Cristopher Stasheff - Escape Velocity

“BELAY IT!” Lona shouted, and a sudden, eerie silence fell. Dar drew in a long, trembling breath. Whatever had happened, it was really bad !

“They were waiting for us,” Lona said into the hush. “As soon as we fired up, their sensors locked their battle computer on us and let loose a ball of pure energy—several, really; the first few just vaporized the junk between us and them. The last one knocked off our tail section. As it is, we’re lucky—if I hadn’t swerved to avoid a rock, they’d have caught us right in this cabin.”

“They’re rising again.” Whitey had his head craned back against the viewport, staring upward.

“Sure.” Lona shrugged. “They didn’t just shear away our engines—they blew away our reactor, too. There’s no power left for them to ‘sense.’ Besides, why should they bother hunting down the pieces? They know we’re dead now, anyway.”

Sam strangled a sob.

“Take heart,” Father Marco said sternly. “We aren’t dead.”

“We do have emergency power,” Lona agreed. “It’ll keep recycling air while it lasts—and the sun’s radiation’ll keep us warm, if we block the portholes on the far side. And we have a couple of weeks’ rations.”

“Will the power last that long?” Sam’s voice was hollow.

Lona was silent.

“It will, if we don’t talk much and can do without light,” Whitey answered. “Of course, we can’t go anywhere.”

Father Marco grunted in surprise. “I didn’t know you knew any physics.”

“I was an engineer before I was a bard.” Dar could hear Whitey’s grin. “Who else could make enough sense out of this civilization to set it to music? But I’m a gambler, too.”

Dar felt the dread coalescing into terror.

“Just what kind of gamble did you have in mind?” Father Marco’s voice echoed with foreboding.

“Well, we can’t go to help,” Whitey mused, “so we’ve got to make it come to us.”

Dar cleared his throat, which pushed the fear back down. “You’re talking about a distress signal.”

“It’d give us a little chance, at least,” Whitey answered. “Without it, we’re dead—unless you can arrange a miracle, Father.”

“I’m afraid my connections don’t quite run that high.” The priest sounded amused. “Even if St. Vidicon reaches out to us, we’ve got to give him a handle to grab us by—some sort of action to put us into the ring of coincidence.”

“How much energy would it leave us?” Dar dreaded the answer.

“If it’s going to be strong enough to do us any good, we’ll have to put half our remaining power into it,” Lona answered.

“A week’s worth.” Dar wet his lips. “That gives us a week for somebody to hear us and get here.”

They were all silent.

A week ! something shrieked within Dar Only a week to live ! I’ve never even been in love !

“We don’t really have any choice, do we?” Sam said softly.

The cabin was silent again.

Then Sam heaved herself upright and leaned forward to the communications panel. “All right. How do you want it?”

Breath hissed out in a sigh of consensus.

“Broadband.” Lona slapped keys, routing the emergency power to communications. “Just the traditional Mayday, with our coordinates.”

Sam leaned forward to the audio pickup and thumbed the transmit key.

“Don’t give the name of the ship,” Whitey said quickly.

Sam hesitated, then spoke. “Mayday, Mayday! Distressed spacer at 10:32:47 V.E., 5:22 below P.E. Mayday, Mayday! Moribund!”

Moribund … “Death-bound.” Dar felt the dread wrap around him, creeping up his spine.

Sam shut down her board.

“Leave trickle-power on,” Lona advised. “If salvage does come, they’ll need contact—a second of arc is a big distance out here.”

Sam hesitated, and Dar could almost hear her thoughts—how much life-time would they lose to that trickle? But I.C. grains drew only a few milliwatts per hour, and a rescuer a mile away who couldn’t spot them was no better than no rescuer at all. Sam nodded, cracked one slider, and left her main on.

The cabin was silent again; then Lona said, “Now we wait…”

… for death . Dar completed the sentence in his head. “What do we do with our minds?”

The silence became acutely uncomfortable.

Then Father Marco stirred. “I do know a little about meditation. Would anyone like a mantra?”

“Burro-boat FCC 651919 to distressed spacer. Respond, please.”

Dar sat bolt upright, staring at the first pair of eyes he saw—Lona’s, fortunately. “So soon ? Where was he, just around the corner?”

“It’s been two hours…”

“Even so…”

“Burro-boat, this is distressed spacer,” Sam snapped into her pickup. “Can you rescue?”

“Distressed spacer, I can rescue and am in your vicinity, but need transmission to home on. Please continue transmission of carrier wave.”

“Burro-boat, will do. We await you anxiously.” Sam locked down the “transmit” button, but covered the pickup with her hand and swiveled to face the others. “It doesn’t have to be the Patrol, you know.”

“If it is, we’ll know in a minute.” Whitey gave her a dry smile. “As soon as they get a locus on us, they’ll blast us to vapor.”

Sam flinched, and whirled back to her console.

“No!” Lona snapped. “It might be legit—and if it’s not, I’d rather steam than starve, anyway!”

Sam hesitated, but she left the “transmit” button on.

“And it could be honest,” Father Marco pointed out. “The prospectors flit all over the belt in their burro-boats. Why shouldn’t there have been one two hours away?”

Lona’s eyes glazed. “Well, the probabilities …”

“Spare us,” Whitey said quickly. “Have you been praying for St. Vidicon’s help, Father?”

Father Marco squirmed. “It couldn’t hurt, could it?”

“Not at all. He might’ve stacked the deck in our favor.” Whitey craned his neck, staring out the porthole. “Dar, take the starboard view. What do you see?”

“Just asteroids… No, one of them’s getting bigger… There!”

There was a concerted rush to the starboard portholes.

“Is that a ship?” Dar gasped.

It was dingy gray, and it might’ve been a sphere once, but it was so pocked with crater dents that it looked just like any of the asteroids. Two paraboloid dishes sprouted from its top, one round for radio and microwave, the other elongated, for radar. Below them, the hull sloped down to two huge windows; the miners liked naked-eye backup for their scanners. Below them , the hull kept sloping until it reached the loading bay: two huge holes, housing solenoids, for small bits of ore; below it, a “mouth” for big chunks. Beneath a bulbous belly hung two pairs of pincers, one fore and one aft, for grappling onto small asteroids that were two big for loading. From the aft section sprouted a spray of antennae that set up a force-field to prevent rear-end collisions by small asteroids.

“It’s beautiful,” Sam breathed.

The burro-boat rotated, broadside-on to the Ray of Hope , and a small hatch opened in its side. A magnetic grapple shot out, trailing a line. It clanged onto their hull.

“Distressed spacer,” said the com console, “We are prepared for boarding.”

Sam dived for the console. “Acknowledge, burro-boat. We’ll just slide into our pressure suits, and be right over.”

Whitey swung out a section of the wall. “I hope they left the suits when they mothballed this thing… There they are!”

All five crowded around, feasting their eyes on their means of escape.