The Rock Rats

WALTZING MATILDA

George had drifted to sleep in the copilot’s chair, leaving Nodon to monitor the control console. There wasn’t much to monitor. They were still drifting helplessly, alone, slowly starving.

“I have a signal!” Nodon exulted. His shout roused George from a dream about dining with a beautiful woman in the Earthview restaurant back in Selene. Groggy with sleep, George knuckled his eyes, wondering which was more important in his dream, the woman or the tucker. “What signal?” he mumbled.

Nodon was quivering with excitement. “Look!” He pointed a bony, shaking finger at the comm screen. “Look!”

George blinked several times. By crikes, there was Lars Fuchs’s dour, dead-serious face on the screen. George had never seen anyone more beautiful.

“I have received your distress call and am proceeding at full thrust to your position. Please home on my beacon and keep repeating your signal so my nav system can maintain an accurate track on you.”

Nodon’s fingers were already dancing across the keyboard on the control console.

“Ask ’im how long it’ll take him to reach us,” George said. “I have already fed the data into the computer.” Nodon tapped a few more keystrokes. “Ah. Here is the answer. Fifty-two hours.”

“A little more’n two days.” George broke into a shaggy smile. “We can hold up for two more days, can’t we mate?”

“Yes! Certainly!”