Story Sampler

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  Lilith had never been very good at waiting. She liked to do things. But there wasn’t anything she could do yet. So, she dozed. It was not a restful sleep, though; the message from Mars Base kept waking her up.

  It was a monotonous message – tedious and wasteful. “Mars Base to The Junket. We are aware of the accident and are working the problem from our side. If you are receiving this message, please respond.” If she got back, she’d tell them so. At the very least, they could vary it up a bit, make it seem more human.

  She was about ready to shut off the communicator so she could get some real sleep when something changed. The message was different. The messenger was different.

  “Mars Base to The Junket. Mars Base to The Junket. Lil, this is Ed. I know you can hear me but can’t respond. That’s okay. We know what you want, and we’ve got the computers doing their calculations. Once we have them, we’ll transmit the coordinates and departure times. We’re not sure where you’ll end up, yet, but it will be within your limits. Those explosions were awful clever, Lil. Sorry it took so long to overlay the patterns. Spelling out REPLY like that, one bit at a time.…”

  “Oh, Ed,” Lilith said in the pause that followed. “Dear, dear Ed.”

  “Okay, we know you’re short on fuel, but we don’t know how much. We’re assuming the worst case scenario with a little flexibility. That way, if you have more, it won’t be a problem. Same with oxygen. That doesn’t leave us too many options. We’re trying to find a ship that can rendezvous with you, but it doesn’t look promising. We think the computer will send you to Ceres. It’s the nearest outpost, but you’ll have to dodge quite a few rocks to get there.”

  “Listen, Lil,” Ed continued after a moment. “We’d like confirmation that you’ve received this message, and it’s going to be a bit tricky. We don’t want to use up your oxygen, but the explosion needs to be large enough for Ceres to pick up. You’ll need that last buoy and the following food packs.…”

  Lilith scurried through the larder tossing out the food packs as Ed named them off, and when he finished, he repeated them a second and third time. The instructions became more complicated at this point, since she had to do some chemistry with equipment that was never meant to be used to do chemistry. At the end of the instruction, Ed said, “Lil, you have to be careful with this. It’s sensitive. You don’t want to put the trigger in until you’re ready to set it off. The buoy trigger will provide the primary heat source, but once the reaction starts, you’ll only have about fifteen seconds to get clear of the concussion. You won’t be able to set a timer on this one,” he added softly, “and it needs to be set against the iron in the asteroid for fullest effect.”

  Lilith sighed. “Another Evac – more oxygen depleted.” She shook her head. “There has to be another way.” She sat back, her nose pinched and brows furrowed. “Another way.…”

  It took her an hour to rig up the device, and a two minute spacewalk to set it in motion. She hadn’t liked the idea of trying to outrun a concussion wave, so she’d set up a contact trigger, secured the goo around the buoy the way Ed had directed her, and gave it a gentle shove toward the asteroid, adjusting the speed so that it would contact the exposed nickel-iron core deep in the cavern that had formed when the asteroid had shattered beneath her. Then she made her way back inside before her suit’s oxygen had completely run out.

  The explosion, when it occurred, was brighter than she’d expected for such a small device, and she smiled. “You’ve always been a good cook, Ed,” she said.

  Then she waited for the next transmission.