(Note:  This story is part of a series and isn't actually meant to stand on its own.  
There may be portions of it that don't entirely make sense without its prequel, 
which explains more of the workings of the spacecraft.  Also note that in this story,
Ma'ku 99--the main character--is traveling alone following the loss of his crewmate.)


'One hell of a Morning'
A story by WerePuppy, copyright 1999



There is sound in space. Lots of it.  

There's the consistent thrum of engines, the buzzing and clicking and whirring of control
systems cycling tirelessly through various tasks, and the hiss of air being shunted back 
and forth through the filtration conduits...  

All the hundreds of little sounds generated by the interior mechanisms of a spacecraft in 
its efforts to keep its fragile occupant alive.  

It's when you can't hear anything that you're in trouble.

Ma'ku was in trouble!


The big snow leopard morph was barely into his sleeping cycle when the massive implosion 
rocked the ship.  The weightlessness straps that held him to the wall were all that 
prevented him from being sucked into space when hull integrity had been lost, but they also 
encumbered him for the first precious seconds after the air was gone.

He knew that he had about two minutes of serviceable consciousness, and he would be dead 
in three.  He was already beginning to feel light-headed. 

He held his eyes tightly shut so that the moisture on his eyeballs wouldn't freeze, but 
he could already feel his exposed flesh stinging painfully.  He had, fortunately, gone 
to sleep in his flight-suit, but his fur wouldn't protect his face and paws very long.

His only hope of survival was to get to the storage locker, and into a spacesuit.  He 
launched himself in the direction of the hatchway and, finding it, crawled through the 
opening and began guiding himself hand-over-hand through a narrow tube toward the airlocks, 
and the suits.

Thirty seconds had elapsed.

Suddenly the supports he was using to pull himself along vanished.  His mind screamed.  
He fought down the panic and tried to open his eyes for a quick glance.  They were frozen 
shut by the tears he'd shed in the first painful moments!  He held a paw over them for a 
second.  He had enough body warmth left that the ice instantly withered and he was able 
to force his aching lids apart.

In the squinting moment before a million needles caused him to grind his eyes shut again, 
he saw that this was where the breech had occurred.  An entire section of the access tube 
he was traversing had been shorn away.

He'd have to blindly fling himself toward the opening of the segment beyond the hole.  
No time to think it over, he thought angrily at himself, DO IT!

For a considerable percentage of a second he flew, nearly naked, in deep space itself.  



One minute.

The air had been escaping from his lungs in little fits and gasps since he left the 
sleeping cubicle.  It was nearly gone.  His paws were numb so that now he was really blind.  
The pain in his body and the sharp brightness behind his eyes made it nearly impossible for 
him to function-but he drove himself onward.  

He knew without being able to see or hear or feel that he had entered the spacesuit locker.  
It takes about three minutes to properly suit up.  He had about forty-five seconds before 
his brain turned to pudding.  

Yet, even as he wrestled with the helmet seals and the backpack oxy controls, he paused.  

He could hear something.  It registered slowly through the pounding in his ears.

To'jon.  The voice of his dead lover was whispering through his mind, but he couldn't hear 
it.  He almost dropped the helmet.

Twenty seconds.

Suddenly he recovered himself in a final moment of lucidity before his mind shut down, 
and he crammed his head into the helmet.  

Ten.

He groped clumsily across the suit controls for the knobs that would save his life.

Five.

He opened the valves and oxygen blasted him in the face, and he gulped greedily at it.  
Then pulling in a deep draft, he shut it down.

He spend a leisurely thirty seconds stuffing his furry bulk into the spacesuit and 
sealing the helmet on properly before cranking up the oxy flow again.  His eyes burned, 
his brain throbbed and hundreds of little knives were slashing away at all his extremities.

He felt wonderful!

-------------------------------------------------------------------

It was impossible to tell what had collided with the ship.  It was probably a comet-
fragment.  Must have slipped through a gap in the shield-matrix, somehow.

The odds of something like this happening was on the order of winning the Galacta-lotto 
twice or being hit by lightning a dozen times.  

Ma'ku was about the luckiest creatures who had ever lived--just to have survived 
an event like this. 

The self-repair units were running at full tilt, and he knew that he would be back on 
course for home within the hour.  So he sat back on the pilot's couch and took a deep, 
grateful breath.

"What were you trying to tell me To'jon, in that moment before my death?  Were you 
calling me to join you?"  Ma'ku shook his head.  Probably he would be haunted by 
episodes like that for the remainder of his life.  

"I'm sorry, To'jon.  I wish I could have come to you, where-ever you are now.  
I love you, my friend.  Always will."

I know.

Ma'ku looked up and glanced around the flight-deck.  No one was there of course.

He closed his eyes and tried to catch up on his interrupted sleep-cycle.  It had been 
one hell of a morning.



The End