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"Okay, here we go." Ralissa pushed off gently and drifted through the open airlock door. Zadra and Lorkis joined them, followed by Kolya, Corwin, Dylan, Nishara, and Grishnag. Everyone tapped a quick burst from their thruster packs to accelerate them across the distance between the Jemison and the Vancouver.

"How're you doing?" Kolya glanced over at Corwin as he nudged his thruster and launched off to the left. She couldn't see his face in his darkened visor, but imagining his eyes popping out made her giggle.

"Uh, just - oh, crap!" He tried to correct his course and rejoin the rest of the team. His efforts sent him flying past them and Kolya burst out laughing.

"You sure you don't want to come back in and watch the experts handle it?" Cora chuckled.

"Hey, cut me some slack. I've never done this before. And I'm sticking with Kolya."

"Most of the Jemison's crew came from technologically primitive societies," Nishara said with a soft laugh, "and we managed to learn how to use these. Give yourself a chance. I think you'll catch on quickly."

Kolya laughed again, darted after Corwin, and grasped his hand. She maneuvered behind him, positioned herself, and nudged her thruster controls, easing both of them back to the team.

"You're a lot more graceful in bed." She grinned at the memories of their last several nights together. "And that's where it really matters."

"Heh. Well, thanks. That puts things into a much better perspective." He took a few slow breaths as they caught up with everyone else and followed them across the remaining distance to the derelict ship. He stared at the tumbling ship and his breathing quickened. "I'm not sure how we'll board that thing, though, with it spinning like that."

"Aim for the middle and then make our way along the length until we reach one of the hatches on the command module," Zadra said with a grin in her voice. "Then we'll try to bring the primary systems back online, if there's still any power left in the reactors."

Kolya pointed. "Right there, where it's moving the least."

"Okay. Sure. Simple as that." Corwin took another breath.

Kolya stared at the central part of the hull and frowned. At first the formerly gray metal had appeared to be covered with dirt or soot, but now that she'd gotten close enough to make out details ...

"Huh, Looks like something's growing on the hull. Vines of some sort."

"Hmm. Wouldn't be the first time we've encountered something organic that can survive in hard vacuum," Ralissa said. "If we're really lucky, it'll be something we've never seen before. Who knows where - or when - this ship has been."

"Still not picking up any human life signs," Cora said. "The crew either evacuated the ship or died."

"I hope they left," Corwin muttered. "I'm not eager to find a bunch of corpses."

"Even if we do, at least we'll be able to tell their families what happened to them." Ralissa grasped a handhold on the hull, latched the tether to it, and made her way along the two forward centrifuges as if repelling down a mountain. The huge drums, which normally rotated to provide gravity in older Terran ships, had seized up, or maybe someone had powered them down.

Soot puffed up around the spots where Ralissa's environment suit-encased hooves touched the hull, and the same happened when everyone else followed her.

"I wonder what the ship drifted through," Kolya said. "Looks like it's been near a fire."

Lorkis plucked a handheld scanner from his belt and swept it over the cloud of dislodged dust in front of him.

"That's not ash or soot. They're spores."

"That figures," Corwin muttered.

"We'll have to go through a thorough decontamination when we pass back through the Jemison's airlock." Zadra paused to scan the spores near her before continuing along behind Ralissa. "They don't match anything in my database."

"Something completely new, then." Kolya grinned. "I like it already."

"It's only good if it's not dangerous."

"True enough, Corwin. Probably be a good idea to keep our spacesuits on the whole time we're onboard, even if there's a breathable atmosphere. There's no way to know what those spores could do if we inhaled any."

"That's why only some of us are boarding," Lorkis said. "If our oxygen starts to run low before we finish powering up the systems, we'll need a few others to come over and take our place while we go back to resupply. But we should have enough to last around a day."

"Good to know." Kolya noticed a sensation of her weight increasing as she slid closer to the command module. Not enough to cause any discomfort, given the ship's slow rotation - not quite as much as the gravity on Earth's moon - but it would take some getting used to. Heh. Until we get the systems powered back on, we'll be walking on one of the walls, and the floor and ceiling will look like walls.

She passed by one of the vine-like structures and gave it a casual tug without slowing down. It snapped off like a dry twig and tumbled up toward the planet as it rose over her right shoulder.

"Huh. Whatever this stuff is, it survived in space long enough to grow over part of the hull, but couldn't go any farther than that."

"If the vines' purpose is to produce these spores, then I'd say they lasted long enough." Ralissa stopped at a hatch on the side of the command module and brushed a coating of spores off the control panel beside it. "The spores could remain dormant in space indefinitely, too. When we return to the Jemison, we'll definitely need to scrub every square millimeter of our suits to be sure there aren't any of these things left in a crack or crevice."

She prodded the control panel and then tugged on a small hatch beneath it. The hatch swung out, revealing an opening about the size of a hatbox with a circular mechanism inside. The upper surface of the round thing had six slots crisscrossing it. Zadra opened one of the compartments on Ralissa's backpack, pulled a gadget out, and handed it to her. Ralissa fitted the round end over the circular mechanism, made sure it was locked in place, and pushed a button on the side. The end rotated, turning the mechanism, and the hatch cranked open slowly.

A puff of air sent a thick cloud of spores jetting past everyone. Ralissa leaned over the airlock and aimed her helmet lights inside.

"Empty. The inner hatch is sealed. Looks like there's just enough room for all of us to fit inside, so we won't have to cycle through in groups." She climbed down into the airlock, detached her tether from her belt, clipped it to a nearby handhold to prevent it from drifting out of reach, and disappeared inside.

"Okay,Jemison, we're in."