The Final Frontier

by Neil Clarke

  She understands what I’m asking. She gives me a disapproving sideways look. “I took the vids before she even had the suit off.”

  Technically, that’s what I want to hear, and yet it’s not what I want to hear. I want something to be tampered with, something to be slightly off because then, maybe then, Jypé would still be alive.

  “Look,” Karl says, nodding toward the screen.

  I have to force myself to see it. The eyes don’t want to focus. I know what happens next—or at least, how it ends up. I don’t need the visual confirmation.

  Yet I do. The vid can save us, if the authorities come back. Turtle, Karl, even Squishy can testify to my rules. And my rules state that an obviously dangerous site should be avoided. Probes get to map places like this first.

  Only I know J&J didn’t send in a probe. They might not have because we lost the other so easily, but most likely, it was that greed, the same one which has been affecting me. The tantalizing idea that somehow, this wreck, with its ancient secrets, is the dive of a lifetime—the discovery of a lifetime.

  And the hell of it is, beneath the fear and the panic and the anger—more at myself than at Squishy for breaking our pact—that greed remains.

  I’m thinking, if we can just get the stealth tech before the authorities arrive, it’ll all be worth it. We’ll have a chip, something to bargain with.

  Something to sell to save our own skins.

  Junior goes in. His father doesn’t tell him not to. Junior’s blurry on the vid—a human form in an environmental suit, darker than the pile of things in the center of the room, but grayer than the black around them.

  And it’s Junior who says, “It’s open,” and Junior who mutters “Wow” and Junior who says, “Jackpot, huh?” when I thought all of that had been a dialogue between them.

  He points at a hole in the pile, then heads toward it, but his father moves forward quickly, grabbing his arm. They don’t talk—apparently that was the way they worked, such an understanding they didn’t need to say much, which makes my heart twist—and together they head around the pile.

  The cockpit shifts. It has large screens that appear to be unretractable. They’re off, big blank canvases against dark walls. No windows in the cockpit at all, which is another one of those technologically arrogant things—what happens if the screen technology fails?

  The pile is truly in the middle of the room, a big lump of things. Why Jypé called it a battlefield, I don’t know. Because of the pile? Because everything is ripped up and moved around?

  My arms get even tighter, my fists clenched so hard my knuckles hurt.

  On the vid, Junior breaks away from his father, and moves toward the front (if you can call it that) of the pile. He’s looking at what the pile’s attached to.

  He mimes removing pieces, and the cameras shake. Apparently Jypé is shaking his head.

  Yet Junior reaches in there anyway. He examines each piece before he touches it, then pushes at it, which seems to move the entire pile. He moves in closer, the pile beside him, something I can’t see on his other side. He’s floating, head first, exactly like we’re not supposed to go into one of these spaces—he’d have trouble backing out if there’s a problem—

  And of course there is.

  Was.

  “Ah, hell,” I whisper.

  Karl nods. Turtle puts her head in her hands.

  On screen nothing moves.

  Nothing at all.

  Seconds go by, maybe a minute—I forgot to look at the digital readout from earlier, so I don’t exactly know—and then, finally, Jypé moves forward.

  He reaches Junior’s side, but doesn’t touch him. Instead the cameras peer in, so I’m thinking maybe Jypé does too.

  And then the monologue begins.

  I’ve only heard it once, but I have it memorized.

  Almost time.

  Dad, you’ve gotta see this.

  Jypé’s suit shows us something—a wave? A blackness? A table?—something barely visible just beyond Junior. Junior reaches for it, and then—

  Fuck!

  The word sounds distorted here. I don’t remember it being distorted, but I do remember being unable to understand the emotion behind it. Was that from the distortion? Or my lack of attention?

  Jypé has forgotten to use his cameras. He’s moved so close to the objects in the pile that all we can see now are rounded corners and broken metal (apparently these did break off then) and sharp, sharp edges.

  Move your arm.

  But I see no corresponding movement. The visuals remain the same, just like they did when I was watching from the skip.

  Just a little to the left.

  And then:

  We’re five minutes past departure.

  That was panic. I had missed it the first time, but the panic began right there. Right at that moment.

  Karl covers his mouth.

  On screen, Jypé turns slightly. His hands grasp boots and I’m assuming he’s tugging.

  Great. But I see nothing to feel great about. Nothing has moved. Keep going.

  Going where? Nothing is changing. Jypé can see that, can’t he?

  The hands seem to tighten their grip on the boots, or maybe I’m imagining that because that’s what my hands would do.

  We got it.

  Is that a slight movement? I step away from the wall, move closer to the vid, as if I can actually help.

  Now careful.

  This is almost worse because I know what’s coming, I know Junior doesn’t get out, Jypé doesn’t survive. I know—

  Careful—son of a bitch!

  The hands slid off the boot, only to grasp back on. And there’s desperation in that movement, and lack of caution, no checking for edges nearby, no standard rescue procedures.

  Move, move, move—ah, hell.

  This time, the hands stay. And tug—clearly tug—sliding off.

  C’mon.

  Sliding again.

  C’mon son,

  And again.

  just one more,

  And again.

  c’mon, help me, c’mon.

  Until, finally, in despair, the hands fall off. The feet are motionless, and, to my untrained eye, appear to be in the same position they were in before.

  Now Jypé’s breathing dominates the sound—which I don’t remember at all—maybe that kind of hiss doesn’t make it through our patchwork system— and then vid whirls. He’s reaching, grabbing, trying to pull things off the pile, and there’s no pulling, everything goes back like it’s magnetized.

  He staggers backwards—all except his hand, which seems attached—sharp edges? No, his suit wasn’t compromised—and then, at the last moment, eases away.

  Away, backing away, the visuals are still of those boots sticking out of that pile, and I squint, and I wonder—am I seeing other boots? Ones that are less familiar?—and finally he’s bumping against walls, losing track of himself.

  He turns, moves away, coming for help even though he has to know I won’t help (although I did) and panicked—so clearly panicked. He gets to the end of the corridor, and I wave my hand.

  “Turn it off.” I know how this plays out. I don’t need any more.

  None of us do. Besides, I’m the only one watching. Turtle still has her face in her hands, and Karl’s eyes are squinched shut, as if he can keep out the horrible experience just by blocking the images.

  I grab the controls and shut the damn thing off myself.

  Then I slide onto the floor and bow my head. Squishy was right, dammit. She was so right. This ship has stealth tech. It’s the only thing still working, that one faint energy signature that attracted me in the first place, and it has killed Junior.

  And Jypé.

  And if I’d gone in, it would’ve killed me.

  No wonder she left. No wonder she ran. This is some kind of flashback for her, something she feels we can never ever win.

  And I’m beginning to think she’s right, when a thought flits across my brain
.

  I frown, flick the screen back on, and search for Jypé’s map. He had the system on automatic, so the map goes clear to the cockpit.

  I superimpose that map on the exterior, accounting for movement, accounting for change—

  And there it is, clear as anything.

  The probe, our stuck probe, is pressing against whatever’s near Junior’s faceplate.

  I’m worried about what’ll happen if the stealth tech is open to space, and it always has been—at least since I stumbled on the wreck.

  Open to space and open for the taking.

  Karl’s watching me. “What’re you gonna do?”

  Only that doesn’t sound like his voice. It’s the greed. It’s the greed talking, that emotion I so blithely assumed I didn’t have.

  Everyone can be snared, just in different ways.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I say. “I have no idea at all.”

  *

  I go back to my room, sit on the bed, stare at the portal which, mercifully, doesn’t show the distant wreck.

  I’m out of ideas, out of energy, and out of time.

  Squishy and the cavalry’ll be here soon, to take the wreck from me, confiscate it, and send it into governmental oblivion.

  And then my career is over. No more dives, no more space travel.

  No more nothing.

  I think I doze once because suddenly I’m staring at Junior’s face inside his helmet. His eyes move, ever so slowly, and I realize—in the space of a heartbeat— that he’s alive in there: his body’s in our dimension, his head on the way to another.

  And I know, as plainly as I know that he’s alive, that he’ll suffer a long and hideous death if I don’t help him, so I grab one of the sharp edges—with my bare hands (such an obvious dream)—and slice the side of his suit.

  Saving him.

  Damning him.

  Condemning him to an even uglier slow death than the one he would otherwise experience.

  I jerk awake, nearly hitting my head on the wall. My breath is coming in short gasps. What if the dream is true? What if he is still alive? No one understands interdimensional travel, so he could be, but even if he is, I can do nothing.

  Absolutely nothing, without condemning myself.

  If I go in and try to free him, I will get caught as surely as he is. So will anyone else.

  I close my eyes, but don’t lean back to my pillow. I don’t want to fall asleep again. I don’t want to dream again, not with these thoughts on my mind. The nightmares I’d have, all because stealth tech exists are terrifying, worse than any I’d had as a child—

  And then my breath catches. I open my eyes, rub the sleep from them, think:

  This is a Dignity Vessel. Dignity Vessels have stealth tech, unless they’ve been stripped of them. Squishy described stealth tech to me—and this vessel, this wreck has an original version.

  Stealth tech has value.

  Real value, unlike any wreck I’ve found before.

  I can stake a claim. The time to worry about pirates and privacy is long gone, now.

  I get out of bed, pace around the small room. Staking a claim is so foreign to wreck-divers. We keep our favorite wrecks hidden, our best dives secret from pirates and wreck divers and the government.

  But I’m not going to dive this wreck. I’m not going in again—none of my people are—and so it doesn’t matter that the entire universe knows what I have here.

  Except that other divers will come, gold-diggers will try to rob me of my claim—and I can collect fees from anyone willing to mine this, anyone willing to risk losing their life in a long and hideous way.

  Or I can salvage the wreck and sell it. The government buys salvage.

  If I file a claim, I’m not vulnerable to citations, not even to reckless homicide charges, because everyone knows that mining exacts a price. It doesn’t matter what kind of claim you mine, you could still lose some, or all, of your crew.

  But best of all, if I stake a claim on that wreck, I can quarantine it—and prosecute anyone who violates the quarantine. I can stop people from getting near the stealth tech if I so choose.

  Or I can demand that whoever tries to retrieve it, retrieve Junior’s body.

  His face rises, unbidden, not the boy I’d known, but the boy I’d dreamed of, half-alive, waiting to die.

  I know there are horrible deaths in space. I know that wreck-divers suffer some of the worst.

  I carry these images with me, and now, it seems, I’ll carry Junior’s.

  Is that why Jypé made me promise to go in? Had he had the same vision of his son?

  I sit down at the network, and call up the claim form. It’s so simple. The key is giving up accurate coordinates. The system’ll do a quick double-check to see if anyone else has filed a claim, and if so, an automatic arbitrator will ask if I care to withdraw. If I do not, then the entire thing will go to the nearest court.

  My hands itch. This is so contrary to my training.

  I start to file—and then stop.

  I close my eyes—and he’s there again, barely moving, but alive.

  If I do this, Junior will haunt me until the end of my life. If I do this, I’ll always wonder.

  Wreck-divers take silly, unnecessary risks, by definition.

  The only thing that’s stopping me from taking this one is Squishy and her urge for caution.

  Wreck-divers flirt with death.

  I stand. It’s time for a rendezvous.

  Turtle won’t go in. She’s stressed, terrified, and blinded by Squishy’s betrayal. She’d be useless on a dive anyway, not clear-headed enough, and probably too reckless.

  Karl has no qualms. His fears have left. When I propose a dive to see what happened in there, he actually grins at me.

  “Thought you weren’t gonna come around,” he says.

  But I have.

  Turtle mans the skip. Karl and I have gone in. We’ve decided on 30/40/30, because we’re going to investigate that cockpit. Karl theorizes that there’s some kind of off switch for the stealth tech, and of course he’s right. But the wreck has no real power, and since the designers had too much faith in their technology to build redundant safety systems, I’m assuming they had too much faith to design an off switch for their most dangerous technology, a dead-man’s switch that’ll allow the stealth tech to go off even if the wreck has no power.

  I mention that to Karl and he gives me a startled look.

  “You ever wonder what’s keeping the stealth tech on then?” he asks.

  I’ve wondered, but I have no answer. Maybe when Squishy comes back with the government ships, maybe then I’ll ask her. What my non-scientific mind is wondering is this: Can the stealth tech operate from both dimensions? Is something on the other side powering it?

  Is part of the wreck—that hole we found in the hull on the first day, maybe—still in that other dimension?

  Karl and I suit up, take extra oxygen, and double-check our suit’s environmental controls. I’m not giddy this trip—I’m not sure I’ll be giddy again—but I’m not scared either.

  Just coldly determined.

  I promised Jypé I was going back for Junior, and now I am.

  No matter what the risk.

  The trip across is simple, quick, and familiar. Going down the entrance no longer seems like an adventure. We hit the corridors with fifteen minutes to spare.

  Jypé’s map is accurate to the millimeter. His push-off points are marked on the map and with some corresponding glove grip. We make record time as we head toward that cockpit.

  Record time, though, is still slow. I find myself wishing for all my senses: sound, smell, taste. I want to know if the effects of the stealth tech have made it out here, if something is off in the air—a bit of a burnt smell, something foreign that raises the small hairs on the back of my neck. I want to know if Junior is already decomposing, if he’s part of a group (the crew?) pushed up against the stealth tech, never to go free again.

  But the wreck
doesn’t cough up those kind of details. This corridor looks the same as the other corridor I pulled my way through.

  Karl moves as quickly as I do, although his suit lights are on so full that looking at him almost blinds me. That’s what I did to Turtle on our trip, and it’s a sign of nervousness.

  It doesn’t surprise me that Karl, who claimed not to be afraid, is nervous. He’s the one who had doubts about this trip once he’d been inside the wreck. He’s the one I thought wouldn’t make it through all of his scheduled dives.

  The cockpit looms in front of us, the doors stuck open. It does look like a battlefield from this vantage: the broken furniture, the destruction all cobbled together on one side of the room, like a barricade.

  The odd part about it is, though, that the barricade runs from floor to ceiling, and unlike most things in zero-G, seem stuck in place.

  Neither Karl nor I give the barricade much time. We’ve vowed to explore the rest of the cockpit first, looking for the elusive dead-man switch. We have to be careful; the sharp edges are everywhere.

  Before we left, we used the visuals from Jypé’s suit, and his half-finished map, to assign each other areas of the cockpit to explore. I’m going deep, mostly because this is my idea, and deep—we both feel—is the most dangerous place. It’s closest to the probe, closest to that corner of the cockpit where Junior still hangs, horizontal, his boots kicking out into the open.

  I go in the center, heading toward the back, not using hand-holds. I’ve pushed off the wall, so I have some momentum, a technique that isn’t really my strong suit. But I volunteered for this, knowing the edges in the front would slow me down, knowing that the walls would raise my fears to an almost incalculable height.

  Instead, I float over the middle of the room, see the uprooted metal of chairs and the ripped shreds of consoles. There are actual wires protruding from the middle of that mess, wires and stripped bolts—something I haven’t seen in space before, only in old colonies—and my stomach churns as I move forward.

  The back wall is dark, with its distended screen. The cockpit feels like a cave instead of the hub of the Dignity Vessel. I wonder how so many people could have trusted their lives to this place.

  Just before I reach the wall, I spin so that I hit it with the soles of my boots. The soles have the toughest material on my suit. The wall is mostly smooth, but there are a few edges here, too—more stripped bolts, a few twisted metal pieces that I have no idea what they once were part of.