Beacon

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The first thing you do, you make sure you’ve got air to breathe. If there’s the slightest doubt of hull integrity, you hurry into a pressure suit. Everything else comes second.

Collision.

Ebeneezer’s Candle did not take a high-angle hit, but she shook enough to turn me inside out and keep my head throbbing for a long time. When I got around to noting such things, there was a lot of dried blood on my face and in my scalp on the left side, from getting knocked around.

Ebbie’s radars had given no warning of the debris hurtling our way. The reason for that was the same reason that we didn’t take a direct hit. The front third of Ebeneezer’s Candle was buried in a large cometary body and I didn’t have the remote sensor packets deployed yet. They had been crawling toward their positions when two chunks of rock and metal shattered the berg, and sent ice and dust banging along Ebbie’s body.

“Ebbie, talk to me,” I said once my eyes quit spinning. I was watching air-pressure dials, wondering what the devil had happened and whether I ought to get into my pressure suit.

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