Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [31]
Just when he found he was getting bored by the interminable wait, the light went off. He tugged Bunny’s hand. “Come on. Act like you belong here.”
At that point the inside hatch irised open and six figures, still suited and helmeted, which was a little weird, emerged and headed down the corridor in the opposite direction from Bunny and Diego. As they disappeared, Diego said, “That’s funny.”
“What?”
“First thing folks usually do is crack open their helmets! Hmmm.”
“Maybe they’re coming right back,” Bunny said. “I don’t usually wear my parka and snowpants in the house either, but if I just have to go inside for a moment, it’s easier not to take off all those clothes first.”
Diego shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe.”
But he peered through the viewport first. The derelict was alone in the repair bay, the outer hatch closed. The hole in her side was big enough to drive a good-sized shuttle through. He checked the dials on the lock.
“Well, there’s oxygen inside, so maybe they just did go to get something, Bunny,” he told her. “And no one’s inside. So we can at least take a close look at that damage.”
“Won’t we need some kind of code to get through here? Or will the bracelet give us access?” Bunny asked.
That was a good question. He hadn’t counted on the bay being empty. He’d planned to ask the repair crew, but they’d gone off. Generally crews didn’t mind letting you look, if you asked first and kept out of the way.
But at the door, he was surprised to find that the iris still bore a pupil of space in its center where it hadn’t completely closed. By sticking his hand and arm through the opening, he got it to enlarge enough to let a body squeeze through.
Bunny reached around him to one of the folds and touched something shiny. “This is caught.”
“Can you use it to pry the door open a little more?” Diego asked.
“I think so,” she said. Sure enough, when she had wiggled the bit around, the hatch creaked fully open. When they had both stepped through, Bunny pulled the object free and the hatch closed behind them, silently this time. There was a faint smell of singed protein in the air the same smell Diego had noticed when the dentist drilled his teeth.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have done that,” she said with a backward glance. “We might need it to get out.”
“Nah, the crew will be back pretty soon. Come on, let’s see what holed the ship.”
Their shoes clanked hollowly on the metal grid floor as they walked toward the lone ship squatting like a toad in the cavernous bay. “It’s a queer shape, isn’t it?” Bunny asked, whispering. “It doesn’t look much like the other ones.”
“Probably wasn’t manufactured by an Intergal company,” Diego said, dropping his own voice to the same level. Though why they were whispering he didn’t know: their footsteps were loud enough to wake the next watch. “Maybe that’s why people went to such trouble to drone it in: figure out its design capabilities or something. It’s a derelict, for sure.”
Bunny was slightly ahead of him, and she peered around the corner of the hole. “Uh-oh. Diego?”
“Yeah?”
“Look.”
He looked over her, his chin resting on the top of her glossy black crown. The interior of the hull was not empty.
The hole sure had been big enough to fly a shuttle through, and that’s just what somebody had done. A good-size shuttle—a twenty-seater at least, from what he could see—crouched inside the hull, wearing it like a disguise. Beside the shuttle lay the bodies of seven people clad only in their underwear.
Bunny turned over a woman who had been lying on her stomach. A burn hole had been drilled through the center of her forehead. A gingerly examination of the other bodies showed similar burn holes.
“Frag!” Diego breathed. He peered anxiously at the shuttle, but nobody stirred.
“Diego?” Bunny asked. “Why were these