“Relax.” TK held up his hand. He herded me over to the ruin and got me to take a closer look at the pit yawning below. The floor had collapsed long ago, but I saw in the depression below a basement or somesuch, a section of one side which had crumbled. I stared at it for a while. What my eyes didn’t first register was that it had been tarped up with clever handiwork to blend into the sand and conceal a large space behind.
I looked up at the four stone pillars and a spider-web roof framework. This place could have been a cathedral as easily as a warehouse, or some eccentric’s mansion.
Scratching my head, I watched as TK worked the remote control with a wink at Billy. The propellant steamed and the antigravs guided Starrunner down into the pit.
TK clambered down a steep, crumbling staircase and I followed, gripping my gun with a ready hand. He moved over to the tarp, cranked the handle of a hidden wheel cached in the earth and up ratcheted the tarp. A huge work area burrowed within that far side of the pit.
I gave a low whistle. “Well, I’ll be a damned monkey.”
TK did a little bow. “You can congratulate me later, Rusco. Here, Billy, help me guide this thing in.”
I stepped inside the darkened quarters, suppressing a grunt. The place projected deeply into the back of the pit. Old engines, machine parts and housing lay strewn on the sand, rotors and gears and panels, whatnots, some on workbenches and tables. The old man lit a pair of battery-powered lights near the door while Billy guided my ship over the sprawl of engine parts then let her rest by the wall. Wren scooted in before TK closed the flap. “Never can be too careful,” he said with a worried grin.
I could see the desert man had built something of a garage for himself. Tables with hammers, drills, electrical gauges, hoses, cables, all salvaged from the rubbish heaps outside. Old vehicle batteries were linked together to give him the power to do his tinkering. “I charge them from solar panels rigged out back where no one can see them. From time to time I need to change them.”
He motioned to a series of jigsaw cutters, pry bars and twisted pieces of metal. “I salvage whatever’s useful from the dump, always more to find even as the years roll on.”
“So I see. Very clever.”
“Never gave up trying to get off this heap,” he said wistfully.
“Some grand little shop you have here, old man.”
He nodded, beaming with pride. “Never had enough of a working engine to get off this rock though. Believe me, friend, I tried.” He picked up a mini pneumatic drill and smacked it on the table. “Been scavenging parts from these dumps since as long as I can remember. Still haven’t given up on the mother lode. You can appreciate my excitement when I saw your Alpha coming down out of the sky.”
“I bet.”
He laughed at the memory. “I once got an old Rixen Eagle space probe up a hundred yards into the air before she crashed past the washboard wastes other side of these mounds. She still sits there collecting dust. Nearly killed me and Billy.”
“How long to fix this thing?”
“Depends on what’s broke.”
“Well, I can tell you the mobilitors are in bad shape, probably dead. Less than 60% before she went down.” I eyed him, checking to see if the term meant anything to him.
“Mobilitors, eh? They can be tricky.”
“What isn’t?”
“Let’s have a look-see then.” He crouched beneath the underpanel while the AGs kept Starrunner aloft. He unscrewed a panel, crawled up the conduit a ways, gave it a shifty glance. “What have we here?”
He knuckled a fist at the twin Barenium cylinders. I poked my head in and blinked. Barenium cylinders…That much I knew. About waist high. Green in a liquid medium, with a golden glow around the edges. Some unstable isotope discovered way back, the liquid masking the radiation somehow, from what I gathered.
“All gunkum to me,” growled Wren, crowding over my shoulder.
“That green liquid there,” he said. “Think of it as a compact potent pressure pump. When excited with photons from that light gun at the end, you’ve got yourself warp power to go.” He waved a casual hand like a professor explaining something to a young child.
“Left one’s shot. Explains why you were down to 60% integrity.”
I sighed. “So, what’s the damage?”
“Won’t know until I look inside.”
“Okay. Let’s check it out.”
While Wren poked around the cowling, I watched over the man’s shoulder like a hawk as he hiked her up higher on the AGs and got Billy to monitor the power.
He stood back, poking an elbow in my ribs. “Oi!” give me some breathing space, will you?” I stepped back with a reluctant grunt. I didn’t like anybody prodding around my ship. Especially the engines. Not to mention, I wanted to learn something in case I needed to tinker with Starrunner myself some day.
“What gets me is we’re light years from Brisis. How the hell they tracked me so quickly—”
“No mystery there,” interrupted TK. “Your enemies traced the residual Barenium from those leaky seals—Couldn’t have had a clearer signal, active dust on the outer cowling from the burn warp, a clear heat signature. The failed mobilitors would have made even more of a dust trail. You’re lucky to have gone any distance at all.”
I gave my head a sober shake. “Just my luck.”
“In my opinion, Rusco, you’ve had plenty of luck. Nine lives of it.” He squinted hard at the canisters. “I can fix it
