“People on ice probably don’t fart too much, but suit yourself.” The airlock hissed as the pressure equalized, and after a few minutes a light above the door turned green and there was a whoosh of seals unfastening. After the inner door swung open Ashok entered a dim corridor, his helmet light shining on blank gray walls, and he held up a finger like someone planetside trying to feel which way the wind was blowing; there were sensors embedded in his prosthetic digits. “Hmm. A little oxygen-rich for my taste, but if we don’t play with any open flames, we should be OK.” He unhooked the latches on his helmet, removed it, and took a tentative breath. “Smells fine. Not as good as the spinwise gardens on Meditreme Station, but it’ll do.”

Callie took off her own helmet and sniffed. The air was stale, but fine. It didn’t smell like death or burning, which she found reassuring. “I guess it won’t kill us.”

Ashok glanced at her. “Your nose is a feat of structural engineering, cap. I bet you can smell all the way out to the asteroid belt.”

“That’s big talk coming from a one-armed man with a computer stuck to his face.” She tapped the side of her admittedly considerable nose. “This is the Machedo family pride. Signature of a noble lineage. Some say it’s my best feature.”

“Everything is somebody’s fetish.”

“Do you think making fun of your captain’s nose is a good idea?”

“No, but it’s no worse than my other ideas. Like poking around in ancient spaceships full of zombie space suits.”

The banter and insults were a form of whistling in the dark. For Callie, every disabled, drifting, battered, or broken ship was a reminder of the fate that could await her own crew if she made the wrong decision, or ran into a situation where bad decisions were the only ones available.

Ashok took the lead, his light sweeping back and forth across the corridor to illuminate every step. He was doubtless peering around with other, more advanced senses, too, so they might get some warning if there were nasty surprises lurking. “Shall managed to find some old interior schematics for ships like this. There’s only one set of living quarters, since the crew was mostly expected to be frozen, with the ship waking one of them up for a day every year or so to do a manual check of the systems. Most of the space is given over to supplies – seeds and embryos and communications equipment, tools, crude old-school fabricators. Maybe we can find a collector interested in obsolete pre-Liar technology.” He stopped by a closed metal door. “The cryochamber is through here.”