know,” Collier mumbled, once again brushing at the dirt. The space inside the cavern was growing cloudy, but Collier could still see what was before him. The object was curved and smooth.

  “I think it’s something buried in the rock face here. I’m going to excavate manually around it, see if I can find the edges.”

  “Copy that. Be careful, Skipper.”

  Collier selected a tool from this beltline and began to hammer gently away the stony rock around the white tube. Pieces of the asteroid flew crazily off the cavern wall, rebounded against the opposite wall and spun in all directions. In a little while, the space was filled with dust and debris, hampering Collier’s efforts. He held on to the rock face in front of him, swiveled his jets upward, and fired a quick burst from them to clear some the space. He grunted a bit as his arms absorbed the push of his jets. The maneuver worked somewhat: much of the debris had vented out the entrance. By now, he had almost freed the snowy tube from the cavern wall, and he noted that the tube itself was completely unmarred — its glossy surface showed no blemish or discoloration of any kind.

  A few more hammer taps and the tube fell from the wall, gently floating toward Collier’s feet and spinning lazily in the cavern space. It was a featureless white cylinder, perhaps half a meter long and twenty-five centimeters in diameter, perfectly round and flat at both ends. Collier could see no seam where the ends met the curved body of the tube.

  “What is it, Skipper?”

  “I don’t know,” Collier said, running his gauntleted hand across the smooth surface of the tube. He could feel no indentations or protuberances of any kind.

  Sancho asked, “Could it be a surveying marker?”

  Collier continued to feel around the surface of the tube. “I don’t see how. There are no markings on it at all. And I don’t know why anyone would have placed a survey marker in an underground cavern on a rogue asteroid.”

  “Maybe it’s part of some larger device or structure.”

  Collier turned the tube over to examine one of the ends. “Maybe … but it’s completely smooth. It doesn’t look like it has broken off of anything else.”

  “Well, it doesn’t match anything in my records,” Sancho said. “You’ve got me stumped, Skipper.”

  “I’m coming back in. We’ll take a look at it onboard. Maybe the assay equipment will give us some answers.”

  *

  Collier took another squeeze of the fourth generation Tank 8. There wasn’t much of it in storage — his limited budget hadn’t allowed for much — but he felt he had earned a swig. The white tube had resisted all attempts at investigation so far. Even his assay computer had been baffled, reporting “null reading” no matter where the leads had been attached.

  “Can’t even figure out what the damn thing is made out of. It’s pretty, I’ll say that,” Collier said, looking at the image of the cylinder projected in front of him. The tube itself was sealed inside the lead-lined assay chamber, mocking all the
ir attempts to penetrate its secrets.

  “Maybe that’s it,” Sancho said.

  “What is?”

  “Being pretty. Maybe that’s all it is.”

  Collier frowned. “You mean, you think it’s … art?”

  “Could be.”

  He shook his head. “Still doesn’t really answer any questions. How did it get there? Why can’t we figure out anything about it? And for God’s sake, who would bury a piece of art on an asteroid? That makes even less sense than the survey marker idea.”

  “You’re always telling me that art doesn’t follow any rules,” Sancho said petulantly.

  “I never said that.”

  “Yes, you did. Six hundred and one days ago, you said—”

  “You record and store all of our discussions?” Collier was momentarily distracted from the enigma of the white cylinder.

  “No, of course not. Just the ones I think are interesting. You said that the best art makes new rules without trying.”

  “Well, yeah, but that doesn’t mean … never mind.” Collier turned his attention back to the cylinder. “It doesn’t matter right now what it is supposed to do. What matters is how it got there, who made it, what it’s for. And we don’t even know what the goddamn thing is made of.” He rubbed his temples. “Still no heat reading?”

  “Room temperature, Skipper. Almost invisible on infrared.”

  Collier stopped rubbing his head. “Invisible … let’s take a look at it on ultraviolet.”

  “Copy that. Scanning in the ultraviolet spec — stand by.” Sancho’s voice became flat. After a few seconds’ pause, he said in a toneless voice, “Skipper, there are markings all over the tube in the ultraviolet spectrum. They appear to be regular and artificial.”

  “Let me see.”

  The midair display changed to show the tube as Sancho saw it in ultraviolet. There were indeed markings all over the tube — squares with odd designs, sharp lines that ran around the circumference of the tube in varying thicknesses, and markings that resembled tribal tattoos or perhaps obscure mathematical symbols.

  None of it was recognizable.