Salander 3: Tyrell's Lost Ship To Proxima

Name: Salander 3
Type: Interstellar exploration transport
Operator: Tyrell Corporation
Destination: Proxima system (never reached)
Mission leaders: Anson and Ruth Tyrell
Born aboard: Sarah and Rachael Tyrell
Return: San Pedro docking terminals
Final location: Sunk in Scapa Flow, Orkney
First appearance: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
Status: Scuttled wreck

The Salander 3 was the Tyrell Corporation interstellar transport that set out for the Proxima system in K. W. Jeter's Blade Runner novels. Philip K. Dick first named the ship in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and Jeter expanded its history. It was the last private flight beyond the solar system before the U.N. banned corporate interstellar travel. The ship turned back a sixth of the way to its target and brought home Sarah Tyrell together with the bodies of her parents. Its contaminated hull was later sunk in a Scottish anchorage, where Sarah went inside the wreck in Blade Runner: Replicant Night.

Design And Systems

Drive And Hull

The Salander 3 was an early exploration transport built to travel beyond the solar system on an older type of interstellar drive. The spent drive units and the long journey left a toxic build-up in the hull that Tyrell Corporation memos described as lethal. Deckard assumed that the ship had to be sealed away somewhere on Earth to keep the effects of its old propulsion units from leaking out. The build-up also disturbed time aboard, so that events from the voyage stayed trapped inside the hull. While the wreck lay in Scapa Flow, a stream of water leaked in under a rubber-flanged seal and ran along one of its corridors.

Corridors And Storage

The interior was a network of corridors lined with curving metal, with light fixtures recessed behind translucent covers and speaker grilles overhead. A central corridor led from the entry point to a branching junction, and the rust-streaked ceiling was low enough that Sarah could almost touch it on tiptoe. Along one stretch every light panel had been smashed during the voyage, and pieces of the plastic covers lay on the floor. Farther in, one section had escaped the violence. It was a storage area with crates and boxes marked in stencilled lettering stacked along its sides, where Sarah stopped to question the girl Rachael. The ship's main hatch opened onto a ramp.

Computer And Care Systems

A built-in computer ran the Salander 3 and spoke through the overhead grilles in the voice of a fond caretaker. Its automated machinery switched on lights and ventilation whenever sensors detected a warm human body, and it had bathed and fed the infant Sarah for the journey home. The girl Rachael called these systems "the nanny," and for the young Sarah the computer monitors served as windows. The ship also had medical circuits, which Anson Tyrell used to deliver the twins, and a sleep transport chamber for suspended animation. Dozens of standard first-aid kits stamped with the ship's name were stocked aboard, and the return program took control only after no living adult remained.

History

The Proxima Expedition

The Tyrell Corporation spent billions on the voyage and sent Anson Tyrell and his wife Ruth as its leaders. They took a long-haired marmalade cat with them as the expedition pet, and a news photograph showed the smiling couple setting out for Proxima. Ruth became pregnant shortly before or soon after the ship left Earth orbit. Anson was publicly known as the brother of Eldon Tyrell, the head of the company. Records of the mission were later erased from the corporate files, and the Los Angeles police files on the ship were locked or emptied. Rick Deckard found only access warnings and empty folders when he searched them early in his career.

Murders Aboard The Ship

During the outbound voyage Ruth gave birth to twin daughters, Sarah and Rachael, and Anson delivered them using the ship's medical systems. Some time later Anson went insane, killed and gutted the cat, smashed the corridor lights, and hunted his wife through the ship. Ruth hid the infant Rachael in the sleep chamber and ran with Sarah in her arms, but Anson knew the ship better, caught her, and cut her throat. When the fit passed, he killed himself with the same knife and left the crying baby to the ship's machines. With no living adult aboard, the computer turned the transport around a sixth of the way to Proxima.

Return To Earth

The Salander 3 raised Sarah alone on the journey home and fed her synthesized milk. It reached the docking terminals at San Pedro when she was three years old, and Tyrell Corporation workers opened the hatch, led her down the ramp, and carried out the bodies of her parents. Eldon Tyrell took the girl in as his niece, and a notice of a cremation service for Anson and Ruth appeared the day after the ship came back. The workers either missed Rachael or left her on purpose, and she remained asleep and unaged in the sleep chamber. Afterward the U.N. launched its off-world colonization program and gave the Tyrell Corporation the exclusive replicant franchise.

Scuttled In Scapa Flow

Because of the drive contamination, the ship was sunk in Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, where it came to rest on the wrecks of the German fleet scuttled there after the First World War. A triangular platform on the surface led to a shaft that ran down to the hull, with a small elevator cage and a strip of lights installed when the shaft was connected. In Replicant Night, Wycliffe and Zwingli of the Tyrell shadow corporation flew Sarah there in an interplanetary yacht and rowed her out to the shaft. They wanted her to learn what had gone wrong during the expedition so they could restore the company.

Sarah's Descent

Inside the wreck the ventilation and lights switched on as Sarah walked through, and the ship's computer spoke to her like an old caretaker and told her to go home. Time had not moved normally aboard, and the past trapped in the hull let her see events from the voyage. She found broken light panels, a large pool of blood, and her own name painted in blood across a wall. A young girl named Rachael took her hand and led her deeper inside. Sarah watched the ghost of her father catch and kill her mother, then ran with the girl back to the shaft and rode it up into a storm.

Wycliffe and Zwingli pulled them into the boat and said they could see the girl too, although Sarah insisted she was a hallucination. Back aboard the Tyrell yacht, Sarah told them that her father had gutted the cat, killed her mother, and then killed himself, which matched the few edited statements left by the workers who had boarded the ship after its return. The two men admitted the shadow corporation had hidden these details from her, and they asked her to go back down to the Salander 3 for more information.

The Photograph And The Twins

One first-aid kit had left the Salander 3 before it was sunk. In Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human, a bearded leader of replicant sympathizers who said he had helped carry the coffins off the ship gave the kit to J. F. Sebastian as a holy relic. In Replicant Night, Marley opened it for Deckard in a bar in the Martian emigrant colony and took out a photograph that Ruth had hidden in the lid before she was killed. It showed Ruth aboard the ship holding two newborn girls, with Anson beside her in his expedition jumpsuit.

Marley also told Deckard that Eldon Tyrell's real brother had died as a child, and that the Anson and Ruth who flew on the Salander 3 were replicants who believed they were human. According to Marley, the mission never needed to reach Proxima, only to leave the reach of the Earth's morphogenetic field, outside which replicants could have children. Deckard later showed the photograph to Sarah and said that Eldon had programmed Anson's murderous breakdown in advance and then covered up what remained. Eldon let both girls live, raised Sarah as his niece, and left Rachael asleep in the wreck.

Key Crew And Passengers

Anson Tyrell - Mission leader, publicly known as Eldon Tyrell's brother and later revealed by Marley to be a replicant. He killed his wife and then himself during the voyage.
Ruth Tyrell - Mission leader and mother of the twins. She hid Rachael in the sleep chamber and a photograph in a first-aid kit before Anson killed her.
Sarah Tyrell - Born aboard during the outbound voyage. She was the only living person taken off the ship when it returned to Earth.
Rachael - Sarah's twin sister, left asleep in the sleep chamber for decades. She came out of the wreck with Sarah in Scapa Flow.
Expedition cat - The expedition's marmalade cat. Anson killed it before he turned on his wife.

Behind The Scenes

Philip K. Dick introduced the Salander 3 in his 1968 novel in the background of Rachael Rosen. Her uncle Eldon Rosen told Rick Deckard that she had been born on the ship and spent fourteen of her eighteen years aboard, learning about Earth from its tape library and from the nine adult crew members. In that account the ship also turned back a sixth of the way to Proxima, and the novel noted that The Buster Friendly Show would have been waiting had it arrived. K. W. Jeter reused the name, the Proxima destination, and the turnaround point in his Bantam sequels, but rebuilt the voyage around Sarah Tyrell and her parents.

Conclusion

The Salander 3 was the Tyrell Corporation's failed expedition ship to Proxima and the birthplace of Sarah Tyrell and her twin sister Rachael. Its voyage ended when Anson Tyrell killed his wife and himself, and the ship's computer carried Sarah home alone while Rachael slept in a hidden chamber. The contaminated hull was sunk in Scapa Flow, where Sarah later saw the murders replayed and brought Rachael back out. A photograph from one of its first-aid kits finally showed Sarah that she and her sister had been born to replicant parents during the voyage.