Storm at Eldala

'It may if it pleases,' Enda said, reaching into the display again. 'I have other problems. Oh!'

The display lit up again with a sudden flash. Enda scowled as if she didn't trust it. Gabriel busied himself with getting back into the fighting field, which still seemed functional for the moment.

'Everything is back again,' Enda said, 'and the mass detectors are up and running once more. What a relief.'

'I'd be a lot more relieved if we knew where Helm was.' 'Somewhere else, plainly.'

Gabriel gave Enda a look. 'Have I mentioned to you that the fraal sense of humor can be a little strange?' 'Several times,' Enda said. 'Similar claims can be made about the human one. That joke about the wire brush, now—'

One of the warning lights, the one that said EMERGENCY, grew to an alarming size in the 3D display and began flashing on and off.

Gabriel looked frantically at all the other indicators, but nothing seemed to be wrong withSunshine. 'Enda?'

'It is not our emergency,' she said, reaching out to the indicator. 'Someone else's.' 'Helm?'

'No. He is not here, but someone else is.'

The display filled with data — not just text, for once, but a schematic. 'Small,' he said as he studied the data. 'A cargo ship?' 'Possibly. We have not seen this one before?' 'You mean, is this the other little ship that was at Rivendale? No.' 'That,' Enda sighed, 'is a relief.'

The emergency message now began to play in several different sets of characters, several different sets of colors, and one sound. 'This is free ship Lalique, out of Richards, en route from Mantebron to Aegis. We have suffered stardrive failure and are near the Mikoa-Aegis transit point. Transiting vessels, please render assistance, or if passing through on emergency transit, please convey emergency message to nearest drivesat relay. This is free ship Lalique— '

'It's recorded,' Gabriel said. 'Still, I'm surprised we're the first ones on the scene.'

'Assuming we are,' Enda said, 'and that they have not merely forgotten to turn off the broadcast.' She studied the display. 'Well, let us go see what we can do for them. This is a bad place to have a stardrive failure.'

Gabriel nodded. They might have to take the passengers aboard and leave the ship here, then go for help. Aegis would be the logical place to take them, so Gabriel and Enda's own plans would not suffer much, but he didn't much like the thought of having strangers aboardSunshine. He looked down at the luckstone, which was still glowing in the little socket it had melted for itself in the floor, though it no longer seemed to be working its way any further in. 'Have you got a fix on them?' he asked.

'Yes, no problem. They're no more than forty or fifty thousand kilometers away. They were probably using the same arbitrary starfall figures for the system that we were.'

Gabriel nodded.Sunshine's system drive kicked in, and the two of them sat there looking outside for any sign of the ship and stealing glances at the floor between them.

'It seems to be quieting down,' Enda said. 'Are you all right, Gabriel?'

He touched the seam of the top of his shipsuit open and stared down inside, then frowned. 'I got scorched. It burned right through the pocket material.'

Enda blinked at that. 'The material is supposed to be fireproof, I thought.'

'Then that wasn't fire,' Gabriel said. 'I thought the decking was indestructible, too. Can we claim for repairs on the guarantee?'

'You would probably have to explain to them how you did it,' Enda said, 'and then they might ask you to reproduce the effect. First you will have to work out just why the stone behaved that way.'

Gabriel shook his head. 'Never mind. I'll just use some hull patching on the hole. It's just a shame. That's the first real scratch or damage thatSunshine has had. She was perfect until now.'

'Ah. You mean, except for when the hold came apart and nearly fell off when you landed on Grith that time.'

'Oh,that,' Gabriel said with a smile.

Enda laughed softly. 'Take a look in the field and tell me if that is the ship we're looking for.'

Gabriel could see the gravity 'dimple' of the vessel, drifting intact. At least the stardrive hadn't caused any structural damage to the vessel.

There was a long pause.'Sunshine?' said a woman's voice after a moment. 'Oh, what a relief! Thank you so much! There are just two of us. No medical problems, thanks. Can you manage airlock- to-airlock?'

'We have a collapsible tube, yes,' Enda said. 'I will squirt the tube specs and coordinates to your computer when you're ready.' 'Ready now.'

They closed in slowly and caught their first glimpse of the ship just a kilometer away. Lalique was obviously an old family-style ship. She was big, nearly twice Sunshine's length, and broad in the beam. Two pair of short wings, a little bigger than canards, just out from the cigar-shaped main hull. Four big cargo pods slung high, two and two, sat snug against the hull near the back. 'Nice,' Gabriel said as they closed in. 'Plenty of room in there.'

Enda maneuvered Sunshine in close to Lalique until the two vessels were drifting at the same speed and in the same direction. The computer confirmed the match. Enda then triggered the flexible airlock tube so that its counterpart program on the other ship could lock the ships together.

This took several minutes. Gabriel stayed in the fighting field, looking everywhere for Helm. 'Where the frikes is he?' Gabriel muttered.

Enda sighed and said, 'He has probably popped out further out in the system where the mass detector cannot see him. Let us wait and see what happens.'

There came a soft chime from the display. 'This is working, at least,' Enda said.'Lalique, our computer is showing the mating as complete and secure. Are you showing the same?' 'Yes, we are. Please come aboard,' said the woman's voice.

'Five minutes,' said Enda and cut the channel. 'Gabriel, I think you can safely come out of that for the moment.'

He nodded and collapsed the field, blinking in the normal ship's light. 'I'll leave it on automatic announce, though,' Gabriel said, unstrapping himself and heading down the hall to the arms and equipment locker. 'I want to know when Helm turns up.'

Enda nodded as they both paused by the locker to pick up hand comms and a sidearm each. 'It's not like I don't trust them,' Gabriel said, 'but—'

'You don't trust them' said Enda approvingly. 'Why should you? At any rate, this far out from anywhere, no one is going to be offended by anyone carrying defensive weaponry.'

'Right' he said as he checked the charge and the safety of his pistol. He holstered it at his hip, and then reached down into the bottom of the locker for his roll of general access tools, the ones used to get into panels and under deckplates. The other ship probably had tools of its own that were suited to the fastenings its own hardware used, but Gabriel liked to have his tools with him.

I just hope I don't have to try to do anything really technical, he thought as they made their way through the hold to the airlock. IfLalique's stardrive was anything likeSunshine's, it was covered with alarming labels saying things likeNo user-serviceable parts inside andOpening casing invalidates warranty. Sometimes such warnings were just clever ways of making sure that the drive manufacturer and its licensees were not cheated out of the price of service calls, but sometimes they were genuine indicators that anything you did to the drive might cause you, it, and everything around you to suddenly become collapsed matter. The trouble lay in telling which was which.

They paused by the airlock port, and Enda touched the opening combination into the locking pad. The door hissed open, and the two of them slipped into the tube and pulled themselves along the cables down the orange- walled corridor.

Another hiss of air heralded the opening of the door at the far end. 'Come in,' said that female voice, sounding more cheery this time.