It started bad and only got worse. Much worse.
“Man, Colt, we got to go back. I tell ya. Back. Got to go back.” Even through the electronically reproduced sound, Pup-man’s terror could be felt. If Colt ever had a nightmare as a boy about entering the belly of some unimaginably large beast, he lived it now. This second.
Damn Cap for making me do this. Making me have to overthrow him. Bastard.
“Pu…” he began, then cut himself off. “Jiptom, no sweat, here, right,” he started again, rattled he’d almost let slip what he thought of the whiner. “You can make it happen. Bring it home. Think of the prize. Got to be something here to rock your world.”
Jiptom’s helmet stopped swiveling in fear and turned towards him. Nodded after a moment. “Okay. You bossman. The prize worth this danger?”
“Course it is.” Damn well better be.
The two of them entered through the holes torn into the aft of the vessel, after anchoring the ship to the outer bulkhead. EVAs usually didn’t bother a shipper. However, when the stars looked like pin pricks in the blackness and you realized how many light years away from a star and supposed safety you were…not many could survive that. Colt always laughed at such comments. After all, get a leak in your suit, lose your safety line or run out of fuel and it didn’t matter if you were hugging an atmosphere or plugging in the void, dead was dead.
This time around, however, for once, the pressure built, until he couldn’t ignore it. Couldn’t ignore this strange ship; couldn’t ignore how far out of normal traffic lanes they were, with no safety net of a standard solar system; couldn’t ignore trying to instigate a mutiny. Along with the claustrophobia, it almost made it more than he could bear.
Cap.
Only that word kept it all at bay. Allowed him to crawl over twisted, metal teeth and down into the beast’s gullet. Course, having someone to browbeat helped.
Now, almost an hour later, after dropping some two dozen blinkers to light an escape route, the corridor simply seemed to go on forever. Three more hours and they’d have to head back. No air.
They trudged on, time stuck between ticks, interminable. Finally, they came to a new hatch. New type, different metal. Colt could tell immediately a new section of the ship would begin here. The last block to the next? They already passed that point? He simply couldn’t tell.
“We going in there, bossman?”
Colt could get used to that word. “Yup. Need to get to the front of the ship. Or captain’s quarters. Something to tell us what the hell this ship is.”
“Yeah. I tell ya, cap’s quarter. Most ships have ‘em in the same spot, right bossman.”
“Except this isn’t most ships.” He didn’t mean to bring back the unease they both felt. “Let’s do this,” Colt barked.
Grasping the wheel, he wedged his feet into the corner and threw his muscles into action. For several long seconds, nothing happened.
“Little help.”
“Oh, course. Sorry man.” Pup-man got on the other side, wedged his own feet and both poured it on. Once again, nothing for several long seconds. Then, with a screech that brought to mind ghouls and banshees in forgotten graves, the wheel cut loose and slowly began to turn. Forcing it the entire distance, it finally un-dogged; another giant chore getting the hatch open as well.
Panting with the exertion, Colt stepped through and played his wrist-mounted lamp around. “What the—”
They stood on a catwalk—one of several dozen marching horizontally up the bulkhead—which ran around an immense chamber, might well fill this entire cube section. Though the high-powered light couldn’t penetrate the dimness to more than half way, he could just make out the massive cylindrical structure that pierced the center of the cube, passing into it and out of it; the Kearny-Fuchida drive?
Damn, damn big drive, though. What the hell? Has to be three times the diameter of the Voidjumper’s.
Around the jump drive, a mammoth latticework rose, around which hundreds of colossal tank-type structures hung, like grapes on a vine. If they’d been on a catwalk above or below, there would’ve been no seeing the center, would’ve been blocked by the tanks which marched along the lattice work, all the way to the bulkheads, in every direction.
“I tell ya. That is one hell of a lot of fuel tanks. Why they need so much fuel?”
Colt jolted. Anger blossomed. How could he miss it? Course, he consoled himself, this room held a thousand times or more as much fuel as their own ship. Had to be hydrogen fuel. For the destroyed reactors they’d seen in the engine cube?
An idea began to form.
Couldn’t be. No way.
He turned to look at Pup-man. Slowly patted the man on his overly-padded shoulders. “Good call on the fuel. Didn’t see it.” Unlike Cap, he could admit a mistake when it didn’t cost a thing and further tied Pup-man to him. He smiled. Laughed out loud.
“Thanks bossman. Just called it like I saw it, I tell ya.”
“Sure did. But I got a feeling coming on. Coming on strong. If this is what I think it might be, well, we just might make all the money in the world…by not touching a stinking thing.”
“Uh?” Those confused puppy-eyes were back.
“I’ll explain. Come on.”
“I tell ya, bossman. Don’t matter what this is. Cap ain’t gonna let you leave it alone. He gonna sack it, no matter what.”
“I got that covered. Money comes in all forms, Jiptom. And you don’t always have to steal it to get it.”
• • •
“I tell ya, bossman. Don’t get it.” Colt wondered if the man might be a closet savant, or
