Fragment

8:54 P.M.

The door of the bridge banged open and Cynthea ran in, startling Captain Sol and First Mate Warburton.

“Stop the ship, Captain,” she said breathlessly. “Drop the anchor!”

“Are you insane? Not when the U.S. Navy just told us to reach minimum safe distance from a NUCLEAR BLAST.”

“It’s Nell and Zero and Andy. They’re stranded on the island, Captain! They need help!”

Captain Sol cocked his head at her. “Andy? The poor lad is dead.”

“We’ll be out of range of their transmission if you go any farther,” Cynthea pleaded. “Stop the ship!”

Captain Sol frowned but reluctantly nodded at Warburton to cut the engines, testing the sincerity in Cynthea’s eyes with a hard look. “Radio Enterprise and tell her we’ve got a distress call,” he ordered Warburton.

“No!” Cynthea shouted. “You better come see this first.”

Captain Sol’s frown deepened. “Lady, so help me if this is some kind of publicity stunt-”

“What should I tell them, Captain?” Warburton asked.

Captain Sol gritted his teeth. “Tell them…we’ve got engine trouble.”

“You are my god, Captain Sol!” Cynthea kissed both whiskery cheeks. “My sea god!”

“All right, that’s enough of that now!”

Captain Sol shook his head at Warburton, then hurried off the bridge after Cynthea.

The first mate spoke to the Enterprise in the smooth voice of a late-night dee-jay: “Hello there, Enterprise, we’ve got a little engine trouble and we’re working on it right now. We should have the problem fixed momentarily.”

Captain Sol and Cynthea watched the monitor above Peach as he patched in the audio. The picture was frazzled by static.

“Now why the hell shouldn’t I tell the Navy to send a rescue crew, damn it, Zero?” the captain demanded.

“Maybe because they don’t want to rescue what we found,” Zero said.

“They may be deliberately abandoning us, Captain,” Andy said.

“Well, what in God’s name could you possibly have found?” the captain asked. “Everything on the island’s about to be nuked! How much worse can it get, for Chrissakes!”

“Captain Sol, please take a big breath,” Andy said. “Did you take one? OK. Now close your eyes and when I tell you, open them…”

Captain Sol did no such thing.

“Andy,” Nell sighed.

Moving Hender into view, Andy yelled, “OK, open them!”

Hender’s fur flushed with fireworks of green and pink light as his eyes darted in different directions.

Peach whispered, “Have you ever seen anything like that?”

Captain Sol swallowed a curse. “I am not allowed to make a decision like this, people. The Navy’s orders are to shoot first and ask questions later if anything is smuggled off this island!”

“But these beings are intelligent,” Nell insisted.

“Go ahead, Hender,” Andy urged, and whispered to Hender.

“Hello, Captain Sol,” Hender fluted, and he waved two hands human-style. “Please. Help. Us.”

Captain Sol grabbed the back of a chair to keep from keeling over.

Cynthea put an arm around him, looking at the screen. “You’re recording this, right, Peach?” she asked.

“Oh yeah, Boss.”

“These new tri-engines are temperamental as heck, and I guess they’re a bit rusty,” Warburton crooned on the radio to the Enterprise. “One of them gets out of sync, it sets off a chain reaction, and before you know it, they all just… freak out!”

The first mate winced at his own B.S.

“What’s the ETA on engine repairs, Trident?” came the response from the Enterprise. “Over?”

“Uh, not sure, Enterprise.”

“OK. Trident, you are drifting closer to shore, there, copy?”

“Yes, Enterprise, we copy. We’ll drop anchor and continue to effect repairs.”

“Marcello!” Warburton gestured to the seventeen-year-old crewman, who was kissing his St. Christopher’s medal.

Marcello let go of his medal and dropped anchor at the same time.

The steel claw bit into a solid rock holdfast two hundred feet below the surface.

“Copy that, we think that’s a good idea, Trident! Uh, you’re going to need to get moving within one hundred nineteen minutes or abandon ship. Is that well understood?”

The anchor bit rock and the line stretched taut as Warburton started letting it out farther toward the shore.

“Understood, Enterprise,” he answered, gritting his teeth. “It takes a lot less time than that to fix these things, usually!”

“OK, Trident. Keep us informed. Enterprise out.”