Read Polaris for Free Online Page B

damage to stationary objects. “They probably came in on a looting expedition,” he said. “Got exasperated at the conditions, and started breaking things up.”
    Yeah. Those looters are just terrible.
    But maybe they’d gotten discouraged too soon. We eventually wandered into what appeared to be the control room. And that was where we found the jade bracelet. And the corpse.
    The bracelet was on the left wrist. It was black, and engraved with an ivy branch.
    The corpse was in pieces, and the pieces were adrift. The torso was moving across the deck when we moved in. At first I didn’t know what it was. It was mummified, and it looked as if it had been either a woman or a child. While we were trying to decide about that, I discovered the bracelet. The arm was the only limb still attached.
    It wasn’t readily visible unless you handled the remains. Don’t ask me why I did. It was just that the corpse shouldn’t have been there, and I wondered what had happened.
    And there was the bracelet. “I think she got left behind,” I told Alex. There was no sign of a pressure suit, so she hadn’t been with the vandals.
    We had nothing to wrap her in, no way to secure the body. Alex stood staring at her a long time. Then he looked around the room. There were three control positions. They opened the outer doors remotely, maintained station stability, managed communications, kept an eye on life support, probably controlled the bots that serviced the living quarters.
    â€œI think you’re right,” he said at last.
    â€œProbably didn’t check when they left to be sure they had everybody.”
    He looked at me. “Maybe.”
    She was shriveled, dry, the face smoothed out, the features missing altogether. I thought how it must have been when she realized she’d been left behind. “If it really happened,” Alex said, “it had to have been deliberate.”
    â€œYou mean, because she could have called them? Let them know she was here?”
    â€œThat’s one reason.”
    â€œIf they were shutting down the station,” I said, “they’d have killed the power before they left. She might not have known how to turn it back on.” He rolled his eyes. “So what other reason is there?”
    â€œThey’d have used a team for a project like shutting down the station. There’s no way someone could have been here and not noticed what was going on. No. This was deliberate.”
    Three walls had been converted into display screens. There was lots of electronic gear. The rear wall, the one the corpse was climbing, was given over to an engraving of the mountain eagle that for centuries was the world symbol of the Shenji Imperium. Two phrases were inscribed below the eagle.
    â€œWhat’s it say?” I asked.
    Alex had a translator. He poked the characters into it and made a face. “ The Compact. It’s the way the Shenji of that era referred to their nation, which was a polity of individual states. The Compact. ” He hesitated. “The second term is harder to translate. It means something like Night Angel. ”
    â€œNight Angel?”
    â€œWell, maybe Night Guardian. Or Angel of the Dark. I think it’s the name of the station.”
    An outstation always had a dozen or so rooms set aside as accommodations for travelers. You want to stay overnight, and maybe even sneak someone into your apartment without the rest of the world finding out, this was the place to do it. The room usually consisted of a real bed, as opposed to the fold-outs on the ships. Maybe a chair or two. A computer link. Possibly a small table and a reader.
    The compartments at the Night Angel were located two decks above the control room and about a kilometer away. We were looking to see if any appeared to have been lived in, but the passage of time was too great, and the contents of the rooms too thoroughly scrambled, so it was impossible to