“Proximity warning!” Justin called.
Weir looked back at Miller, then turned back to the window. Miller realized that he had begun to hold his breath, waiting. With an effort, he breathed out, making himself breathe normally.
“Nine hundred, eight hundred meters, seven hundred,” Smith was saying, each word harder and harder than the last. “We’re right on top of it, sir, we’re gonna hit!”
Starck whirled, staring at Miller, waiting for the command to helm that would get them out of there, save their asses.
“Starck—” Miller began.
“It should be right there,” she said, and turned to point, only to stare in shock as the clouds parted. “My God.”
For the first time, Miller saw the Event Horizon, enormous and dark as it threatened to blot out the blue of Neptune.
“Reverse thrusters full!” Miller yelled.
Starck and Smith complied.
The Lewis and Clark screamed.
Chapter Eleven
The ship bucked and shook, shedding velocity and changing vectors under emergency power. Weir was almost hurled forward, into the windows, but somehow managed to keep his precarious handhold on the bridge. The hull sounded in response to the thrusters, then settled.
The Event Horizon was a dark blur as the Lewis and Clark’ shot past it, with no features instantly visible. Miller found himself trying to pick details out, but having no luck.
They came around again, cautiously matching velocity, creeping up slowly.
No one spoke. The proximity warning continued to beep.
The Event Horizon could easily have swallowed the Lewis and Clark, taken it in without anyone noticing it. Weir and his team had created something that was more Gothic monstrosity than spacecraft, a thing of arching girders and strange angles, of darkness and depth that the naked eye and unaided mind could not estimate. The clouds had swirled away around the starship, leaving it at the eye of the storm, but this did not aid in perception.
Miller stared into this darkness and felt cold. He had never felt cold in space before. He let his chair down, unbuckled, stepped onto the deck so that he could go forward.
“There she is,” Weir said, pride in his voice. Daddy’s little girl is out there, Miller thought.
Smith shook his head, his expression unreadable to Miller. “Can we go home now, please?”
Justin had gotten himself into a position to see the Event Horizon. He stared for a few moments, his mouth working. Finally, he said, “Jesus, that is one big ugly fat fucker.” Miller raised an eyebrow at this uncharacteristic announcement.
“She’s not ugly,” Weir said. His voice held an angry warning tone, a father protecting his child. Miller was not sure that he liked that tone, but he understood it.
He stepped forward, leaning over Smith like a dark spectral presence. He had had enough of that damned proximity alarm now. He reached down and punched the defeat switch, silencing it.
“Range five hundred meters and holding,” Smith said, coming back to business abruptly, a sign of respect for Miller looming over his shoulder.
“Turbulence is dropping off.”
Starck’s fingers were dancing over her board. “Picking up magnetic interference. It’s playing hell with the IMUs.”
“Switch over to the trackers,” Miller said. Starck’s fingers flew again, and readouts changed. He turned to look at Smith. “Smith, you up for a flyby?”
“Love to,” Smith said, using his least convincing tone of voice.
Smith’s hands moved over the controls. The Lewis and Clark eased into motion, nudged along by gentle taps of the thrusters. Miller could feel the bursts through his fingers, through his feet, could feel the pulse of the ship and know when there was something wrong.
They came up under the Event Horizon, looking into the belly of the beast.
Seeing this craft was providing Miller with a different perspective on Bill Weir. He suspected that someone had had the idea to make the ship large and comfortable, a workplace, for interstellar crews who might spend a great deal of time researching newly discovered worlds.
To Miller’s eyes, the Event Horizon was a dark Industrial Revolution monstrosity, the future as envisioned by Ste-phenson and Brunei, wrought from iron and powered by coal, a foul juggernaut tearing the heavens apart and polluting the remnants with its effluvium. This was not a ship that was easy to knock down.
Smith concentrated on his controls, using the displays where needed, refusing to look at the ship they were passing.
“Look at the size of that thing,” Starck muttered.
Weir moved forward, leaning over Smith and Starck, ignoring Smith’s warning glare. “Can we move in closer?”
“Any closer and we’re gonna need a rubber,” Smith growled.
Miller’s eyes narrowed. It was time to face the beast. They had a job to do here. “Do it,” he said.
Smith frowned angrily. His hands floated over the controls.
Another course change, a bit more abrupt than required. The Lewis and Clark drifted in towards the Event Horizon, falling into shadow. Miller felt the cold creep into him again, and he wondered what they were getting themselves into here.
Something spherical loomed within the shadows, in the heart of the starship. An arm jutted from the sphere, covered in small pods, dishes and antenna elements.
Weir leaned forward, focusing, pointing. “There’s the main airlock. We can dock there.”
Miller pulled his attention away from the spherical structure and turned to Smith. “Smith, use the arm and lock us onto that antenna cluster.”
Smith nodded. He flicked controls, switching his monitors over to a view from the main camera on the Lewis and Clark’s boom arm. Cautiously, he nudged the salvage ship in toward the airlock, killing excess velocity with little blips on the thrusters.
Slipping his right hand into a waldo glove, Smith extended the boom towards the Event Horizon. Miller watched over Smith’s shoulder, intent on the pilot’s work. Weir, in the meantime, was watching out of the main windows, trying to pick out the details.
Floating the arm by the antenna cluster, Smith spread his fingers in the glove. The end of the boom spread open like a flower, the mechanical hand spreading wide. Carefully, Smith floated the hand in towards his target, touched it.
His hand closed in the glove. On the monitor, the mechanical fingers closed around the main part of the antenna cluster, buckling it.
“Be careful,” Weir said, turning to Smith. “It’s not a load-bearing structure.”
Smith slipped his hand from the waldo glove and looked up at Weir, his expression dismissive. “It is now.” He turned to Miller, the attitude vanishing. “Locked in, sir.”
Miller nodded, turned his head. “Starck, give me a read.”
Starck’s displays lit, flashed with data, stopping and starting at Starck’s tapped-in commands. He liked it a lot when his crew was efficient and smart.
“The reactor’s still hot,” Starck said, looking over her screens. “We’ve got several small radiation sources, leaks, probably. Nothing serious.”
Miller tried to make sense of the displays himself, but the angle was wrong and all he got was a strained neck muscle. “Do they have pressure?”
Starck nodded. “Affirmative. The hull’s intact, but there’s no gravity and the thermal units are offline. I’m showing deep cold. The crew couldn’t survive unless they were in stasis.”
Even then, the odds are lousy, Miller thought. He smoothed at his close-cropped hair, refusing to jump to conclusions until all the evidence was in. “Find ‘em, Starck.”
“Already on it,” Starck said, her fingers moving over her console.
“Bio-scan is online.” She was silent for a few moments, looking over her displays, mentally organizing the data. Miller expected her to come up with an answer any moment now. Instead, she frowned, uncertain. “Something’s wrong with the scan.”