They never had.
Harcourt pushed himself away from his console. “This time I am going out—with a rocket pack!”
“Captain, you can’t!” Grounder cried.
“Don’t worry, I’ll wear a very, very long fishline.”
“Then why don’t you let me do it?” Harry’s voice asked over the intercom. “I’m all suited up already. Just give me the booster pack and the fishline, and I’ll shoot over, attach it to the wreck. Then all you have to do is reel us in.”
Harcourt hesitated, remembering his responsibilities. He sighed. “You guys get all the fun. Okay, Harry, go catch me a fish.” He turned to Grounder. “See if you can find anything in the data stores about a corvette named John Bunyan.”
Harry’s boots thudded against the hull. He looked around. “There have to be eyebolts here, same as there are on our ship, Captain, for clipping onto when you go EVA.”
“Yeah, there have to be,” Harcourt’s voice said in his earphones. The signal was coming over the wire rope, to maintain radio silence. “But after you clip it onto the ship, Harry, make sure you hold onto that cable until you’re inside the hatch! Got it?”
“Oh, don’t worry, Captain. I brought along an EVA cable of my own.” Harry unwound it from around his waist. “And here’s an eyebolt.” He clipped his cable onto the eye, then made sure it was fast to his belt. He unclipped the “fishing line” and snapped it into the eyebolt, too. “It’s in the eyebolt, Captain. I’m going in through the hatch now.”
“As long as it’s the hatch…”
Harry punched the entry patch and waited. When it had been too long, he frowned, and punched it again. Nothing happened.
“There’s no power on board that ship,” Coriander told him, “no power at all. Deader’n a duck at a shotgun convention, Captain.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Harry frowned. “I could go in through one of the blast holes…”
“Be real careful, okay, Harry?” Harcourt said. “The broken edges on that metal might be sharp as knives. I’d rather not have you drinking vacuum.”
Harry eyed one of the dark holes with a leery glance. “If it’s all the same to you, Captain, I think I’d rather stay out here.”
“Good.” Harcourt nodded vigorously. “We’ll wait until the docking’s over. Just make sure your cable stays fastened on both ends, okay?”
“Will do, Captain.”
Back on the bridge, Harcourt turned to Grounder. “Can I get my suit on now, Mommy?”
She gave him a look of exasperation. “Well, I suppose I can hold things together, if you’re within shouting range.”
Ramona turned away, so they wouldn’t see her roll up her eyes in despair.
Coriander knew right where to find the external power input that the repair crews used in dry dock. After all, the John Bunyan was exactly like her own ship. The airlock opened; Harcourt and Ramona stepped in; the lock hatch closed.
Inside, the emergency lights gave a feeble glow. The green patch lit; the lock had cycled in record time—of course. No problem matching pressures, when there was none on either side of the door. The inner hatch swung open and the two stepped in, their helmet lamps lending harsh accents to the eldritch gloom of the emergencies.
Harcourt went first to the nearest blast hole, stuck an arm through, being careful not to touch any of the jagged edges, and felt the connector Harry pushed into his hand. “Thanks,” he said, so Harry would know he could let go, then pulled, turning away. The computer cable came in behind him—a coil floating free between the two ships, connected at its far end to the brain of the Johnny Greene.
They went through corridors that were eerily familiar, copies of the ones on their own ship, with the computer cable snaking behind them. They stepped into the bridge just as…
The ship accumulated enough power, and lit all the instruments.
The familiar, warm darkness was lightened by the battle display—but only a grid of curving lines, as theirs had been not very long ago. The individual screens glowed to life. The work lights spotlighted the consoles at each position—and the crewmen slumped over them.
Harcourt was intensely grateful that the space suits, and especially the helmets, prevented him from seeing the mummies within.
Ramona paced beside him, completely silent. Harcourt wasn’t feeling all that talkative himself, but he said, by way of apology, “We have to know what happened,” and stepped up to the captain’s console.
The captain sat slumped over the slanted surface, helmet on gauntlets. Harcourt was glad he didn’t have to push the corpse aside; the cable receptacle was low on the console’s side, and clear. He pushed it in, made sure the two connectors meshed, then said, “Okay, Chief. Drain the memory.”
“Yes, sir,” Coriander’s voice said in his earphones. “Just a straight file transfer, or do you want an audio analog while it’s going?”
“Just the straight file. Let me know when the dump is finished, so we can come home.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was no sound, of course—they hadn’t called for audio analog—but Harcourt saw the green jewel come on.
He turned away, looking out over the bridge, trying to avoid staring at the bodies. He noticed the gaping hole in the roof, the crewman lying prone on the floor with a long, brown-stained gash in his pressure suit, the two who sat side by side, arms about one another, slumped in death…
“Dump finished, Captain,” Coriander reported in his ears.
“Gotcha, Chief.” Harcourt turned back to Ramona. “Anything else we need to see?”
Ramona glanced at him with haunted eyes. Then her gaze roved around the rest of the bridge. She shook her head. “Nothing, Captain.” She turned and went out.
Harcourt unplugged the cable and followed her, rolling it as he went.
They cycled through the airlock, hauled themselves across the linking cable to their own ship, and cycled through again, blessing the hiss of air as it jetted into the lock. The patch glowed green; the hatch opened, and they stepped through. Ramona gave her helmet a half-twist and tilted it back with a grateful sigh. “Those poor bastards,” she said. “Those poor, brave bastards.”
Harcourt nodded, thinking that “lambs” might have been a better term—sacrificial lambs.
No. Not lambs. They had died fighting—or trying to. “We have to bury them,” he said. “We owe them that much.”
“Why?” Ramona countered. “They’ve got the perfect coffin as it is.”
Her face was very bleak. Glancing at her, Harcourt felt a chill. What was going on in that mind of hers?
“Captain to the bridge!”
“Coming.” Harcourt hurried away, unfastening his pressure suit. He came into the bridge with his helmet still under his arm. “What did you get, Chief?”
“The whole ship’s log,” Coriander said, “at least for this mission, from the time they were asked to volunteer up until they died.” Her face paled as she watched the screen.
Harcourt was tempted to ask for an audio analog. Instead, he said, “Give me the digest.”
“The John Bunyan was ordered to run a reconnaissance mission past Vukar Tag,” she said, “six months ago. They tried to get close to the planet, but fighters swarmed up to defend, and they had to run for the asteroid belt. They were Swiss cheese by the time they got here, but they had taken out seven Kilrathi ships on the way. The only atmosphere left was in the pressure bottles on their suits. They stayed in the asteroid belt, hoping the Kilrathi would give up and go away so they could make a run for the jump point—but the Cats stayed. They hung around for eight hours, twelve hours… The captain recorded the last entry just before he blacked out from lack of oxygen.” She paused, then said, “The computer made one final automatic entry, noting that the fusion plant had been hit by a parting shot, a random Kilrathi missile. Then the reserve battery ran out, and the computer couldn’t do anything more, either.”