The Cable Cars of Zander

The Cable Cars of Zander

by Bonnie Phillips Gardiner

INTRODUCTION...

"Okay, right. Here is the story... no... Wait... The tale-"

"Yeah, that sounds better."

"Quit interrupting."

"Oh, sorry..."

"Anyway, right, here is the tale of Reginald-"

"Lord Reginald, you mean."

"Oh craps. Who's telling this story, you two or me?"

"I thought you said it was a tale."

"He didn't say tale as in tail, he said tale, as in, TALE." Dramatic music increases in volume and then fades away.

A few moments of silence pass.

"Are you two quite through?"

"Oh, uh... Yeah. I am. I can't think of anything to follow that up with."

"Humph. Neither can I."

"Good. So shut up and let me tell the story- I mean the tale, right?"

A few seconds of vigorous metallic squeaking are followed by a long one.

"Right. So, here is the tale of Reginald -"

There is a quick hollow metal cough.

"THE TALE OF REGINALD KIPPER SPANNER."

"I knew you'd forget the "Lord"."

"Oh shut up."

There is a loud clang.

"Oh! He's resorted to violence again! Violence is not the answer!"

There is another loud clang.

"Now, right, Kip Spanner was just a lowly mine worker. He shoveled rocks onto a conveyor belt all day. But Kip was lazy. There were only two things he loved to do more than anything else in the world. One was avoiding work. The other was reading paperback books...

ONE....

"So this is why the entire section of B 68 just collapsed?"

"Yes, sir. The ore just isn't stable in that area. Another blast could sent that section of the asteroid into space."

"Great. This is just what I need."

Captain Rasdin Finaggin wiped the sweat from his brow with a red western style handkerchief. He was a jolly shaped man with a thin man's temper and an air traffic controller's stress level. He had all his hair but seriously wanted to pull it all out in his fists about six times a day. Though he was in generally good health except for his weight, he had a bad case of nerves almost daily which translated into frequent trips to the men's room. The rest of the men had learned to use the one down the hall.

"Alright," he said in a loud voice. He spun his captain's chair around dramatically, which, being a fan of William Shatner, happened to be one of his secret pleasures. Then he stood up. "I need an assessment on the stability situation in sectors B 60 through B 90. What are we looking at here, people?"

A flurry of activity began a few steps below him in the control room. Well, a sort of flurry. Of the handful of bored and disgruntled employees within earshot of Rasdin, only one of them actually listened and did anything. She was a youngish blond woman wearing a regulation dark green jumpsuit. She got up, poured herself a fresh cup of coffee, grabbed a can of air freshener and brought it to the captain on her way back to her workstation.

"Yes," he said loudly. "Good idea, Jenkins." He coughed, backed up a step and then turned and ran oddly to the men's room.

Sarsha Smyth Jenkins smiled to herself and sat back down at her station as she heard the door to the restroom swoosh shut. She took a sip of her coffee and thought about the ore problem. In a few moments she began typing furiously on her terminal and talking on her headset.

A man burst into the room covered in black soot and dust.

"Where's the captain?"

All the workers pointed to the restroom.

"Shit! We have a major breach in B 62. I think we're gonna lose B 50 to C 10 to space."

Jenkins turned back to her terminal and punched a button. A horrendously loud siren came on accompanied by red flashing lights spaced ten feet apart down the curving and winding corridors and tunnels. They came on one at a time and the farther away from the ship's control room they were the distant and more remote sounding the siren became. Workers dropped their shovels and tools and ran to portable terminals spaced one hundred feet apart. Jenkins' face was there on the screen, barking orders to the dirty faces. A shaken up Rasdin appeared behind her and pointed at the screen as he also began shouting orders. Jenkins showed him something to the left and he collapsed into a nearby chair.

Further down the tunnel the screeching siren was only a distant buzz. Around one corner and up a small incline, one single red light attempted to flash but only flickered helplessly. Just behind it was a small hole in the upper part of an angled wall of rocks. Inside the man sized hole, past a sharp right turn was a small room sized chamber filled with strains of a glowing yellow rock spiraling the walls like a cluster of fireflies. And there, in the center, leaning on a huge pile of old paperback books was Kip Spanner. He turned the last page in the book, read the last paragraph and threw the tome down in disgust.

"Crap! That was utter crap!"

Kip Spanner was short and a bit dumpy. His hair had an unwashed stringy grunge appearance and snugly crushed on top of it was a cap that had morphed over time to look more like a beret. His pale blue plaid shirt had faded to dirty grey-white in spots and his overalls had the white threadbare shadows of his knees and bottom showing. He wore old black shoes that gave the appearance of once being someone's Sunday best but now had the feel of discarded thrift store rejects. The creases in the leather weren't so much creases as cracks and his once white socks were harboring an entirely new species of fungus in an odd shade of lavender. They smelled a bit like that too. His age was difficult to tell at first glance. At once be looked both young and old. With sleepy half closed eyes and hair drooping in front of them all one could really see of his face was his goofy half smile and round chin. Right now his round chin rested in his hands which in turn rested on his knees as he sat cross legged on the cave floor.

"I can't believe she didn't kill him! I could have sworn... " He set his jaw to one side and thought a moment. "Oh well," he said. "Crap is crap. Next!"

He reached to his right and covered his eyes with his other hand. His fingers ran slowly down a stack of paperbacks leaning against the flat side of a large jagged boulder poking through the cave floor. He finally stopped at one and pulled it out of the stack quickly without knocking over the remaining books. He uncovered his eyes once the book was in his hand.

"The Four Faces of Nacey Fate," he said, reading aloud. He turned the book over and read the back. As his eyes scanned the blurb his brain registered a slight red tinge by the entrance to the cave, but he chose to ignore it.

Then his brain noticed the complete silence of the workers outside.

"Spike?"

"Hey," he said. "Spike!"

He lowered the book and looked at his watch.

"SPIKE!"

He tapped the tiny screen with his other hand.

"Hey, wake up!"

A dim light came on in the screen. There was a tiny room with a wingback chair and a fireplace. A door on the right opened and a cartoon dog in a thick bathrobe and slippers walked in and sat down in the chair. He lifted a small pipe to his mouth and lit it then he picked up a remote control by the chair and with a click of a button turned the fire in the fireplace on.

"The time," he said in a very proper English professor-type voice. "Is two twenty two and ten seconds, Kip Spanner."

"Yeah," Kip said. He had very little interest in the time of day unless it involved a meal. "What's going on out there? It's so... you know... quiet."

"Did it, perhaps, occur to you, that maybe YOU might GET UP and WALK out and find out for yourself?"

"Oh, come on, Spike. I'm about to start a new book." He held up "Nacey Fate" to the screen and the dog visibly shuddered.

"Ooh. How can you read such drivel? All right. I'll check. Wait just a moment." Pleasant elevator-style music came on and a chorus line of happy face daisies began dancing across the screen. Kip slipped the new book in his chest pocket and stared toward the exit. The faint red flicker started again.

The music sounded small and faint in the tiny room but he startled when it stopped and Spike spoke again.

"There's been a breach in sections B 50 through C 10. An entire chunk of the asteroid has broken off and drifted away from us. Captain Finaggin ordered an immediate evacuation of all personnel. There was a fear the whole asteroid would fall apart when the chunk escaped."

As Spike was reciting the news Kip jumped to his feet and said things like "Crap!" and "Oh my God!" and "What about my dinner?" Then he ran to the open corridor and saw the pitiful red light attempting to flash.

_______________

Rasdin mentally patted himself on the back. His favorite part of the job was the actual travel through space in the ship itself. Of course, that he had just saved the entire crew from death and destruction made him proud too. He gave Jenkins a pat on the back as well by raising her rank to first mate. Yes, quick thinking had saved everyone's life and the company would be happy they wouldn't have to pay for any lawsuits from angry grieving family members. They would, however, be pissed about the loss of the ore. He thought of that and his face went from a giant toothy smile to an almost frightening frown. He moaned out loud and covered his face with his hands. His pay would be docked. He would end up hauling again instead of mining. He peeked through his fingers, but was staring at nothing. Hauling wasn't such a bad idea. More time in space on the ships and a lot less in damp dirty asteroids. His smile began to return. So what if it happened. He'd probably be happier doing that job even with less pay.

On the controls fitted into the left arm of the chair, a tiny yellow light began flashing.

___

"Yeah, it's me, Kip Spanner! You forgot me!" Kip screamed into the terminal closest to his cave. Jenkins spoke in calm voice over her headset.

"Didn't you see the warning lights?"

"No, I didn't. Look at this," he said. He reached in and turned the tiny camera at the top of the terminal over toward the sad red warning light. It flickered and died again. Jenkins bit her bottom lip and pushed a button on her keyboard. Just over her shoulder Kip saw Captain Rasdin looking through his fingers with a strange smile on his face. He watched as Rasdin glanced down at a light blinking on his left control panel. The captain's eyes went slowly from the panel to Jenkins and finally to Kip's face on the screen. Kip smiled sheepishly and waved. The captain covered his face with his hands again.

_______

"So there's this idiot who got left behind and we just don't know what to do. I don't feel the asteroid is stable enough for us to reattach the ship and there really isn't a suitable landing area for a rescue ship, so I just don't know what to do," Captain Rasdin sat hunched over the desk in his private office. A computer screen in front of him showed a very thin faced man with a curled mustache and a funny metallic gold helmet-looking hat with the emblem of the mining company embossed in the front. He was not smiling.

"Is there a rescue vessel in the area that has the right equipment to get him out?"

Rasdin sighed. "No sir. No one's close. There is one coming but it won't be here for a least a week"

The man on the screen grunted.

"YOU will have to find a way to solve this, Finaggin. And I want to see the report on exactly how this catastrophe happened."

Rasdin raised his head. "Oh, well, Spanner didn't see the warning light sir, and the-"

"Not THAT," the man said. His booming deep voice bounced off the wall behind Rasdin. "The report on why you abandoned the claim."

"Abandoned the claim?"

"Yes. You abandoned that asteroid with the ore still intact. That means that floating rock is still worth quite a lot and-"

"And," Rasdin said quietly. "I left a potential claimer."

"Yes."

"Ugh." Rasdin's head hit the desk with a thump.

_____

"So, what's the situation, Spike? What am I facing? Is there enough food to get me by until the rescue ship comes?" Kip kicked a rock on the ground as he followed the tracks of the mine cars back to the where the ship was once attached.

"I think your more immediate concerns should be oxygen and gravity." Spike took a puff from his pipe.

"I should check on the generators then."

"The truth is," Spike said as he picked off a speck of digital dust from his suit. "I'm not sure how you're breathing now."

Kip stopped.

"What?"

"Well, all the ridiculous apparatus that were keeping this human crew breathing and working, (at such cheap pay, I might add,) left with the ship," he said. "That means the artificial gravity, the artificial atmosphere, everything. In short, I'm not really sure how you're breathing or walking."

Kip scratched his head behind his right ear.

"So, everything's okay then?"

Spike shrugged.

"If that's the case, then food might be the more important matter."

"Oh no!"

"The cooks and the food left with the ship."

"NO!" Kip fell to his knees.

His yell echoed through the abandoned tunnels and out into the cavernous hole left by the ship and the missing chunk of asteroid where it slammed face first into the vacuum of space and evaporated without even a hiss.

______________

In the giant hole left behind by the ship, various levels of the mine could be seen by anyone out there floating around who happened to pass by. That is if they weren't dead from asphyxiation. Down one of the upper shafts, close to the surface and where the former main entrance to the interior of the ship had been, was a mini workstation for one of the fixer-upper type crew members known lovingly as Tink. He loved to fix anything and everything and had a fine workshop all to himself on the ship, but whenever the crew were attached to an asteroid he preferred to be in the action so he always set up a temporary shop on the asteroid itself so he could wander around and check out the local flora and fauna. In other words, rocks. This particular mission was no exception. They had been attached to the asteroid for many long cold months and Tink had a collection of stuff he had to fix piled up in boxes and stacks around the little cave he had staked out for himself. Loyal as he was to his job however, when the warning buzzer went off he grabbed the most important bits of the lot and ran into the ship, leaving everything else behind. Tink was informed that at the next asteroid stop he would be tanked if he so much as tunk about setting up shop outside again.

Among the bits and pieces left behind were a small assortment of robots. Piddles awoke with a start.

"Craps! What a bad dream!" Piddles was a round fat mechanical rock crusher bot, class two. His former job had been to crush up big rocks that couldn't be moved by human effort in spaces where a big machine couldn't fit.

"We don't dream," said a tall robot polishing his fingertips the way a human would file his fingernails. He held them out and looked for a moment, then began polishing again.

"What'd you dream?" A shorter robot with several sets of arms was lying on the floor of the cave with one set of arms folded behind his head. His head was shaped like a poofy chef's hat with eyes.

"We don't dream," said the tall robot again.

"Oh shut up Francis," Piddles said. "What the hell else would you call it?" He turned away and as best a robot could, his gaze seemed far away. "It was so real too. There was this woman's face and she was going "Attention! Attention! Evacuation procedures are to commence immediately!" Then she was telling the humans where to go and everything."

Francis stopped polishing his nails.

"Piddles," he said in a slow and very low voice. "Are you connected to the ship's computer?"

"Oh!" Piddles sat up straight and rubbed his chin with one of his heavy metal three fingered claws. "Oh, look at that!" He picked up a small hunk of metal with bits of wires sticking out. "That's a regulation seventy four 'A' circuit transformer for a level six mark two lifter."

"You ARE."

Piddles dropped the transformer and sighed.

"Yes," he said sadly. "I am." He shrugged. "That's why I'm here, you know." He shrugged. "Contraband information. They found me relaying private messages from the ship to some more, er, shady members of the crew."

"Ooh! An outlaw!" Francis jumped to his wheel and began circling around the cave waving his arms. "Hey! You! Tinker or Tanker or whatever your name is, I want out of here right this instant! I am a class one butlerbot and I demand to be moved to the upper class repair room!" After a few moments he stopped waving his arms and ventured out a bit into the corridor. "Hello?"

"So what happened," the chef robot asked.

"Aw, nothing really. It wasn't my fault they reprogrammed me. I mean what's a bot to do when they turn off the power to your body, right? They can pretty much do whatever they like with it, you know?"

"Eew," the chef shivered.

"So, what's wrong with you?"

"Why am I here, you mean?" Piddles nodded. The chef shrugged. "Cooked the wrong meal."

"Oh."

"Yeah, I didn't know the first mate was allergic to cinnamon. I was supposed to know, but somehow I didn't. Or I forgot... Or something."

"Oh... That was you," Piddles said. He looked down at the floor as if in thought.

"Lovely funeral though," he said.

"Oh yes. Quite nice."

They were quiet a few moments. Francis had disappeared down the corridor.

"I'm Piddles, by the way."

"Maurice6." They shook hand and claw.

A mechanical scream echoed down the hall. Francis rounded the corner and crashed into the room knocking broken bits and pieces everywhere. His arms were flailing above his head and his eyes were flashing alternatively red and blue on either side.

"AAAAGH!"

He rolled to Piddles and grabbed his metal collar.

"AAAAAAGH!"

Piddles lifted his right claw and flicked a finger on Francis' chest. Francis flew backwards and crashed into the workbench raining more noisy metal bits and pieces on the floor.

"Now what's wrong?"

"They've left us!"

"What?" Maurice6 sat up. "Left us? What do you mean?"

"The ship is GONE!" Francis covered his face with his hands. "AAAGH!"

"So it wasn't a dream then."

"I told you! We don't dream!" Francis collapsed in a heap and switched himself off. There was a fast blue spark and a small whiff of smoke above his head. Maurice6 leaned over and took a close look at him.

"He'll be alright."

"I was worried, right," Piddles said. There was a sarcastic tone to his voice and a toothy-metal grin on his face. "Welp," he said. "I'd better go check this out."

"I'll keep an eye on, uh, Frantic here."

"Frantic, heh, that's a good one, right?" Piddles chuckled to himself as he lumbered down the tunnel toward what should have been the main heavy equipment entrance to the ship. Instead there was a huge hole over a mile across. Piddles looked down and saw floor after floor below him open and gaping at the empty space. Then he let go of the doorway with both claws and looked at them. He looked up at the stars and made out the star that was the ship far out into space.

"Right, well, something's really wrong here," he said when he got back to the others. "If you think logically, you know, we should probably have been jerked out into space when the ship left, right?"

Francis made an agreeing noise and Maurice6 nodded.

"We didn't and all the stuff stayed put too. Even down in the hole. And there seems to still be gravity."

"I think there's an atmosphere too," Maurice6 said. "I can taste it." A green light came on where his mouth grill was located. "Oxygen... "

"I wonder if that means someone is still here?" Francis said in a small far away voice.

Maurice6 and Piddles looked at each other. Francis sat up.

"Someone is still here?" He fell back down again. "AAAAGH!"

__________

Kip used every last token he had at the vending machines. He got fourteen chocolate candy bars with peanuts or almonds, ten small bags of barbeque potato chips, a roll of hard cherry flavored candies, and twelve orange sodas in plastic bottles so he could screw the tops open and closed.

"Well, this'll get me by today," he said. He crammed all of the pockets in his overalls with his newfound bounty.

"At least your diet won't suffer," Spike said.

"Yeah," Kip said. "I could use a hotdog though."

Spike audibly sighed.

As Kip walked along and munched on a bag of chips he stared up at the ceiling of the tunnel. The rocks glistened in the red flashing lights, but otherwise the ceiling was black. The appearance was like a night sky with red stars.

"So," he said. "We're all alone then."

"Mmm," Spike said in agreement.

"Big, echoey place," Kip said. He walked along the metal tracks and kicked at the gravel. On either side of the tracks the area cut out for mining and the workers varied between ten feet and thirty, but the height tended to stay about thirty feet along the main corridor.

"Hey, with no sound this place is kinda creepy, yeah?"

"Mmm."

"Okay, so... How about a little music or something?"

Upbeat tinny music began playing from his watch. Kip hummed along. Feeling a little chill he shivered a bit as he walked.

"Hey," he said. His mouth was full of candy bar. "What about heat? Is it me, or is it getting kinda cold in here?"

"Oh yes," Spike said. "I forgot about that. The heat left with the ship as well."

"Oh, man..." Kip stamped his foot. "What am I gonna do about that? There's no coat in the vending machines. Just bikinis."

"I noticed," Spike said. "Who's idea was that?"

"Oh, I think that guy, uh, Rick put those in for a joke."

"Mmmm.... Funny." Spike rolled his eyes. "You'll have to find some way to stay warm. A fire perhaps?"

"Yeah! A fire!" Kip ran a few steps ahead then stopped. "But how am I gonna do that?"

The two of them were thoughtful for a few moments.

"Let's see where we are," Spike said. He made a few clicking noises and then, in front of Kip was a blue holographic map of the entire asteroid with the ship. "....remove the ship..." The ship disappeared and the huge gap where it had burrowed down was a hole. "...and the chunk we lost...." A second huge chunk, just larger than the ship fell away from the far side of the asteroid map. "There," Spike said. A large pink arrow appeared in a corridor in the upper right hand corner. "And that's you," he said. With a few more audible clicks Spike zoomed in where the pink arrow pointed and eventually they could see where, up ahead, a few turns away was a large recreation area for coffee breaks during work.

"Well," Spike said. "That's a start. There may be something there that'll keep you warm."

________

"Well, I guess we should do something, right?"

Maurice6 nodded. "I think we have to."

Maurice stood up. He was much taller than both of the other robots and looked menacing with his six arms. He walked on three thick legs and a small oven was set in the middle of his chest. He was so tall he had to stoop a little to stand in the cave.

"Let's go," he said.

Francis sighed and pulled himself to his wheel and all three headed out of the cave and into the corridor. Maurice6 stood straight up once they were away from the cramped cave. He was a full two feet taller than Piddles' five and a half. Francis was the shortest of all, standing only 4 feet tall. He had to look up at both of them.

"Right," Piddles said. "Where do we start?"

"Hey, Francis," Maurice6 said. "Shouldn't you have some sort of human tracking device to help you serve better or something?"

"Oh!" Francis covered his mouth with his hands. He stood still for a moment with his head cocked to one side. His shiny brass color glinted in the red flashing lights. "Nope. Not getting a thing."

Piddles lightly tapped Francis' head.

"That's not a surprise."

Francis pushed his claw away.

"If we can local a terminal we could try to contact him that way," he said.

"Say, that's smart thinking Francis," Piddles said.

"Well, I was a butlerbot you know."

"Yeah, a real wimpy job if you ask me, right?"

Francis sparked. Maurice6 stepped between them.

"Let's get started," he said.

The metal men headed toward the corridor with the gaping hole at the end, following Maurice6. Piddles reached over and flicked the short antenna on the right side of Francis' head. Francis moved over to the left side of Maurice6 out of Piddles reach and made an obscene gesture with his fingers.

"So, Frantic," Maurice6 said. "How did you end up back there in the toy box?"

"Oh." Francis wrung his hands. "I, er, well, I,"

"Spit it out, fancy pants," Piddles said.

"I didn't get along with other robots!"

"Now there's a surprise," Piddles said.

"I kept arguing with the other butlerbots about cheese."

"Cheese," Maurice6 asked.

"Yes," Francis said, "Well, really, cheese etiquette."

"Okay," Piddles said. "We get the idea. You nitpicked and drove the captain crazy."

"Oh, no," Francis said. "I wasn't here for the captain. I was here for the owner, Charles Lievenweather. He got sick of me arguing with the others and asked the captain if he could fix my... uh... problem."

"So what was the problem exactly," Maurice6 asked.

"I drove him crazy," Francis said in a small voice.

"Ah."

_________

"All I know to do is go back." Rasdin held his head in his hands and leaned heavily on his desk. Sitting across from him were his first mate Jenkins and his second, Xiong: a thin, older man with shoulder length grey hair. Both wore headsets and leaned forward in their seats as if waiting for the starter's gun to go off.

"We can't leave him out there," the captain said. "And...." He sighed. "Can you guys keep a secret?"

Jenkins and Xiong glanced at each other. "Yes sir," they said in unison.

He looked at each of them before he spoke again.

"I may have lost the claim."

Jenkins let out a peep. Xiong slumped in his chair.

"I can't go into much detail, but there's this paperwork that has to be filled out and the company wanted to make sure there was something there before.... Well, let's just say, I'm not the only person who screwed up here, but I'll be the one taking the blame anyway."

Both of the crew members stayed silent but their expressions looked like melting ice cream.

"So," the captain continued. "I'm relying on you two to help me figure this one out. Any ideas on how we get Kip Spanner off of that asteroid?"

Again the two crew members put on the spot glanced at each other. Rasdin looked at each of them and then let his head hit the table. He moaned.

Jenkins bit her bottom lip.

"Sir," she said. "We could try to find a suitable landing spot for the explorer. There may be one on the other side or even down in the hole."

"But the explorer is a one man vehicle,' Xiong said. "It's certainly not meant as a rescue ship."

"We're only after one man," she said.

"Yes, but that one man would have to be a pilot!" Xiong shook his head. "It's too risky."

"No." The captain's head was still face first on his desk. His breath fogged the glass. "That's not a bad idea." He lifted his head just a few inches. "We could rig it with an autopilot to take it both ways." His head went back down with a thump.

"Hey, that might work," Xiong said. He grinned and sat up again.

"If we can teach Kip how to turn it on," Jenkins said.

"And if he isn't smart enough to understand about the claim," the captain mumbled. The officers looked at each other yet again.

"You mean-" Jenkins started.

"Spanner can-" Xiong added.

"Claim it," Rasdin finished. "Yes. And then we would all be out of work."

"And he would be a rich man." Jenkins sighed.

"I wish you'd left me behind," Xiong said.

__________

"Ooh, Spike, it's t-t-too c-c-cold in here!" Kip jumped up and down hugging himself. "Cripes! I'm freezing!"

Kip hopped up and down in the break room which also served as the junction between four tunnels for the mine car tracks. Scattered through the room on the bare rock floor were dozens of card tables and unfolded metal chairs. Trash littered the edges and corners of the space and inset into a long niche in one wall sat six vending machines. The noise of one of several large generators left behind in the haste to leave echoed from the tunnel on the other side of the niche. A small cart had been set up as a coffee and hot cocoa server but both pots were full of sludgy black gook where they had been left on during and after the evacuation. The air tasted of burnt coffee and ozone. Kip unplugged the coffee makers and warmed his hands by the hot coffee pot while he looked around the semi-lit room.

"I don't see anything useful, Spike," he said. "Just trash and junk."

He reluctantly abandoned the warmth and walked down the tunnel where the row of three giant generators sat looking fierce and coffee-pot-like themselves. He leaned close to one and tapped the glass of a computerized meter. It sprang to life and some information flitted across the screen.

"The generators seem to be working okay so we'll have lights for a while, but God it's cold!"

"Kip Spanner? Come in, Kip Spanner?"

Kip spun around. Behind him on the opposite wall from the generators was a terminal facing the break room. Captain Rasdin's and Jenkins' faces filled the screen.

"Is he there?" The captain tapped the screen.

"I just saw him walk by."

"I'm here!" Kip dashed to the terminal and crashed into it catching himself from falling by grabbing the sides with both hands. "Hey, it's getting really cold here, Captain. You've gotta come soon!"

"We know Kip," Rasdin said, smiling apologetically. "We have a plan."

"Good," Kip said. "A plan is good."

"Yep," Rasdin said. "We're going to explain to you how to take off and turn on the autopilot on a single man explorer. We've found a good landing spot not far from where you are right now. You'd just have to go all the way to the opening where the ship used to be, climb down to ground level and get in the explorer pod that'll be waiting for you. The only complicated part is getting from where you are now down to the pod."

"Okay?"

"You may have to put on a suit and climb out there in the black to get to it."

"Oh....." Kip frowned. "A suit?" He scratched behind his ear again. "Can't you land closer?"

"What's wrong Kip?" Rasdin lowered his head. He sighed and his shoulders drooped.

"Oh, well, I, uh, I don't do well in those things, captain. I, uh, tend to throw up."

"Why?" Jenkins asked.

"Oh, well, it's the smell you know? They get so much use and nobody ever thinks to clean them, so you get in and there's these smells of feet and bodies and stuff and I'm very sensitive to smells, you know, so I tend to stay away from them..."

"Get over it or stay there, Spanner." Rasdin disappeared from the screen.

Jenkins shrugged apologetically and the screen went dead.

__________

"Get over it or stay there?" Jenkins said. She watched the captain climb the stairs and flop back into his chair.

"Why don't they put a terminal here by me," he said. "Why do I always have to climb up and down those damned stairs?"

"Captain," she said. "You just told him to stay!"

"No," he said. "I told him if he wants to leave he has to do what we say. He'll do it. He wants to get off of there."

"But," Jenkins started to say something about the claim, but she caught the words in her throat and glanced around the room at the others. Fairly certain no one had heard her, she turned back to her screen.

_________

"Get over it or stay there," Kip repeated. He made a face and kicked a small rock. It bounced off the wall and hit him in the leg. "Ow!" He bounced around for a moment, holding his shin.