Rob Chilson - Refuge

In a moment she was back on Aurora, about to do her first solo takeoff. She had had that very thought, or something very close to it, and even more nervousness than now. Now, though, she was in shock. The memories went on and on, the takeoff, the acceleration seeming more fierce than ever now that she had to remain conscious, the relief as the jets shut down, and then the indescribable free, floating sensation of one’s first solo orbit.

“Ariel?”

Her instructor-

“Ariel?”

With a shake, she brought herself out of it. “Sorry. Memory fugue.” As her hands moved over the board-taking care to push the buttons on the real board instead of the remembered one-the memories went on, flashed back, picked up details; A whole chunk of her past restored to her by a chance thought, a chance repetition of forgotten circumstance.

She burned for ten seconds and rolled the ship to study the junk. There should be detectors back there that would tell them how fast they were moving relative to the junk, but they weren’t working. The junk still seemed to be receding. Ariel rolled and blasted for another twenty seconds, again looked.

“That should do it.”

They had only to wait, floating toward the wrecked ship aft-end first, ready to burn to brake down.

“How did she do it?”

“It’s hopeless;’ said Derec.

Mandelbrot was trying to patch their hull.

“It’s got to work,” Ariel said, biting her lip behind her helmet…Otherwise, Wolruf -”

The other Star Seeker had been hit harder than their own and was scarcely maneuverable. Mandelbrot, using rockets welded onto his body and a line gun, had brought them close together, with Ariel doing most of the maneuvering. There was very little air in either ship-and there was no spacesuit for the caninoid alien.

“We’ve been stressed too severely. The best we can do is temporary patching.” Derec tried to rub his head, and his hand encountered his helmet for the fifteenth time. Frustrated, he let it drop.

“If it holds long enough to Jump out of here-” she said.

Derec shook his head. “Four Jumps to Robot City-five for safety,” he said…That’s days of work checking courses and calculating. I wouldn’t want my life to depend on that kind of patching. And we’ll be maneuvering. That’ll strain the patches even more.”

“Something’s got to be done! Maybe Aranimas’s ship-”

Jumping at straws, and she knew it. “Even Wolruf doesn’t really know how to fly it-assuming any of us had the arm reach for that control board. No computer aid, Ariel!”

She nodded soberly…I know. It’s not possible; it’s these ships or nothing. “

“Maybe there’s air or food over there. We could use both.”

They looked at each other somberly. It was not a pleasant position.

On a wrecked ship, barely maneuverable, with most of its instrumentation out, leaking like a proverbial sieve, on a trajectory that would take it somewhere near Procyon in a few million years, short on air, water, and food, with a friend on another, worse ship, sealed into a single room.

“Join the Space Service and see the stars,” Derec said, forcing a grin.

Ariel grinned back, just as wanly.

The alien ship was all around them, and some of the pieces definitely had once been living. Derec, feeling none too good to start, avoided looking at them, though they were at such a distance that details were lost. His imagination supplied them. Many were Narwe, but there was a goodly number of the starfish-shaped dwellers-in-darkness he had glimpsed in his brief time aboard the ship.

“I’m amazed they aren’t trying something,” he said again. They’d both been saying that for nearly an hour.

“Derec…I think they’re all gone.”

It could be. But-”Dead?” he asked.

Many were. Ariel shook her head, though. “I don’t think so. I think they must have Jumped out at the height of the battle. “

Leaning forward, Derec eagerly scanned such of the surroundings as were visible, trying to count the hulls. It was no use. “I don’t know how many hulls there were, and they all look different now. The central one, I suppose, had the hyperatomic motors. Maybe some of the other hulls did, too. I don’t think there’s more than one hull missing, though.”

“You agree, then?” she asked, worried.

“I agree,” he said. “Knowing Aranimas, if he were alive and here, he’d be shooting at us. With something.”

“Yes.” She was silent for a moment. “It’s not likely that all that damage could have been done by Mandelbrot.”

Wolruf had dropped the robot off when she had braked sufficiently to bring the relative motion of the ships down to a level Mandelbrot’s rockets could handle. The robot had made a landing on the alien ship, damaging one knee joint, and then had swarmed allover it, planting explosive charges at the joins of the hulls. The mighty ship had simply broken up.

“We already know that there were explosive charges at the hull connections,” Derec said. Aranimas had dropped one of his hulls to make his escape at Rockliffe Station.

“Yes. He must have blown them all, got his central hull free, and Jumped.”

“If he Jumped blind, he could be anywhere in the universe,” Derec said. “Let’s hope he never finds his way back!”

It wasn’t something they could count on.

Half an hour later, Mandelbrot called them on the radio and suggested that they go lock-to-lock with Wolruf’s ship. Presently, Ariel brought them together, Mandelbrot guiding them, and the open airlocks grated together. They were compatible, and with a little nudging clanked into position.

“This join will not hold air long,” observed the robot. “We must charge it, and Wolruf must move fast, despite the bag.”

They had been pumping their leaking air into bottles, to save at least some of it. Derec took one of the bottles to the lock, shoved its bayonet fitting into the lock’s emergency valve, and opened the bottle. Presently Wolruf banged on the inner door, the outer door clanking shut behind her. Derec let the air continue to hiss to equalize pressure-but the bottle went empty first.

Muttering, he jerked it out of the emergency valve, which closed automatically, and turned to the manual spill valve. It took a good grip to hold that open, but after a moment pressure was equal and they hadn’t lost much of their precious air.

Wolruf entered in a transparent plastic balloon, now half deflated under cabin pressure. She looked a little short of breath-or scared; Derec certainly couldn’t blame her. Itcould not have been easy to flounder in free-fall, inside that balloon, through the other ship and the twinned locks.

The little caninoid emerged from the release zipper with a shake, saying, “Thank ‘ou. Itwass a nervous time. I ‘ave grreat fearr of the Erani.”

“We think Aranimas is gone,” said Ariel.

“I ‘ope so, but I do not understand.”

Ariel explained tersely.

“He would sshoot, if he could,” Wolruf agreed.

Mandelbrot’s voice came over the radio. “I will enter the other ship and bring forth what items I can,” he said. “You will need more organic feedstock for the food synthesizers, and of course air. Perhaps it would be wise to explore the alien ship also.”

That was a thought. Itmade Derec more than a little nervous, and he could see that Ariel wasn’t much happier.

“That wreckage is grinding around a good bit. Still, the bigger pieces are getting farther and farther away from each other,” she said. “It should be safe-as things go.”

“That apartment back on Earth looks more and more cozy every minute,” said Derec with a weak laugh.