* * * * *
It was bad. There was no way else to put it. The ship would fly, but landing would be difficult, if not impossible. The buoy mechanism was non-functional. The fuel leak had used up a fifth of her supply. Half the anchors had been separated or destroyed. If that were all, she could manage well enough to get back to Mars Base, but the communication laser was a garbled mess. No replacement parts. Her ship was a survey vessel – sleek, fast, and sparsely equipped. She could not contact Mars Base to revise the pre-programmed course through the asteroids. She had two options: continue the mission or risk flying out of the asteroids manually with limited information. Neither option was appealing. There wasn’t enough fuel left to finish the mission, and she didn’t relish the idea of dodging asteroids without the assistance of Mars Base’s computers. If she miscalculated the trajectory to Mars Base even a fragment of a degree, she’d be adrift, lost. She had six hours to choose.
“Six hours,” she muttered, “to find another way out of this mess. All right,” she nodded to herself. “What’s working? Everything inside the ship. The Evac suit. Four anchors. Propulsion. Thrusters. Supplies – two months of food, oxygen, and water. Eighteen buoys that I can’t deploy. Me.”
Not much, she admitted to herself.
“Mars Base to The Junket. Please respond.” Lilith jumped, reached for the console to keep from flying free. “Mars Base to The Junket. Please respond.”
“The Junket here,” she said, then shook her head. “The laser’s broken, Stupid. You can receive messages, but you can’t send any.”
“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.”
She slapped the console. “Damn it, I can’t respond. The communication laser’s toast. Without that, there’s no way—
“Wait a minute,” she said. “How did they know about the accident?” She frowned, brought up the navigation charts, and studied them for a moment. “Ceres,” she said. It wasn’t close, but she was within range of their telescope. “Maybe,” she said, sitting back.
“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.”
“All right,” she said at last. “Respond I shall.”