The Falling Wrench

The first thing Mara Venn heard after the moon hit them was her own wrench striking the ceiling.

It had been clipped to her belt. She remembered checking the clip. Now it turned slowly above her face, silver against the red emergency strips, while something warm crawled toward her ear. Blood. The little practical inventory steadied her more than the ship's soothing announcement that an unscheduled landing was in progress.

“Landing finished,” she told it.

The ship disagreed by dropping another meter.

Mara caught the wrench when gravity returned. Metal punched her palm. Across the maintenance bay, a coolant pipe folded with a sound like a bitten apple, spraying pale mist over the only door. She unclipped herself from the inspection chair and fell onto one knee.

Six people aboard the Aster. Six suit beacons on her wrist display. Five green, one amber. Eli's.

“Engineering, respond.” Captain Rook sounded breathless, which frightened Mara more than shouting would have.

“Here. How long have we been down?”

“Forty seconds. Your section is losing pressure.”

“I noticed.” Mara pulled the emergency hood over her head and sealed it against her collar. “Eli's below me.”

“His compartment is isolated. Come forward, and we'll assess.”

Mara looked at the amber dot. Deck Four, survey cradle. Before the alarm, Eli had asked her whether the moon's silver terrain was frost. She had promised to show him the spectral data after breakfast.

“I'll assess on the way down.”

“Mara.”

She killed the transmission before the captain could make it an order.

The door wheel refused to turn. Mara wedged the wrench through its spokes and leaned until her injured knee began shaking. Something shifted inside the wall. The wheel gave, opening onto a corridor lit by the white, impossible daylight of a hull breach.

Beyond it lay a plain of glassy ribs. They curved out of gray soil in rows, each taller than the ship, their edges threaded with blue light. No frost. No familiar moon at all.

A noise came through the breach: three clear notes, descending.

Her diagnostic display answered with the same three notes.

Mara stared at it. The screen showed no incoming channel.

“Later,” she whispered, and took the emergency ladder.

On Deck Four, the survey cradle had detached from its mounts and crushed the corridor into a narrow triangle. Beyond the wreckage, someone tapped twice against metal.

“Eli?”

“If you're breakfast, you're late.” His voice rasped through the suit channel. “My left leg is trapped. I think the suit's intact.”

She lay flat and shone her wrist lamp beneath the cradle. His boot protruded under a support arm. The arm's hydraulic piston had snapped; no command would lift it.

“I'm going to brace this,” she said. “Then you slide toward my light.”

“How reassuring is your engineering face right now?”

“Exceptionally expensive.”

She found a cargo strut, checked its load rating twice, and wedged it under the arm. The jack needed a battery. Hers would operate it, but her emergency hood used the same cell. Ninety seconds of lift meant perhaps four minutes of air afterward.

She connected it.

The arm rose a finger's width. Eli screamed once, abruptly, then dragged himself forward on his elbows. Mara caught his harness. Something struck the outside of the ship hard enough to ring through her teeth.

The strut slipped.

She hauled Eli clear as the cradle slammed down. His boot remained beneath it. For one terrible instant she thought his foot had too, until he cursed and curled both knees toward his chest.

“You owe me a boot,” he gasped.

“Put it on my account.”

Her air counter turned orange. She reconnected the battery, but its charge continued falling. Damaged contacts. Her gloves felt enormous as she tried to scrape them clean.

“Forward route's gone,” Rook said over the channel. “Mara, the hull is settling. You need the breach. We're sending Jo outside.”

“Copy.” This order she could follow.

She looped a cargo strap through Eli's harness and pulled him behind her. The passage tilted. Dust fell in fine sheets. At the breach, the daylight was so bright that for a moment she saw nothing but the red reflection of her own frightened face in the hood.

Then a figure moved between the ribs.

He was tall and narrow, wearing a dark coat segmented with overlapping mineral plates. Pale markings climbed from his wrists beneath the sleeves. His face was almost human until he turned, revealing a second translucent lid flickering across amber eyes.

He moved with an economy that made her notice her own trembling hands. Under other circumstances, she might have spent longer noticing his face. Under these, she concentrated on the fact that he had stopped well beyond the reach of her wrench.

He raised a hand.

Mara raised her wrench.

“We have an injured person,” she said on every channel her suit could broadcast. “We need help.”

The stranger pointed behind her. The ship groaned.

She did not require translation for that. She dragged Eli down the sloping hull, her boots skidding, and reached the gray ground as the breach folded shut above them. The Aster's stern sank into a furrow that had not existed a moment before.

Eli went still.

His beacon remained green, but his pressure was falling. A seam had split along his thigh. Mara pressed both hands over it. Her patch kit was in the maintenance bay, now buried under several tons of ship.

The stranger knelt opposite her and opened a small metal case.

“Stop.” She shifted one bloody glove toward the wrench.

He stopped. Deliberately, he placed the case on the ground and backed his hands away. Inside lay narrow silver bands and a square of translucent film. He pointed to the seam, then the film, then held out his empty palms.

Mara checked her own air. Two minutes.

“Do it.”

He waited until she nodded, then pressed the film against Eli's leg. It contracted over the torn fabric. Suit pressure steadied. The stranger watched the numbers on her display as if he could read them.

“Thank you,” she said.

His gaze shifted to her orange air warning. He touched his throat, then pointed toward an opening in the nearest glass rib.

A shelter. Or something with a door.

“Captain, there's a local here. He has a pressure refuge. Sending position.” She tapped the command. Her display flickered and filled with the same three descending notes, drawn now as bright horizontal bars.

The stranger's expression changed.

He caught himself before reaching for her wrist. Instead, he held up his palm again, urgently, and pointed at the display.

“It's a communicator,” she said. “My crew needs—”

The ground answered with a shiver.

Blue light kindled inside every rib across the plain. Far away, beneath the broken belly of the Aster, a thin silver thread lifted from the soil and turned toward Eli's torn suit.

The stranger spoke for the first time. His words meant nothing, but his fear needed no translation.

Mara switched off the transmitter.

The thread stopped.

For one heartbeat, nobody moved. Then the stranger offered her the loose end of a carrying sling, making the decision unmistakably hers.

She threaded it beneath Eli's shoulders.

Together they lifted him toward the open rib. Mara's air warning began to sound. Behind them, something inside the wreck played her captain's voice, perfectly, asking her to come back.