1. The Ship Is Hit
Even as the sleeper lid rose, Khor could see the console lights flashing and could hear the intermittent buzzer.
The break-sleep alarm. Very often the last sound some spacemen ever heard. His blood pressure began to mount. He wasn't even completely awake, and his body was doing this to him. He shuddered. He would not see home again. Never again the stern Zoology Supervisor. ("What, Khor, still no featherless biped?" and Queva ... she had taken the sleep, to wait for him. Beloved Queva. She had given him the key to her casket. "You alone will open. Else I sleep forever." No, Queva, no, no, no ... I may never return. But she had done it. The female mind ... beyond all comprehension. Well, my friend, what now?)
He deciphered the alarm code mentally as he clambered up from the cushions: the hydraulic system had been hit, aft. Bad, bad. He had a dreadful premonition of what he would find. Get to it. Know the worst.
He ran a finger around his helmet seal, brushing his scapular feathers. Still air-tight. Next he sat on the side of the casket and wondered whether he should remove his helmet. He decided to leave it on. At least for the moment he wouldn't have to make any decisions about cabin pressure and oxygen.
The alarms--all of them--had now become impatient with him. They had moved from console and wall and had invaded his guts and brain like barbed parasites. "Xeris and Mord," he groaned.
He reached for his heat-suit and simultaneously glanced at the ceiling meter. How long had he been under? Forty cycles. Long time. He closed the suit up and clumped over to the console. First turn off that pflicht alarm. Now back to the tail of the ship.
Air pressure apparently holding. Which meant the hole in the ship wall self-sealed in good order. The missile--a meteorite?--couldn't have been too big. So why hadn't internal automatic repair handled the problem? As he rounded the passage, the answer literally hit him in the face. A jet of oil struck his visor. The pin hackles on his neck and face stood out in panic. By reflex his hands grabbed the valve wheel and extinguished the flow. He wiped his visor with his sleeve. "By the egg that bore me!" He felt sick. How much fluid had he lost? From the looks of the balls of glop floating weightlessly around him, at least half. How was it possible? Not just one leak? He played the inspection light along the piping array. The whole tubular system was dripping. Some of the holes were big enough to see. Others were microscopic, hiding behind tiny globules of fluid. The meteorite had evidently struck a brittle section of the ship wall, which then had imploded into a thousand high-velocity fragments. He had warned Maintenance last time in. The skin was fatiguing. The chief mechanic had laughed at him.
He sighed and looked around. Oil everywhere. Mocking clusters. All sizes.
Where could he find make-up fluid in this Zaforsaken corner of the galaxy? And repair-tape? He'd used the last of his tape on the solar batteries ... how many cycles ago?
"Khor," he muttered gloomily, "you sorry misbegotten space scavenger, you are in serious trouble." He'd have to land. Very funny. (You had to have a sense of humor for these collection missions.) To land, he'd have to find a planet. And not just any planet. One with a civilization sufficiently advanced to supply his needs.
He shuffled back through the collection area, toward the control room. He passed the cage with the ten-legged carnivorous reptile, now quietly sleeping its drugged sleep in the corner. Past the telepathic tree that had tried to charm him into its gluey branches as its next meal. Past the floating head-size ball of fluff that seemed to have no mouth, no food, and no alimentary system, but which had doubled in size since he had first capture it on Sargus-VI. And finally the empty cage: "Featherless biped." Where in the name of Xippor the Remorseless was he to find such an unlikely specimen? You can at least try, the Supervisor had admonished him. There are a lot of unexplored planets out there.
And so to the pilot-console, where he activated the chart screen. Nearest star ... there we are. Yellow, medium size. Third generation. Has all ninety-two elements. How about planets? Big one. Too big. And too far out. Also that one with the gorgeous ring. No. The red one? No air. Next. There's one ... plenty of water, probably good air. Life? Maybe. Civilization? Maybe. Go on. Two more. Both too hot. Back up to III. No choice, really. I'm going in.
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