Chapter Three

Munching on nutrition bars, Teelak and Adria jumped when a warning siren blared. A few seconds later both thrusters died. Working furiously they attempted a restart. All efforts failed. The complete power grid shut down. The computer screens went blank. The back-up system died, too.

"We're going down! Dust must have choked out the engines," the pilot warned.

Teelak heard Adria send out a distress message over the subspace radio on all frequencies. He fought to keep the flyer level using the manual controls and managed to keep it in a partial glide. But that, too, proved only temporary.

"Crash positions!" he yelled, seconds before they hit.

The nose of the flyer cut into the hard surface. Gray dust flew in a shower of debris as the vessel skidded along the planetoid's surface. Bounced and jolted over rocks and small craters, the pilot and co-pilot flew about in their seats like rag dolls.

As the flyer came to an abrupt stop in a large pile of rocks, Adria lurched forward in her seat smashing her head against the computer console.

Teelak sat, stunned and speechless. He'd actually survived his first crash landing.

* * * * *

One interior wall of circuits shot sparks then the flyer caught fire. The automatic extinguishers failed to engage. Teelak lifted Adria in his arms and carried her outside away from the smoldering vessel. He rushed back inside to use the manual fire extinguisher, to salvage what he could.

He put out the electrical fire in the circuits, dismayed at the extent of the damage. They wouldn't be flying this ship out of here anytime soon from the look of the fried wiring and ruined components. He sure hoped those distress calls made it to The Explorer.

Returning to Adria, he thought he saw a blur of movement out of the corner of his eye. Impossible, must have been dust blowing on the wind.

Teelak knelt beside Adria to check for injuries. A large purple bruise above her right eyebrow seemed to be the worst of it. No way to know how bad her head was injured until she came around. At least, he hoped she would come around. He dropped onto the ground to sit beside her and wait. Something he didn't do well.

Several minutes later, Adria regained consciousness. Rubbing at the lump on her forehead, she answered his questions to prove her coherency. She recited her name, rank and serial number, where they were, and their captain's name. When he asked her age and weight, she balked.

"Teelak, I'm fine. I just have a monster of a headache. Considering how hard I whacked it, that's no surprise. We have other things to worry about."

"I agree. Like how we're going to get off this rock. The flyer's not going anywhere."

"If we don't report back, Captain Winslow will send a shuttle won't he?"

"Yeah, but we've got more immediate problems. There's something out there," Teelak insisted when he saw movement again. This time he knew he'd seen something moving in the distance.

"No way. There's no life here, remember? Are you sure you didn't hit your head, too?" Adria sat up, groaning at the pain shooting behind her eyes.

"Then what was that?" The pilot pointed.

"I don't see anything. Maybe it's dust devils."

The pilot watched the same area where he saw the movement and caught a glimmer of it again. Just a blur, a quick flurry of motion, then nothing.

He told her, "Wait here." Pushing to his feet, Teelak decided to check it out.

Sensing movement behind him, he glanced back to see Adria following at a distance. About to yell at her for disobeying orders, he saw her go down. He didn't know if she fell, got hit by a weapon of some sort, or what. From his present position, he couldn't even tell if she was still breathing.

Movement to his left, alerted him to something coming closer. Drawing his pistol, Teelak circled to the right hoping to get a good look and possibly a shot at whatever it might be.

The odd creature scurried behind first one rock and then another. It took up a position between them, effectively cutting Teelak off from his downed companion. When the creature hopped up onto a boulder to look for him, the pilot finally got a look at part of it. A small part of it anyway and he didn't like what he saw.