That was why the station was plain, unremarkable. It was among the first several birthed—and the only one designed for stargazing, the only one from its day still in orbit. It was primitive compared to what had been crafted in the decades since and certainly compared to the others Hoshi had traipsed through. Primitive, but nonetheless functional, with a full crew of astronomers charting stars that men on Earth could only see in pictures because of the light pollution.
The Streetcar shuddered just as Hoshi activated the great telescope. She intended to retrieve these lenses, cut the gravity in the observatory, and maneuver her treasures into the hold of her skimmer. These lenses and the ones from the other telescopes, perhaps a few more trinkets, would be whisked away before Auriga’s Streetcar plummeted Earthward. She couldn’t take much, her ship being so small. But she could take what was historically important, what she would briefly covet and show to close friends, and what antique collectors would pay dearly for.
“Beautiful. Wonderful,” she pronounced, as she stared through the scope. Diamonds on black silk, she thought of the stars. So bright and visually intense, hypnotizing. She believed there was nothing more incredible than a vivid starscape. She blinked away tears as she continued to watch—so happy to see such distant systems, so grief-stricken to know that those on the Earth below could never experience this.
She took off her helmet, the air uncomfortably cool and the oxygen content satisfactory now, though laced with the artificial metallic scent that settled distastefully in her mouth.
She could see better without her visor in the way, though her breath feathered away from her face in a lacy fan.
Hoshi stared through the scope for what she sensed was hours, as her legs began to cramp and the ache returned to every inch of her body. The chill air that swirled around her face set her teeth to chattering. Couldn’t she coax more heat into the room? Later, perhaps. Too much to see to be interrupted.
She fixated on what were considered the constellations of autumn, as would be viewed from the middle north latitudes. Cassiopiea and Perseus. A curved line of stars that made up part of Perseus extended toward Auriga.
“Auriga the Charioteer,” Hoshi stated when she took in the large constellation. Auriga was the last of the autumn formations. The stars heralded the approach of winter.
Capella, a bright triple star on Auriga’s chest glared hotly at her. Capella was sometimes called “The Goat,” and near it were a triangle of stars referred to as the kids. She noted several open clusters in the formation, each containing about a hundred stars and—
according to the readings on the telescope—sitting nearly three thousand light-years away. She could see them plainly when she made a few adjustments. The starlight was intoxicating.
“Auriga’s Streetcar.” Named for the constellation this telescope was keyed to and for the shape of the station and the business Charles Yerkes had been famous for. “An appropriate name after all,” she decided. Auriga the Charioteer that beckoned winter.
Hoshi was well into the winter of her life.
She would have watched longer, had the ache in her joints not become a dull, persistent pain she could no longer ignore, had the cold not sunk in to become unbearable and forced her to replace her helmet, had the station not groaned and shuddered once more.
With a great sigh, she reluctantly edged away from the refractor and busied herself with removing the lenses from two of the smaller telescopes. Were she younger and stronger, she could have taken more this trip.
As she turned to leave, a small telescope on the opposite end of the observatory caught her notice. It looked much newer than everything else. Not an antique, it would be her last priority.
Hoshi patiently made her way back through the narrow gray tunnels and to her skimmer, carefully placing the treasures in her hold and retrieving thick silk padded slipcases that she intended to use for the largest lenses. She tried hard to thrust to the back of her mind the groaning of the station. It moved more this time, slipping in its orbit, causing her to curse her slow, old woman’s body. The station hadn’t days left, she knew now. It likely had only hours. And she would have to push herself to gain Yerkes’ antique lenses and more.
A glance through the large refractor when she was again in the observatory. Auriga had moved, or rather, the Streetcar had moved significantly. Hoshi worked fast to remove the lenses, a task that should take two or more people, or that should take time and great care—she couldn’t afford the time.
Somehow she handled the task. And with the room now at zero-g, and the lenses protected by the silk, she maneuvered them through the ghost-lit corridors. She would have taken one at a time, Hoshi had the patience for it. It would have been safer for the lenses, easier for her to deal with. But she handled the time limitations presented her, and she fought to keep from crying out as her fingers—clamped viselike around the edges of the slipcases—ached so terribly from age that they felt on fire.
“A few minutes more,” she told herself. “Just a few more.” Then she would be settled in her skimmer and heading toward her Takasago home on the coast, contacting several potential buyers and cherishing her look through the telescope, her oh-so-wonderful view of Auriga’s goat and kids. What a story she would tell her grandson.
“No.” Her fingers opened in surprise, and she had to struggle to catch the slipcases as they floated upward. “No!” Looking out through the hatch window, Hiroshi could see the stars. But she couldn’t see her ship.
Was she at the wrong bay? Had her aging mind took her down a different corridor and to the bays on the other side of the Streetcar? Had she…?
Hoshi froze, eyes locked onto a spot below a second-magnitude star. There was her skimmer, drifting free of the Streetcar. “How?” her gaze settled on the hatch door. She’d done nothing to release it, nothing to break the lock. “How is it possible?”
Turning and swallowing her fear, she summoned what speed she could and carried the lenses down one corridor and then the next, her helmet beam bouncing light off doorways and protrusions, sending shadows to eerily dancing. Her side burned from exertion by the time she reached the other bays and spied a sleek freighter. Someone else had made the trip to scavenge from the dying station. That someone had released her ship. There were no markings that she could see from this position. What nationality?
She quietly made her way to the hatch, worked the controls, and slipped inside the freighter. Empty—of people anyway. It was otherwise filled. A glance through the hold revealed the lenses she had previously stored on her ship. There were also circuitry cards and various other things—all taken in a hurry judging by the way they were strewn about.
“Pirates,” she cursed, as she carefully placed the antique lenses alongside the others and backed out the hatch. Well, she could be a pirate, too, take this ship and head home. The station lurched and something popped deep inside a corridor, and for an instant she indeed considered taking the freighter right this instant—not only would she be saving her life, but she’d be saving the valuable, historical lenses. In a sense, she had a duty to save both.
But she’d prefer not to leave someone stranded here. And she was curious about the pirates and what else they might be taking from this place.
“How long?” she wondered, as she made her way through the network of corridors, glancing in rooms and in service ways and heading toward the observatory, where she was certain the pirates were working to gather the remaining lenses. “How long does the station have?”
She nearly ran into him as she emerged from the last corridor and into the observatory, and he released what he’d been carrying—a spectroscope, a mechanism used to show the spectra of an object being viewed by the telescope it was attached to. The device hovered in the space between them.