Science fictionAbout 4,000 words3 chaptersAll ages
Salvage Rights
Some doors only open together.
Four salvagers finally track down the Halcyon, a hauler listed as a wreck for eleven years that has been broadcasting three different positions the whole time. She is dark, stripped bare, and still drawing power, and every door aboard her was built by somebody who did not want to be found by just anyone. Then a second ship comes in running silent.
What it teaches while you read
- Told as a log written after the job, so the narration holds one simple past form.
- Present tense is kept for the narrator's asides about her crew.
- Future tense appears only where someone is talking about what happens next.
We told this one as a log written after the job, which keeps almost every sentence in one simple past form while the reader is busy following a puzzle. Present tense comes in only where the narrator stops to comment on her crewmates, and future only where somebody is talking about what happens next.
