so we could still keep busy."
105 "The equipment on the surface still continued to work?" Enquired
Morn.
106 "Yes, sir," the man answered. "Their gaskets remained intact. Well,
then the gaskets in everything else started to go. When the life
support equipment started to give out, we really got in a bind. We put
some equipment together using fiber gaskets instead of
plastic ones. Then, the people started getting sick. That's when your
ship arrived and pulled us off."
107 Morn was thinking about all this when suddenly he became aware of
something ...a shimmering glow came out of the ventilators, travelled
over to one of the Engineers and disappeared within him. Morn blinked,
not sure of what he had seen, and from the reaction of the others he
was sure they had not seen it. He decided to keep quiet about it, for
now.
108 "Tell me," he asked the mutineer, "did anything unusual happen just
before all this started in a volcanic eruption, a meteorite shower,
anything?"
109 "Strange you mention a meteorite shower!" he said. "We had a beauty
right after that oddball comet the astronomy team got so excited about.
Just about everybody went up to watch it. Our air is pretty thin, but
they must've been awfully small 'cause they all burned up. We thought
two or three big ones were going to make the surface, but they broke
up."
110 "Why were the Astronomers so excited?" asked Morn. "Because it came
so close!" the mutineer told him. "It swung around the sun and nearly
entered the atmosphere. It was really travelling! The Astronomers said
it was going the wrong way, and it was almost as if the meteor shower
was aimed at us."
111 The shimmering glow Morn had seen reappeared, emerging from the
first man and going to a second.
112 "I want to talk to these Astronomers," Morn told the mutineer.