The principals here are the captain, Marcus Calvert, and crew of the Lady Macbeth, a ship for hire. Their latest clients have a new scheme for detecting mineral-rich asteroids, so the ship embarks for a star system with a fresh asteroid belt and goes trawling. Instead of gold they discover an ancient alien shipwreck embedded against an asteroid containing a telescopic dish. The Macbeth crew eagerly set about exploring it, quickly realizing it contains technological wonders that would enrich them far beyond the value of any gold in them thar asteroids. But the prospectors turn out not be be much interested in the ship; they have more sinister goals to persue.
The story is slick and fast-paced with a sufficient dose of alien mystery to keep it from being a mere action thriller. The shipwreck's mysteries tange from how to open the automated doors, to what the movable dots are that pace the humans up and down the bulkheads, to what the telescopic dish implies about how, or whether, the alien crew was rescued. A cat and mouse game between good guys and bad guys resolves the story but perhaps sacrifices the alien mystieries. In particular, the alien discoveries are of a nature that they imply a profound impact on the subsequent history of Hamilton's universe.
Locus, October 1997, p. 52
I also know that Peter Hamilton has published short fiction in the following places, but I don't know the names of the stories or what issues they're in. If you have any information about them, please let me know.
If you have any more information on short fiction by Peter F. Hamilton (both new stories and reprints of old stories), I would be very interested to hear it so that I can make this page a better reference. It's impossible for one person to keep track of all SF magazines and anthologies, so please help!
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