was it doing in the Ochent Nebula, far from all galactic civilization? And racing along at near light-speed, to boot?
She and Rhodan reached the end of the hangar. Before them rose a wall that spanned the ship's entire width. The layer of ice hid from their view the hatch that must connect the cargo hold with the shuttle's bow.
Sharita extended her little finger on the hand holding the beamer and tapped the picosyn on the other wrist. A series of diagrams and schematics flashed rapidly across the tiny screen.
She gave a grunt of satisfaction, then aimed her beamer at a point about three meters to the right of where she stood. A wide green beam of energy melted several square meters of ice. When the steam dispersed and condensed somewhere else, Sharita could see a discolored metal surface.
No wonder, she thought. The builders of this shuttle never dreamed that its interior would be exposed to temperatures near absolute zero. The materials weren't up to the strain.
"Aha! There's our hatch!"
A rectangle of straight lines had appeared on the wall, wide enough to allow two people to walk through simultaneously.
Sharita fired her beamer.
"No!" Rhodan exclaimed, but it was too late. The disintegrator ray traced the outline of the hatch. The metal didn't offer any significant resistance. Where it was touched by the beam, it dissolved into greenish gas. Along the outline of the hatch the metal suddenly turned black.
A few moments later, deprived of its support, the hatch tipped forward, falling with an echoing impact that must have been heard in the Palenque's control center.
"Now what's bothering you? I suppose I should have waited for a team of specialists to carefully open the hatch so I wouldn't destroy anything valuable?"
"Yes, and—"
"I don't know what's eating you," she interrupted. "Even they couldn't have managed a better cutting job, right?"
"Hardly."
"So what's the problem?"
"I think I saw lettering. Left of the hatch at eye level."
"Intercosmo, maybe? 'Please don't shoot—the key is under the mat!'"
Rhodan didn't answer her sarcasm. "No, not Intercosmo. But a language that seemed familiar to me."
Well, crap. I really messed up that one. If I keep going like this, I'm likely to blow up the whole Palenque out of pure nervousness.
"There's no reason to get excited," she said, trying to downplay her mistake. "That can't have been the only lettering in this entire thing."
Rhodan nodded absently. His thoughts were clearly somewhere else.
Another icescape awaited them beyond the hatchway, though on a much smaller scale. They found themselves in a narrow corridor from which other passageways branched off, lined with doors instead of hatches. Sharita decided that they had penetrated the crew quarters. The engine must have been in the stern section, which had collided with the crawler.
For the next few minutes, they traveled through the corridors and climbed up several decks using primitive ladders. The ladders were installed in square shafts and their rungs studded all four walls.
"No antigravity," Rhodan remarked. "I believe this craft is designed for spaceflight without artificial gravity. In weightlessness, you move by pushing off from the rungs and then grabbing on to them again. In acceleration phases or in planetary gravitational fields, they're used like conventional ladders. Primitive, but absolutely maintenance-free."
Sharita hardly noticed her surroundings. Her left-hand little finger—she wasn't letting go of the beamer in her right hand—raced over her picosyn as she called up data, took measurements and ran scans. She stopped rather suddenly.
"Got something?" Rhodan asked.
"Um ... " Sharita tapped the display again. "There is something that stands out."
"Yes?"
"Over there." She pointed to a section of the wall several meters further on. "It's too warm. It's much too warm behind that."
Sharita was so fascinated by her armband's readings that for a moment she even forgot her resentful feeling of being on trial.
"What's the temperature?"
"Minus one point three centigrade—which means fourteen point eight degrees warmer than in here."
"Energy emissions?"
"None. There aren't any energy-generating devices in this part of the wreck. If there even were any emergency systems, they haven't worked for a very long time."
"So the reading must be an error."
"I ran the picosyn's self-diagnostic. The armband is in perfect working order."
They exchanged glances.
"Let's take a look."
Sharita aimed her beamer at the section of the wall where the heat source registered. The disintegration ray made slow progress cutting through the barely visible hatch.
"This hatch is a lot thicker than the first one," she called over the hissing of the melting metal.
"Maybe it's a rescue pod that's designed to be ejected in an emergency."
Sharita's beamer continued to burn through the wall. The loosened hatch fell away, and Sharita stepped first through the opening, her beamer held ready.
She found herself in a tiny room, this one somehow free of the ice that coated the rest of the wreck. In the weak light beam from her armband, Sharita could see several contour seats anchored to the floor, and in front of them instrument panels and dark, dead screens. At the other end of the room, she saw an opening that led into a kind of cockpit. And in front of that opening, on the floor—
"A body!"
Venron hears a noise. A crash that reminds him he is still alive; the cold has not eaten him. Not yet.
Sharita's light hovered on a human form. The body had drawn itself up into the fetal position, with its back turned toward them. One arm was outstretched, as though the being had been trying to reach something. The body was dressed in lightweight trousers and a shirt that appeared colorless and faded.
Light. Not the light of the stars. This is softer. Venron tries to open eyelids that are frozen together. He manages only a narrow crack. The colors do not seem right. It is as though the cold has frozen even them. He sees the dully colored floor of the shuttle. And an arm. A long moment passes before he recognizes the emaciated limb as his own arm. He had stretched it out. He had thought he could touch her. Grasp her with his hand and cling to her. Who? he wonders. He has forgotten.
"That ... that ... "
Sharita's mind told her to run to the figure on the floor, to help him or her, but her body didn't obey. It was as if her body had frozen at the moment of the discovery. She felt ashamed. How could she have been playing games with Rhodan to save her pride when someone lay here dying?
Rhodan
