"Hutch?" Carson's voice was calm.

"Yes?"

"You're a hell of a woman."

In the dark behind her eyelids, she smiled.

Hutch listened to the familiar sounds of the bridge. To Carson's tense breathing, to whispers from the passenger cabin, prayers maybe, wishes, things undone.

She felt terrified and helpless and humiliated, but for all that, she did not want it to be over—God, she did not want it to be over—

She squeezed her eyes shut. Squeezed the rest of the world down to her heartbeat and the soft curve of the chair. And the countdown that some inner voice maintained—

Three. Two..

A hammerblow struck the hull.

The ship shuddered. Alarms exploded. The electrostatic hum of power in the bulkheads changed subtly, deepened as it sometimes did when the vehicle was responding to crisis. Carson shouted something unintelligible.

But she was still alive.

They had problems. The navigation board was on fire; black smoke poured into the air. Warning lamps blazed across the banks of consoles. Two of the monitors died. Computer voices spilled from the commlinks. Deep within the ship, systems sighed and shut down.

But oblivion did not come.

She looked at the gauges and could not believe what she saw. Their altitude was a hundred forty kilometers. And rising.

Rising.

She silenced the klaxons and stared at her status board. The power plant was going unstable. She shut it down, and switched to auxiliary.

Then she let out her breath.

"What happened?" asked Carson in a tentative voice.

"Damned if I know. Everybody okay?"

They were rattled. But okay.

"Is it over?" Janet asked.

Someone began to laugh.

In the passenger cabin, a cheer broke out.

"We seem to have gone through it," Hutch said. "Don't know how—"

"Son of a bitch, Hutch," said Maggie. "That was beautiful!"

Hutch's hands trembled.

"What did you do?"

"Damned if I know."

She killed the fire, and sent out a distress call. Carson reached over and clapped her on the back. "I don't think I want to do that again," he said.

They passed through three hundred kilometers.

"Hutch," said George, "that's the finest piece of piloting I've ever seen."

They were all laughing now. She joined in, and if the celebration had a hysterical edge to it, she didn't care. No one cared.

The ground was receding. It glowed softly. The illumination might have been internal. Or possibly reflected starlight.

"Maybe," said Maggie, laughing and crying simultaneously, "it was just smoke."

The sky had developed a distinct roll. "We're tumbling," Hutch said. "That's all right. We can fix that"

"Are we okay?" asked George. His voice trembled.

"Yeah. We're fine." Hutch was running through her checklist. Seconds after impact, the fusion plant had sent a blast of energy through the ship. There were systems in place to guard against the effects of a surge, but they were not, could not be, entirely effective. Who knew what might have burned out? She would need a walk-through to assess damage. "We're in good shape," she said. "We've got some power problems, but nothing we can't handle." Their situation was uncomfortable, but she saw no reason for alarm.

Auxiliary power consisted of a net of batteries and solar collectors. Several of these were also down. Not good. "We can maintain life sunnort. And soin. But we can't fire the main engines, and the Hazeltines can't recharge, so we have no stardrive. We are dead in the water." Navigation readouts implied altitude adjustment systems were out of line. Water pressure had dropped precipitously, but was now holding steady. That meant a tank had burst. The Hazeltine flux detection system was putting out a flat line. Even if she had power to go hyper, she'd have no real way to control their point of re-entry. But we could be worse, she thought. Damned lucky. Her hands were trembling.

They were getting far enough away now that the object was regaining its ovoid shape. "Could it be water?" asked Maggie.

"Even that would've wrecked us," said Carson. "Unless it was just a couple of centimeters deep."

"Hey." Janet sounded surprised. "Why do I keep trying to fall out of my chair?"

"Because we're tumbling," said Hutch. "Our gravity's off center."

Carson was preoccupied with the ovoid. "It's thin. Micro-thin. Has to be."

"Can we straighten out?" Maggie looked unhappy. "I'm getting sick."

'Trying."

The number four thruster showed negative. She disabled it, and set up a bypass firing sequence. "Heads up," she said. "We're going to have a little movement."

"We have power to spare?" asked Carson.

"Enough. We're going to be here a while, and we don't want to have to deal with all this rolling—" She executed, and felt the satisfying push of the rockets, felt the ship respond.

The firing sequence was long and complicated, but the stellar dance slowed, changed direction, changed again, and almost stopped. Almost. There was still a mild lateral motion.

"Best I can do," she said. "You can stand up now. But be careful, we have a wobble."

"You want to try it again?" said George.

"No. Too much drain. We'll live with this."

"What do we do next?" asked Janet.

"Take a look at the damage to the fusion plant," Hutch replied.

Carson shook her hand. "Thanks," he said.

"Not my doing. We were lucky."

"I suppose. Thanks, anyway."

The others crowded onto the bridge. The exhilaration was subsiding. "Can we restore power?" asked Janet.

"I'm running the diagnostics," said Hutch. "But I can tell you the answer. Fusion plant repair is not something you do on the run. We should proceed on the assumption that we will not have it available. Which means we are stuck here." She released her restraints.

"Then we need to get help." Maggie took a long deep breath. "Somebody's going to have to come and bail us out. First thing to do, I guess, is get off a distress call."

"We've already done that."

Maggie had arrived on the bridge, and was walking unsteadily across the deck, testing her balance. "Nobody's going to want to do any drinking," she said. "The floor runs uphill."

"Where would rescuers have to come from?" said George. "Nok?"

"Probably." Hutch was looking at flight schedules. "There isn't much else in the region. Unless you want to ride with Kosmik. They've got a ship at Quraqua."

"We're going to be laughingstocks," said Janet. "We go out looking for an artifact, and crash into it."

"The Valkyrie's at Nok. Just got in, if we can believe the schedule. They normally stay about four days. We're two days away, transmission time. So it'll still be there when our SOS arrives."

"It does mean," said Maggie, "that we lose the mission. Everybody'll want in now; we'll be squeezed out, and the credit will go elsewhere." She looked desperately at Hutch. "Do you have any ideas?"

"No, Maggie. All we can do is wait to be rescued."

"How long will it take?" asked Janet. "The trip from Nok, I mean."

"The packets are fast. If they leave as soon as they hear the distress call, the Valkyrie will be here in eleven days."

"We can live with that," said George. "Maybe in the meantime we can figure out what that thing back there is."

The real problem surfaced five hours later. Hutch was still trying to reroute and reprogram her status board when Janet strolled in, blowing conspicuously on her hands. "It's getting cold in here."

It was chilly. Hutch's board showed 103 °Celsius. Hot enough to boil water. She ran a diagnostic, and got a Negative. No problems. She shook her head, got up, and walked over to one of the ducts. "It's pumping cool air."