The Salvagers Read Online Free Page A

out, giving us plenty of time for the survey. We wanted to thoroughly understand the derelict. We photographed every weld and rivet and pored over each image for hours, thereby gaining confidence that when the time came we could get the job done safely and with a minimum of surprises. That did nothing, however, to relieve our feelings of anticipation. Those only grew worse until they finally gave way to outright impatience.
                  Our first hands-on experience with the ship came when we tackled the problem of stopping it from spinning. That was something we could try to do before the salvor arrived, so I declared the survey finished on the morning of day 92. When on a long salvage mission, you seize any opportunity you can to break the humdrum routine and celebrate. Kurt and Stacey marked the event with a "feast" consisting of dehydrated turkey and all the trimmings we could approximate . . . and my last bottle of whiskey.
                  The next day Stacey and I were discussing the specifics of just how we'd stop the ship from spinning when Kurt shot in to begin his bridge shift. He was smiling and energetic. He'd obviously had a good sleep after the whiskey the night before, but I think most of his energy was coming from coffee.
                  "Good morning! Do we have a solution?" he asked.
                  "We think so," I replied. "We'll have to deploy the pneumatic strap-thrusters first. Neil tells me that he can set them up inside of a week." Neil was the ship's engineer and my son, and also the best spacewalker among us. "We won't have to do any guesswork. The Amaranth Sun 's computers will do all the calculating. When Neil says they're ready, Stacey will have the computer touch them off. It’ll be as easy as crashing into an asteroid."
                  "You hope," Stacey said wryly. She had a penchant for being a logical foil to my optimism.
                  "Always say it's easy. Then it has no chance of failure," I said, causing Stacey to roll her eyes.
                  "What can go wrong?" Kurt asked, a little disconcerted by Stacey's tone.
                  "Nothing," I said.
                  "Everything," she retorted.
                  She was right, of course. Things have a habit of never going as planned. The first snag we hit was the length of the straps. The Cape Hatteras was a huge ship, bigger than most vessels of our day. When Neil unrolled the straps, they didn't reach halfway around. He came up with a workaround by drilling holes in the outer hull plating and riveting the thrusters in place. He then put a spot weld around the edges for added strength, but the whole thing wasn't as sturdy as those braided nanolatch straps would have been. What started as a week's work grew to six, and when the time came to test the rig I was petrified.
                  I hadn't said anything to anyone, mainly because there weren't any alternatives, but I was skeptical that the plan would work. Neil's workarounds were often ambitious to a fault, and I'd never heard of anyone riveting thrusters in place. I worried they might tear a section of hull plating off and put an end to any easy way of pumping an atmosphere back onboard.
                  Stacey manned the thruster controls; Neil kept visual watch through a window; and Kurt and I monitored the data from the Amaranth Sun' s displays.
                  "Unless anyone has any objections, I think we're as ready as we can be," I said. No one objected.
                  "Ready. Four, three, two, . . ." At one Stacey hit the button.
                  A burst of white mist shot out of seven of the thrusters, but the eighth broke off and spiraled wildly into space.
                  "Daughter of a Ganymede flagellant!" Stacey exclaimed. "We lost one. Nice workaround