The steel was garbage again.
Jack Sterling could tell by the bead. A good weld ran like honey off a spoon, bright at the tip and gray behind. This one spat at him. Little pops of gas punched holes in the seam as fast as he laid it down.
"You're swearing," Gunnar said in his ear.
"I'm not swearing."
"I can hear you not swearing. It's very loud."
Jack killed the arc and hung there on his tether. Below his boots, the ore hauler's hull curved away in dull company gray. Below that, a long way below, Saturn filled half the sky. Its cloud bands were cream and rust and a gold so pale it looked like old paper.
The rings ran out from it in a flat white road. Capstan Station sat on the outer edge of that road like a tin can dropped at the side of a highway. It had two spin rings, a long zero-g spine down the middle and a hundred docks bristling off the spine. Nine hundred people lived on it. About half of them belonged to the company.
Jack was one of that half.
"How much seam is left?" Gunnar asked.
"Four meters."
"Shift ends in nine minutes. You owe me a drink at the Gap."
The Gap was the station bar on Ring B, named for the dark gap in Saturn's rings you could see from its window.
"I don't owe you anything yet."
"You will in nine minutes. I'll have the expensive one. The one with the actual ice in it."
"All the ice on this station is actual ice."
"Not the stuff they put in the cheap drinks. That's refinery slush. I've seen it made."
Jack thumbed the feed and struck the arc again. His visor went dark against the glare. The steel hissed and popped. He pushed through it one bead over the other, because the company paid for one pass and the hauler needed two. A weld either held or it didn't.
"A weld holds or it doesn't. Everything else on this station is an opinion," Gunnar said, as if he'd heard Jack think it.
"Get your own lines."
"That one was mine first. I taught it to you."
The seal on his visor ticked in the cold.
It had been doing that for a week. A hairline crack ran through the gasket where the faceplate met the helmet ring, just enough to make a sound when the suit cycled. The part was discontinued. He had exactly one spare, wrapped in a rag in his locker on Ring B. He kept meaning to fit it.
He kept not fitting it, because then he wouldn't have a spare.
"Three meters," he said.
"You're slowing down. Is it the steel?"
"It's company scrap. It's always company scrap."
Gunnar grunted. He was fifty-six and had been a foreman on the spine for twenty of those years. He'd taught Jack to weld on this same stretch of dock when Jack was twenty-seven and new and furious. Gunnar's grunt meant yes or no or pass the salt, depending on the day.
"They'll pay you for the first pass," Gunnar said.
"I know."
"Not the second."
"I know, Gunnar."
"Just saying it out loud. So somebody does."
Jack finished the third meter and moved his clamp along the tether rail. His fingers were stiff inside the gloves. Out here the cold got into everything. It got into your knuckles and your teeth and the small hinge of your jaw.
"You thinking about the crane again?" Gunnar asked.
"No."
"You get quiet on the last meter. Every shift. Same meter."
Jack didn't answer that. He'd come out to the rings seven years ago owing nothing to anybody. He'd been a rigger then. A good one. He could hang a load off a crane arm and set it down on a dock plate so softly the plate didn't ring.
One shift a crane he'd rigged came down across a dock. Two men spent a month in the hospital ring.
"The bolts were scrap," Jack said. "You saw them."
"I saw them."
"Threads stripped flat. Full of holes. Same steel as this."
"I know, Jack."
"The report took a day. Nobody asked me about the bolts. Nobody asked anybody."
"And they put the whole thing on your contract." Gunnar's voice was tired. "I was there. I'm saying I know."
That was what on the books meant on Capstan. The crane put seven years of debt on his contract. The company owned those years now. Jack was three years in. Four to go.
His wages came in marks, the station scrip, and the company took his air out of them at four marks a day.
Contract Day was when they read your name out in the mess and you walked away free. He'd been to a dozen of them. He'd stood at the back and clapped for men who cried. He had a picture in his head of standing up there himself. In the picture he didn't cry. He'd already decided that part.
"Two meters," he said.
"You'll make it. Barely."
"I always make it."
"You always barely make it. It's a different thing."
Something moved at the edge of his vision.
He thought it was a reflection, a flare off the hauler's hull or a bit of ice catching the sun. Then it moved again and kept moving. He turned his head inside the helmet.
A streak ran across the rings. It was too low to be a ship coming in and too fast to be anything on purpose. It left a line of light behind it, orange at the head and white along the tail, like a match struck along a dark table.
"Gunnar," he said. "You seeing this?"
"Seeing what?"
"Sector Four. Low. Moving fast."
A pause. Then Gunnar swore, which he almost never did on the comm. "That's not one of ours."
"No."
The streak got bigger. Jack could see shape in it now. It wasn't a hauler or a cutter or a tug. It was long and narrow, ribbed down its length like the spine of a fish. The color under the fire was a deep, dark green, moss on a wet rock. No company painted anything that color. No company built anything that shape.
It came down into the ring's outer edge two kilometers away and plowed into the ice.
There was no sound. There was never sound out here. A long white plume rose off the ring, glittering as it spread. Then the plume settled and the light went out.
Jack's hands had stopped moving. He noticed that and made them close the feed valve on the torch and clip it to his belt.
"Jack," Gunnar said. "Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You're breathing like you're going to do something stupid."
"There might be someone in it."
"There might be a bomb in it. The company's got a sweep that'll be out there inside an hour. Let the company find it."
"And then what?"
"Then you get a medal or a bill. Same as always."
Jack watched the plume. It had almost settled. In the middle of it a long dark curve caught the light. Then something smaller and brighter did. A small steady light, low down on the hull.
"There's a light on," he said.
"Jack."
"Somebody turned a light on, Gunnar. Wrecks don't do that."
"Wrecks do all kinds of things. Wiring shorts. Batteries trip."
"That light came on after it hit. I watched it."
Gunnar didn't say anything for a moment. When he did, his voice had gone flat and careful. "If you go out there, the company's going to want to know why."
"Then I'll tell them I saw a light."
The work sled was parked at the end of the tether rail, where he always left it. It was a cold-gas frame the size of a coffin with a seat and two handles, built for hopping between docks. It was never meant to go two kilometers into the ring.
He unclipped his tether and pushed off to it.
"The sector's locked," Gunnar said. "You go across the line, the board logs it. That's a breach. That's months on your contract."
"I know."
"You don't know. You're not listening."
"I'm listening. I'm also going."
He strapped in. The sled's panel blinked green. He pulled the left handle and the cold-gas jets hissed. The dock spine slid away behind him. Beyond his boots the ring spread out like a field of white gravel, some pieces the size of his fist and some the size of a house.
The board flashed red on the sled's panel as he crossed the sector line. Unauthorized. Logged. He watched it go past.
"That's on your number now," Gunnar said, quieter.
"Yeah."
"You owe me two drinks."
Jack almost laughed. "Put it on my contract. Everything else is."
He threaded the sled between the big pieces of ice.
"You know what they'll say," Gunnar said. "When they pull the board."
"That I saw a light."
"That a contract man went off his rail into a locked sector to loot a wreck. That's what the report will say. It'll take a day to write."
"You could tell them different."
"I could." A long breath on the comm. "I'm too old to tell the company different, Jack. I've got eleven years of pension in their bank. I'm going to sit right here on the spine and pretend I can't see you."
"That's fair."
"It isn't fair. It's what I've got."
Jack eased the sled around a block of ice as big as a cargo pod. A fleck of frost broke off its edge and drifted past his visor, turning, catching the sun. The seal ticked. You didn't go fast in the ring unless you wanted to come home in a bag. The plume had settled completely. The wreck lay half-buried in the ice ahead like a fish frozen into a pond. The small light still burned near its middle.
The closer he got, the less it looked like anything he knew.
"Talk to me," Gunnar said. "What is it?"
"I don't know."
"You've welded every hull in the system. What is it?"
"It isn't plated." Jack slowed the sled. "There's no plating. It looks grown. Or poured."
"That's not a thing."
"I'm looking at it."
Long green ribs curved over the hull from end to end. Between them the skin was smooth and dark and scorched black where the fire had hit. There were no seams. He looked for a weld out of habit, his eyes running along the hull for the place where one piece met another. There wasn't one anywhere.
Near the middle of the hull, under the light, was a hatch.
He anchored the sled to a block of ice and pulled himself along the ribs. They were warm through his gloves. The warmth surprised him enough that he stopped.
"Jack. Talk."
"It's warm."
"What's warm?"
"The hull. It's been sitting in the ring for ten minutes and it's warm."
"Then it's got power. Get away from it."
The hatch was a long oval set into the skin, rimmed in the same green. Beside it was a panel of black glass, dead. Above it someone had scratched a line of marks into the hull by hand. They weren't letters he knew. They curled and hooked like vines.
The scratches were bright. Someone had made them recently, with a tool, in a hurry.
He unclipped the torch.
"What are you doing," Gunnar said.
"Knocking."
He struck the arc on the hatch rim. The metal took the flame wrong. Steel would have glowed and run. This went dull red and stopped. The flame skated off it like he was trying to weld glass. He moved the tip along the rim more slowly and felt for the place where the hatch met the hull.
There was a seam there after all, a thin one. The hatch was sealed with a gasket of something softer than the rest, and the gasket melted under the arc.
He cut along it for six minutes, sweating inside the suit. The seal on his visor ticked. When the last of the gasket gave, the hatch slid inward a centimeter and stopped. A breath of air came out past it in a thin white puff that froze as it hit the vacuum.
Air. The ship had air.
"Gunnar."
"I'm here."
"It's pressurized. There's air inside."
"Jack, listen to me. If there's air, there's somebody who wanted it there. Somebody who might not want you."
"Yeah," Jack said. "I thought of that."
He put his shoulder against the hatch and pushed.
There was a small chamber behind it, an airlock or something like one. A second hatch at the far end was closed. Set into it was a round window of thick glass.
There was blood on the inside of the glass.
It was a smear, a handprint dragged sideways. The light was bad. Even so the hand looked wrong to him, too wide across the knuckles. The blood was dark and not quite red.
Jack stared at it.
"Jack. What do you see?"
"There was somebody alive in here," he said. "Not long ago."
He found a manual lever by the inner hatch, the kind every airlock in the system had, because every engineer in history had been afraid of the power failing. It was shaped wrong for his hand. He pulled it anyway. The inner hatch groaned and slid aside.
Dark.
He clicked on his helmet lamp. The beam went out into a corridor that curved away in both directions. Gravity was gone. Loose things drifted in the light: a cup, a strap, a bead of the dark blood turning slowly end over end.
The walls were the same smooth green as the hull, ribbed. Every few meters a seat was built into the wall, facing in. There were people strapped into some of the seats.
They weren't people.
They wore charcoal jackets cut close, with piping at the cuffs. They had arms and legs and heads, two eyes, a mouth. But one had skin like polished stone, gray and cracked. Another had gold lines traced along her throat like wire set into copper. Another had hands with too few fingers.
They were all dead. He could tell that from the door, because the stillness was the wrong kind.
He pulled himself along the corridor, hand over hand, because he couldn't make himself not do it. The lamp moved across their faces. Men and women. Strange. Also not strange at all. One of them had died with her eyes open, looking at the ceiling. Her eyes were very green.
"Jack," Gunnar said. "You've stopped talking."
"They're not human, Gunnar."
A long silence on the comm.
"Say that again."
"They're dead. And they're not human. There's a whole crew in here and not one of them is..."
He stopped. Something had changed in the air, though his lamp was still and the corridor was still. Behind him, very close, someone breathed.
He turned.
She was big. That was the first thing he saw. She filled the corridor behind him, one hand braced on a rib and the other holding a gun the size of his torch. Her face was broad and her eyes were amber in his lamp. Along her bare forearms, where her jacket sleeves had been torn away, the skin was plated in pale gray stone, smooth and veined with silver.
She was bleeding from a cut above one eye. She didn't seem to notice.
The muzzle of the gun came up and touched his visor, right over his left eye. He heard it click against the glass.
She said a word he didn't understand.
