"The first thing you're going to do is to write a book that will complement these recordings—a memoir telling the story of the discovery—and loss—of the Cape Hatteras." Ed’s statement was followed by an abrupt click. His comment didn’t offer a choice; it amounted to an order. I could do that much, I thought.
"I will," I said, ending that simple response with my own click. I hoped that he'd at least hire a ghostwriter for me, even if it was just a fourth-rate author of science fiction. I can't say I was too excited about having my dark-matter dreams published though. It seemed . . . voyeuristic. I ticked off the minutes until demand number two while staring at Janet.
"And while you're getting that done, the second thing you're going to do is to resupply at Mars. You'll need to stock a large amount of food and fuel in modular pods attached to your ship. You should even consider having some extra fuel tanks mounted just in case. I've got something big, and I need someone I can trust. I think that person is you, Cam. You might drop the largest concentrated quantity of gold in the solar system right into the goddamn atmosphere of Saturn, but at least you told me the truth. You're going to work my new salvage project, though at a smaller share than last time. It's the secret I mentioned to you a year ago, Cam. It's huge, and I'm confident it can be done. Will you do it?"
The end-of-message click came through. He had asked me whether I would do it, but it was just a courtesy. Deep down I knew it was really just another order.
"I'm in," I said after looking around at Kurt, Stacey, and the others and seeing nods of agreement. Waiting a few minutes for his response seemed a longer period of time than the last year had been.
"It's in the far outer solar system and comes from one of the earliest accounts of the Oort cloud when Captain Langley skirted the inner regions. He thought he saw a station or a ship out there. It was enormous, though, more the size of an asteroid than a ship. It wasn't like anything he'd ever seen, but he couldn't get close to it for lack of fuel. He just knew that it looked artificial and wondered whether one of the other unions had sent a high-tech secret mission out there before the UNAG. As far as I can tell, none of them had.
"Guiscard Van der Shark . . . er . . . Boort, also saw it, but he dismissed it as just a strangely shaped planetoid and never went close enough to investigate. Nevertheless, it gnawed at him when he got back to Earth. Eventually he came to believe that something wasn't quite right with it. He could never get the mystery out of his head and mentioned it in his memoirs. They were never published because he hadn't finished them before the shark ate him, but I obtained a copy. It cost me a small fortune, but who wouldn't want to be the first person to read about his adventures? Anyway, I pored over the instrument readings I requested from you. They were taken during that expedition. What I found convinced me to commission a long-range space telescope specifically designed to search for what he saw and photograph it in high resolution. But it's not what they thought, Cam. It's much bigger than that."
It must have been big. I can only imagine what a telescope like that cost him.
"Your mission will be to go to the Oort cloud. You will be travelling into an area of space where no one has ever been before. It’s so far out that it will take over two months for a communications signal to reach Earth. For all intents and purposes you'll be out of contact and totally on your own. You'll also travel faster than any person in human history. I've got the specifics of the mission and an engine retrofit for your ship waiting for you at Mars. I can't say much more under these circumstances. Can you guarantee on your end that you trust everyone implicitly and that they'll all be going on the mission? If you can, please have Janet input her MR-2.21 encoding protocols from the Hyperion's secured communication frequencies to your ship and have her enter her command code."
I looked at Janet. She smiled and nodded her approval.
"I can, and she's doing it now," I replied, before ending the transmission. She entered the protocol in the computer. Minutes later a response came.
"I think it's an alien ship, but much bigger than anything you can imagine," said Ed, "a kind of artificial planet that has been coursing through space below the speed of light over millions of years. We don't know where it came from, or where it was going, but it looks as though something went wrong. It seems to be dead in space, and we think it's been there for a very long time. We want you to explore it."
Perhaps the Cape Hatteras hadn't been my greatest moment after all. I looked at Stacey, but I didn't have to say a word. She had already set a course for Mars.
The Salvagers Page 23