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Cherry sat there on the floor watching his friend until another chunk of rock clanged into the hull. Sparks from the console told him he needed to see what he could do there. A half hour later, Cherry found the cause of the sparks. The entire frame of the spaceship had warped.

  Using the cutting tools he had brought in to rescue Josh with, he cut the inner frame that held gauges, sensors and other navigational equipment. Once the wire had been repaired, he hooked the sensors back up. He tweaked settings as he muttered to himself, "Where are we? Are there any of the pirates left to come after us? We weren't in an asteroid field when we were in the battle. Could a big asteroid have hit us and done this damage?"

  After another fifteen minutes, one view screen came on. The picture twisted to the side, too distorted to make anything out. Cherry worked with it another ten minutes before he had a clear view of the outside.

  He tried to connect with the computer mentally but had no luck. Shoving his little finger on his left hand into the slot on the console, he made contact. As directed, the computer switched from sensor to sensor. Cherry studied each view briefly.

  The view to the front showed only black. Cherry adjusted, but still had the same thing. On the bottom side of the spaceship, he found the same thing. Most of the sensors there showed only static.

  Switching back to the front, he looked at it closer. He used his connection to the computer to change to infrared. Now he could see rock. Making a few more adjustments, Cherry studied the picture.

  The sound of movement behind made him turn. Josh was moving, trying to sit up. Cherry said, "Don't. Your legs are broken. I've set them and put them in a cast, but the healer unit says you have to stay still for a few days."

  Josh laid back down, "How many days?"

  "It doesn't give me a time. I guess it depends on how your body heals. Here, have some drink and soup. The unit said you needed intravenous fluids but I didn't think slitting your wrists and dumping it in would work."

  "Yeah, I wouldn't get to taste it. What's that?"

  "I stopped the fireworks under the dash. I'm pretty sure the entire ship is twisted. That's the view out the front."

  "What is it?"

  "It appears you flew nose first into a big rock. All those noises you have been hearing —" A clang on the hull interrupted him. "And are hearing may be pieces you blasted off."

  Josh shook his head no, "There wasn't anything like that even close. How could I fly into it in empty space?"

  "I don't know, bucko. I'm just reporting facts."

  "Well, give me the facts on the rest of the ship."

  "The back's a mess. I don't think we'll ever fly this vessel again."

  "You'd better call our insurance company and get us a lift out of here."

  Cherry looked at his friend, "No, I haven't had a chance to scan the area. If we've lost the pirates, I don't want to tell them where we are until we can defend ourselves."

  "What do the other views show?"

  "Empty space except for the asteroids drifting around us."

  "Asteroids! Where did they come from? You can look back at our recordings. There was nothing there."

  "I know, but there is now. I'd swear we were in an asteroid belt."

  Josh lay quietly for a few moments as he thought. He said, "Switch it to another view. I want to see what you mean. I assume you're only using passive sensors right now."

  "Yep, I don't want anyone to know there's life on this bird. As long as we've been sitting here, I expected company to check us out. Maybe an asteroid swarm came through and got all of us…"

  "Yeah, and maybe pigs fly. Let's just stay passive and silent until we know we're in the clear."

  "Josh, what's a pig? Don't they normally fly?"

  "Look it up. It's too hard to explain."

  The picture on the view screen changed. Both individuals studied it carefully. Josh said, "Change the spectrum – try infrared, ultraviolet, the works."

  The picture changed colors. Josh asked, "You see anything that looks like a spaceship? Can you zoom out?"

  As the view changed, Cherry said, "I detect nothing but rocks."

  "Try some of the other sensors. Zoom in and out."

  Cherry switched sensors. Each showed empty space with stars shining in the background until they came to the lower side. Josh exclaimed, "Is that a moon? Have we crashed on a moon?"

  "No, I don't think so. Maybe an asteroid. It'll take me a bit to rewire so we can use more of the sensors. At least we're safe for now."

  "Unless the pirates are on the other side of the asteroid looking for us. We can only see about forty percent."

  While Cherry worked on the electronics, Josh ate some of the soup and drank his fill. The clangs of asteroids hitting the hull didn't cause the pain like they had before but they still bothered his head. After he had his belly full, he laid back down and soon fell asleep.

  Cherry saw his eyes close. Making his way to Josh, he checked the healer unit. It didn't show any serious head injury, so he let him sleep. He went back to the electronics, trying to be as quiet as possible while he worked.

  Five hours later, Josh woke up again. He looked at the view screens. Two more were working. He called out, "Cherry, it looks like you're making progress. How long was I out this time?"

  "You slept about five hours. I've been running scans and I can't find anything to suggest any pirates anywhere around us."

  "Better to be safe than sorry. What have you found so far?"

  "It's kind of strange. I'm not hearing any radio or comm traffic. I've scanned all the known frequencies. We had all kinds of signals from Avayal before."

  "Are you sure the comm and radio are working?"

  "At least on the receiving end. I haven't tried anything with broadcast. I think we should wait a bit to make sure we don't have unwelcome company around here."

  Josh started to move to get up. Cherry laughed at his grunt of pain. He said, "You should listen to me and the healer unit. Your bones need time to heal. It's not instantaneous with the equipment we have."

  "Yeah, I know. I just forgot. I want to punch some buttons. Do you think you can get the ship's computer to respond to mental commands again?"

  "I don't know. I'm just doing one step at a time. I've got to get some things running or we'll be out of air in 7.63 hours."

  Concern crossed Josh's face, "Maybe you'd better get my spacesuit up here."

  "How are we going to get you in — oh, never mind. I'll go get it."

  "Cherry, did you try to launch any remote sensors or detectors?"

  "No detectors. If anyone's around, they would have seen them. The remote sensors won't launch. I suspect the outer door is jammed. The way the frame of this ship is twisted, I'm surprised anything works. We had to have been hammered in that battle."

  Josh thought for a moment, "Go get my suit, then unjam that sensor door. We need to see what's on the other side of this rock. If nothing's close, we need to launch a remote detector. Cherry, you don't think all this debris could be Avayal, do you?"

  "I don't have enough data to answer that. Something happened to silence all the comm and radio traffic from there. You're right, I need to launch sensors and detectors. We're blind and we need to be able to see."

  While Cherry went for the spacesuit, Josh tried to connect with the computer. When that failed, he tried to make a mental list of all they needed to do. The mental activity made his head pound. He felt his vision narrow to a tunnel. Only items right in front of him came into focus.

  With a groan at the extra pain, Josh pulled the healer unit into view. He punched a few buttons and his pain started to subside. The tunnel vision continued as he lay back and closed his eyes.

  Cherry lugged the spacesuit back into the cockpit. Josh's eyes flew open at the commotion. Cherry said, "I don't know why you couldn't get a shield suit like most of the other humans have. This thing is awkward…. What's t
he matter with you?"

  "My head hurts. I'm having — never mind. My head hurts. I can't get one of those shield suits because I haven't worked for RTG Enterprises. Only their employees get those things."

  "What else is happening with you?"

  "Nothing, just some trouble with my vision."

  Cherry dumped the suit in a corner and walked over to the healer unit. He studied it for several moments. "This thing says you're trying to do too much. Lay back and rest. If your head wasn't so hard, I'd be trying to straighten out this mess by myself."

  "If I don't help think, we'll never survive. Look at this." He waved his hand at the casts on his legs. "I'd be up repairing if it weren't for these."

  "I can take them off. Then your legs will look just like this arm. You won't walk so good in full gravity either."

  Josh growled in frustration, "I know but I feel useless laying here. I want to be doing something."

  "For now, get some rest and give your brain a chance to heal. The healer unit will speed things up but it needs time. I'm going outside to see if I can launch a couple of remote sensors."

  "Don't forget a safety line. We don't have much gravity here. If you float off, we're both dead."

  Cherry gave him a disgusted look, "I never go outside without backup – even when you're there."

  "Honest, it was an accident. I didn't mean to leave you out there for that long."

  "Yeah, right. I'll just make sure I can get myself back in the airlock, thank you."

  As Cherry walked out of the room, Josh closed his eyes and soon drifted into a deep sleep.

  Outside the spaceship, Cherry intended to hurry to the sensor launch, but the sight of frozen oxygen hanging outside the ship stopped him. He muttered, "That might be the difference between getting out of here and dying. How can I collect that for later use? I know."

  He went back inside and dug through the rubble until he found a shield generator. Taking it out the airlock, he set it up near the cloud of frozen gas. Setting the shield as large as possible, he looked all around for any signs of life before turning the generator on. Cherry nodded in satisfaction when he saw the shield covered the entire ship and most of the air they had lost.

  As he looked around, he stopped in surprise. He saw the nose of the spaceship jammed under the edge of a great land bridge. A dark object appeared at the edge of his peripheral vision. Ducking instinctively, he raised his right arm. Looking up, he saw a large rock half the size of the spaceship bounce off the shield.

  Shaking his head at his futile gesture, he hurried to get the sensor door open. He'd let the sensor look around while he sat safely in the ship. The sensor door had jammed tighter than what he could open by hand. After rounding up tools, he came back out to attack it.

  It took an hour before the door finally stood open. Cherry glanced at the huge land bridge. His eyes calculated that it arched 300 feet high in the middle while having a span of over 1200 feet. With the dim light from the distant sun, he couldn't tell how wide it was.

  Picking up his tools, he went back inside. In the cockpit, he found Josh awake again. Cherry asked, "Notice anything different?"

  "We aren't getting hit as often."

  "Yeah, I set a shield over us. There's a lot of air just outside the ship. I figured it might be essential to have it later."

  "I'm glad you did it. That pounding transferred directly to my head. What else did you see? Anything in space?"

  "No, but I found out what we were scraping against. We must have been bouncing along an asteroid. Right now, we're jammed under this huge land bridge. That's why the front sensors are not seeing anything. If we'd have drifted ahead another hundred feet, we wouldn't have been hit by any of the other junk out there."

  "Do you think we could get Naca in there?"

  "Not now, but if she were flying, even you could have flown under that bridge."

  "How big is this thing? How big is the asteroid we're on?"

  Cherry told him his estimates on the bridge, then said, "I'll find out how big this rock is in just a minute. I'm going to launch some sensors."

  He plugged his finger back into the computer and soon had four sensors floating in space. Moving them away from the asteroid, he set them to automatically avoid any debris. As the picture on the view screens became clearer, Josh said, "Wow, this thing is big. It looks like a small moon."

  "It might look that way this close, but I don't think it is —"

  An alarm stopped all talk. Cherry searched for the reason. He said, "It's a spaceship."

  "Should we hail it? We could get off this rock."

  "Ah – umm – I don't think we should. It has a strange signature. I can't find anything like it in the database I can use. I don't know if they're pirates, friendly or even a new species that hasn't come in contact with the Imperium. If they are new, how do they react to crippled spaceships?"

  "Yeah, I see what you mean. I don't think we should make ourselves known until we have an idea who are friends and who are foes here. Speaking of which, where are we?"

  Cherry snorted, "Just when have I had time to check? I've been getting the view screens operational, the computer set back up, patching you up and let's see —"

  "I get it. Just ask the computer to compare the stars around here with our maps."

  "The computer's not a hundred percent yet. I still have to make a few tweaks. That blast that knocked us out of commission did some damage to it."

  "We've got to get a way for me to help. With everything that needs to be done, it'll take you two years to get half of it finished. I don't think our air and food will hold out that long."

  Cherry sighed, "After I check on that spaceship a little more, see how big this asteroid is and check our air scrubbers, I'll see if I can rig up voice commands for you."

  "Then you'll have to figure a way to get me mobile. I can help with a lot of things even without the use of my legs. I just need to be able to get there."

  With a mutter that Josh didn't understand, Cherry turned back to the spaceship. After several minutes, he said, "That's strange."

  "What? What is it?"

  "Those comm signals. That language. If I didn't know better, I'd swear they were ancient."

  "What are you talking about, you bucket of bolts? What's strange about them? Can you tell if they're friendly?"

  "I can't tell a thing. I'm trying to access some of our database. I can't get in. All the stuff on history seems to be missing."

  "What do you mean missing? Did it get wiped?"

  "I don't know. Josh, let me concentrate for a minute."

  Josh crossed his arms on his chest. His eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth to say something but didn't. Using his arms, he found he could move fairly easily in the lighter gravity. He shoved himself behind Cherry so he could peer over his shoulder.

  He couldn't see anything more from this vantage point, but it made him feel like a part of the team. After several minutes of concentrating, Cherry turned to talk to Josh again. He jumped when he saw him right behind him. The movement shot him to the ceiling where he banged his head.

  "Yeow! That hurts."

  "How can a tin can hurt? What did you find? Did you find the missing data? Do you know what that language is?"

  Cherry carefully shoved himself back to the deck. He lit with a clang as his magnetic soles attached to the metal. "No, I didn't find the data. I'll try later. The language sounds like an ancient forerunner of Imperium standard."

  "So we're in some backwater solar system that's just getting space flight?"

  "No, I didn't say that. I just said the language and the comm transmissions are strange."

  "Well, if they're old and strange, can you suggest anything else?"

  "Not reasonably, but space is a big place. You never know…"

  The two stared at each other. This mystery wouldn't be solved in just a few minutes. Cherry turned back
to the sensor feeds to see if he could measure the asteroid they were marooned on. After fifteen minutes he said, "This rock is about forty miles by sixty by forty. It doesn't have the gravity pull for that much mass, so I suspect it is hollow or has something trapped in chambers inside."

  "Are we in danger of drifting off?"

  "Not as long as our nose is jammed under that bridge and I have the shield up. It'll keep us here."

  Josh rubbed his jaw, "Can you see any more space traffic on the other side?"

  "Nope. I'll set the computer to monitor for it though."

  "Where are those pirates? They couldn't have just disappeared."

  "I don't know. If they're out there, I'll find them."

  After half an hour, Cherry said, "I can't see anything metallic. The only thing close is here on our asteroid. I'd say it was us but it's much too big. Of course, it might be an iron or other metal deposit. That's why you have so many asteroid miners."

  "You think we might have hit the mother lode?"

  "No, it's not that big."

  Josh looked at the data on the view screens. He said, "For now, we're safe from pirates. We need to get some of this other stuff taken care of or we'll have more immediate problems. Can you get the computer to take my voice commands?"

  "Yeah, it'll take a few minutes. What do you have in mind?"

  "I can start checking life support systems while you see if you can get some of that air back in this tin can. It would also be nice if we could expand the useable space to our living quarters and the galley. This cockpit is going to get awfully small if we have to spend much time here."

  Cherry worked on the computer through his finger connection. After ten minutes he said, "OK, Josh, try some commands."

  Josh said, "Bring up the view from sensor four."

  The view screen went blank. Cherry made some more adjustments and Josh tried again. It took an hour to get most of the control back. When he finished, Cherry headed to the rear of the ship to expand their usable space.

  Josh kept himself balanced on his arms as he checked the life support systems. He adjusted the air scrubbers and tweaked a few other things. His legs started to ache, so he laid back down on the blankets on the deck while he continued to check out the ship. He fell asleep before they were completed.

  An hour later he woke to stare at the test results on the view screen. His aching legs told him he needed to be more careful, even though they were in almost zero gravity. Checking the remote sensors, he didn't see anything out of the ordinary, so he tried to launch a remote detector. Flying it away from the asteroid, he found a place to park it.

  Now that he could, he set the computer to examine this solar system. While the computer searched, Cherry came back into the cockpit. He said, "I've got the shield extended beyond the living quarters. You'll be able to sleep in your own bed."

  "Ha, seems like I haven't had any trouble sleeping here on the floor. My legs are aching though."

  "You need to be somewhere you can elevate them. What's that?" He pointed to the view screen.

  "I launched a remote detector. The computer is probing this solar system right now. That has to be some of the results."

  "Something is very wrong. See that planet? Look at the primitive radio signals. I'm not sure they even have space flight. That can't be Avayal. Where in the universe are we?"

  Chapter 3