He was nervously chewing the inside of one cheek when the shuttle crashed.
"Fast Eddie, this is Shuttle One down, mayday."
"Give it a rest for a moment, won't you?" Connolly's voice was weary as he massaged his temples, eyes closed.
Owens stared at his screens in tightly controlled terror. "Fast Eddie's probably in farside orbit from us right now; goddammit, I must've told Potter a hundred times to recheck those relay satellites."
"Well, he didn't, we don't have them, so if Fast Eddie's in farside orbit right now, we can't talk to them." Connolly opened a panel on his own console and distractedly pushed a few buttons.
"It's dead, for chrissakes," Owens surrendered in disgust. "Leave it alone." His own board confirmed his judgment that all the shuttle's port side controls were inoperative. They'd landed very hard and with a lot of noise, and every screen monitoring the port systems had gone dark the same moment that the shuttle had developed an ominous, sickly list to that side.
Ike arrived with the results of his inboard systems inspection; the shuttle was small, and it hadn't taken him long to ascertain that an outside inspection was necessary.
"Christ on a crutch." Owens' voice tightened by the minute as he struggled out of his seat against the unfamiliar gravity. "Well, that should make Miller happy."
"Miller?" Connolly frowned. "We've an emergency here, Owens; we can't have him toddling outside on a whim while we're trying to perform damage assessments."
"Oh? Why the hell not? He's going to be useless as tits on a bull, and it'll keep him out of the way while we work."
Owens was at the door when Connolly added: "Look, Owens, I can't say I've much use for the fellow myself; but we can't spare anyone to buddy with him; what happens if he wanders off and gets lost, or hurt?"
"Who cares?" Owens mumbled without turning around.
Thomas Farrow, Owner and Master Aboard of the Fast Eddie, stared at the screens with great, sad owl eyes. He'd posted himself to the bridge immediately upon hearing of the shuttle crash.
Pausing only long enough to drop three tabs of Hangover-Be-Gone, Potter uncharitably thought.
Potter had found his temper shortening with every discovery of a new dimension of his own impotence to affect the crisis. He had just learned that the second shuttle was inoperative; there could be no rescue from that quarter. Farrow had neglected to schedule its hundred-hour check, and Potter had found a dozen problems that were sufficient to ground it for full overhaul. He sighed again. But it wasn't Farrow's fault that they had no relay satellites; Potter had made the mistake of trusting Hogan's word on that one, and his ulcer was exacting payment for that folly, now.
Shuttle One was out of contact every ninety minutes for an equal amount of time as the Fast Eddie's painfully slow orbit carried her around the far side of the Byers' Star moon. Even when directly the landing zone-Potter had forced the words "crash site" back from his mind so many times he'd lost count-the static generated by the gas giant, Cat's Eye, was enough to make an unholy mess out of communications.
"We're coming over the horizon again," Farrow said in a low voice.
Potter grunted acknowledgment. He had a feeling that Owens and Connolly were tiring of his demand for updates every hour and a half.
Too bad. He began calling for the shuttle.
"It's just great, that's all," Owens' voice was borne on a wave of interference, but the communications filters were doing their job well enough. "This place is a regular garden spot. Two hours outside in thin air with thin coats, and what's waiting inside but thin coffee. Anyway. it looks like we put down over a frost heave covered by snow; solid ground beneath one leg and lots of air three feet under the surface beneath the other. This whole area is a swamp marsh frozen solid for the winter. The landing leg collapsed and the whole weight of the shuttle came down on the port lift thrusters. They're half-buried, so I'd guess they're shot. Ike shakes his head a lot when I ask him how we can repair them, then he makes lifting gestures and shrugs."
"I've got Liu working on the other shuttle," Potter said. "Can't say for sure what we can accomplish, but we'll keep you posted."
"Yeah, right. Listen, Connolly wants to talk to you."
"Put him on."
"Emmett? It's about Miller."
Potter heard Owens bitching in the background at the mention of the BuReloc man's name. "What is it? What's he done now?"
"Well, the damn fool's gone off and started his bloody survey on his own. So far he's stayed in sight of the shuttle, but that's not the point."
Potter shook his head. Miller was utterly inconsequential, now, but he wanted to give Connolly and Owens something to take their minds off the strong likelihood that they would become the moon's first permanent human residents. "Is he any use to you there?" Potter asked. "In the repairs, I mean?"
He heard Owens shout "No!" in the background.
"No," Connolly admitted, "but it's damned dangerous. It's cold as a witch's tit out there, with snow to boot. If he falls and kills himself, we'll have to answer to the Bureau of Relocation for it."
"To hell with the Bureau right now, Brian," Potter said. "And to hell with Miller. Let him play with his drills and ore samples. We'll need all that data anyway, once we get you fellas orbit-capable again and ready to come home."
And if we don't get you orbit-capable, you won't be coming home, so it won't matter then, either.
There was a long silence. "Right," Connolly said finally. "Got it, Emmett. See if you can't-" Connolly's voice faded out.
"Orbital path," Farrow said. "We're losing them again."
Potter boosted the signal. "Passing on, guys. Talk to you again in an hour and a half. Edward V out."
He leaned back against the chair's zero-G harness and tapped the console distractedly, looking out at the surreal patterns of the Cat's-Eye gas giant. "Tom, what's the latest on that storm front?"
Farrow turned to another screen. "Weather patterns on this rock are pretty strange, Emmett. Looks like they're tied in closely with the long full-night cycle, when one half of the moon is without light from either the system primary or the gas giant. The valley they're in is due for that night in about ten standard days."
Potter stared at the sepia-toned mass of gaseous soup outside, the horizon of the satellite a gray crescent along the top of the port. The moon's proximity to its parent world allowed enough radiant heat to compensate for its distance from the system primary, but the heavy gravity of the gas giant denied the Fast Eddie any chance of making geosynchronous orbit over her downed shuttle. They could only circle helplessly, and wait.
"Sit and spin," Potter said.
And pray.
A clipboard floated through the bridge hatch, followed by the clambering form of Chief Engineer Liu. "Emmett, we might have a solution to our problem."
"Well, amen, Chief."
"Huh?"
"Nothing, go ahead."
"Okay, here's a list of what's wrong with Shuttle Two, and here's what I can reasonably expect to fix in the next eight days."
Potter scrolled through the datapad screens, grunting occasionally as he passed items of interest. "That's great, Chief, but these are all quick fixes, and none of them bring the shuttle up to full spec."
"Well, no. But all together, they'll get Shuttle Two down in one piece, guaranteed."
"Well, hell, Chief, we've got one shuttle down there, practically in one piece; our problem is how to get that one back up."
"Relax, Emmett. The idea is we take the second shuttle down filled with as much repair equipment as it will carry, land it near Shuttle One, and then cannibalize the second shuttle for parts to fix the first. Ditch Shuttle One's ground car to save the weight of the extra crewmen and-" Liu wafted a hand toward the ceiling-"bring our boys home before the snow falls."
Potter looked at the Engineer for a moment, then went back to the datapad. "Nice work, Bill," he finally said in a small voice. He turned to Farrow. "Tom? You're Master Aboard, and we are talking about throwing away several hundred thousand New Dollars' worth of equipment."