The Find. 4.6k An Old-Fashioned Space Opera. Adult. (standard:science fiction, 16427 words)
Author: Oscar A Rat	Added: Jun 19 2020	Views/Reads: 1472/1044	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Deep Space Mining for metal asteroids is a dangerous and lonely life. John makes an important find, an abandoned alien spaceship. Now, he has to find a way to sell it.

“RRRiiinnnnnggggg.” A proximity alarm wakes me. My bunk's built in, as
is everything in the tiny spacecraft. Above me is an interior water 
tank, its gray-painted surface eight-inches above my chest. Level with 
my eyes a set of emergency dials and displays glow yellow, orange, and 
green ... with one pulsating red. 

It's for an alarm now ringing across the cabin. A readout shows a
relatively large object less than five-hundred kilometers away. I slide 
off the cramped bunk easily, to stand in a walk-space four-feet wide 
and twenty-five long. 

It's my living quarters, with a table and bookcase at this end. At the
other, a well-worn imitation-leather seat is bolted to the floor with 
the spaceship controls laid out in front of it. Three small thick 
view-ports are embedded in front of and to the sides of the chair. A 
sort of artificial cocoon, it's my home. 

Space scavenging is for the small. I'm four-feet tall with the ceiling
less than five-inches over my head. Barefoot -- hell, bare everything 
-- I stretch both arms to the sides, grasping sturdy plastic bars 
placed there for that purpose. 

Space scavaging is usually a placid occupation involving long gentle
distances. They're sometimes broken by ion storms which come up 
unexpectedly and throw the ship around as a though a wooden chip in a 
water tide. 

It isn't so much fear of bodily injury as one of damaging vital
electronic devices that makes it important to have something inflexible 
to hold on to. My craft is small and every piece of equipment is 
necessary for survival. 

I make my way to the pilot's seat in front to study a larger and more
complex set of readouts. At my speed I have only a short time to decide 
whether to examine the object or not. Is it worth the fuel expenditure 
to even close with it? What is the probability of it having enough 
value to bother salvaging? 

The computer shows metal, which is a good sign; though not one hell of a
lot, which kind of deflates me. We're all yearning and dreaming of that 
huge iron mountain somewhere in the vastness of free-space. The single 
find that will ensure our fortunes. 

I tow a motley collection of partially-iron nuggets behind my vessel at
the moment, connected by tractor-beams and gravity. When I've gathered 
enough or become low on fuel I'll head back to a company collecting 
point near the Earth moon. 

The way my penetrating radar goes through it, the object is either
hollow or, more likely, a collection of frozen gases and water with a 
few metallic fragments mixed in -- not worth harvesting. 

I could use more water, though, and it isn't all that far off my path.
Not that I have a set course. Having already reached the apex of my 
route, I'm simply cruising through free-space back toward the Earth, 
hoping to collect enough debris for a few days vacation when I get 
there. 

It's simple economics. The once vast surface-metal fields on Earth are
depleted. With the advent of the ionic-space drive, it's cheaper for 
huge metal conglomerates to subsidize individual exploration of the 
asteroid belt than it is to dig deeper more expensive holes. Once 
found, huge tractor beams send vast amounts of metal ore back down to 
earth. 

After all, the conglomerates involved don't themselves don't take any
risk and get most of their investment back by selling supplies to the 
miners. It's sort of a closed ecology. The large companies own the 
space stations we miners depend on and, under contract, buy all the 
metal we find. They also sell the supplies needed for our next trip 
and, in between, provide our entertainment. Any risk belongs to us, the 
individuals doing the collecting -- and the companies even sell us 
insurance. 

Few miners get rich and half of us never live to retire, expiring from


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