Markham looked over at Second Lieutenant Mea. She was almost nodding off. The stress of the past few days seemed to age her older than her twenty some odd years seemed. Comm-Officer Kalla shouted,"The Rahkoshans are calling us!" Markham exclaimed, "What! They let us go!" Mea snapped, "On main viewer, and speakers!" The voice had the same sexless, electronic quality as previously as it said,"We have smelled with our eyes danger for the planet below. The anti-matter powered slower-than-light ship approaching. It is five point eight-seven light hours out. Our noses have seen the future of you. If you aid those selected by the Destiny Prognosticastion Engine below, you might survive. We see with our noses that the ancient Meta-Probability Engines stir into function. We remain on-station until we talk with Jeet or Narchi below. This is our last communication with you until something else happens." Transport Specialist Markham exclaimed, "Another of those space-holes just popped up fifty-five klicks port-side aft, 10 o'clock high!" Mea ordered,"Oh hell...get us out of here, best possible speed." Markham frowned, and sighed,"THAT'S not to fast, either. Gorag's on it. The Brownian Motion Filter on the MMI is out of whack. We have Simulated Gravity, but that's it." Mea felt sick again. She swallowed and said,"All hands! Prepare for acceleration!" She said to Markham, "Run us up to point two-five gees, then." A small vessel popped out of the Time-Space-Matrix-Distortion with atmosphere crystallizing around it almost in a cometary way. It slewed around to a halt almost on the nose of the huge Transport Command freighter. Mea shrieked, "Evasive!" The small ship turned it's engines aft as the freighter over-spun on it's x-axis. The bottom cargo hatch opened as Kalla fell on the freight-handling switches in terror. The hatch cycled open and swallowed the small ship. They all heard the bang as that ship hit the inner structure of the cargo hold. Kalla shouted, "Oh, SHIT! Oh-shit,oh-shit,OH-SHIT!" She punched controls in a frantic fit of practiced concentration. She said tersely, "Main hold still maintaining atmosphere! Vessel under gravity in main hold! No fires detected! Minimal debris detected! No leaks of foreign atmosphere detected inside hold! We are being hailed from INSIDE the ship and from OUTSIDE the ship!" Mea shook inside and wished for a chance to run to the head and pee. She said in a shaky voice, "Inside first." There was a mixture of four voices shouting as one voice shouted,"Shut-UP! We're live! Hi!" It sounded like a small male with a strange tone to it. "We're in your cargo-bay...WHY IN HELL ARE WE IN YOUR CARGO BAY?" Mea swallowed and tried to say with a smile, "Because we have fast-hands and saved you from running into us, who HAD THE RIGHT OF WAY in this area of space?" A long while seemed to pass as Mea sweated. After a moment, The voice came up,"Hey-ho! That's remarkably reasonable an attitude! Why couldn't you get out of the way? I'm Pazu, by the way." Mea swallowed on her dry throat, and rasped out,"Pazu, our engines are damaged, and we can only spin in any axis at speed, and maintain Simulated Gravity." Pazu said,"We might be able to help that. Can we plug into your engine and computer readouts?" Mea blinked and looked around at her two bridge-crew. They were no help. She bit out,"Sure, go right ahead!" Mea indicated to have her throat cut, and Kalla cut the feed. Kalla asked,"Outside now? Mea nodded. A blue girl appeared on the screen. She said,"I am Lieutenant Floona of Transport Command of the Flying Cities of Balaam, on special detached duty. Do you have any weapons onboard? We need help to take out that torch-ship." Mea looked at the alien ship in her hold and smiled. "I might, at that!" --TO BE CONTINUED!--