Narchi was surprised how quickly it had gotten dark on Adamesh. The cold sliced through him as he led Girtset out onto the ruins of the walkway. Narchi saw Neblae turn on her cobbled-together work-light. It was no more than a light on a wire run through a length of conduit, tied to one of the chemical batteries on the vessel. It worked, however. Seeing Narchi, she crowed,"HA! AND HA, SOME MORE! You said it wouldn't work! There you go!" 399, the Scav yelled up to her,"Quit waving that thing around, Neblae! I'm trying to tie this Light-pipe into the main Distributer. Hey Perro? You going to help? Or just supervise?" The neophyte 'Cyclops' said,"I AM Chief Engineer, I should supervise you. However, if you pass that floppy flexi-pipe up here, I'll connect it. If you can get get it up?" Narchi laughed, "I never thought I'd live long enough for you to start using 'Sexual quips'? I thought they were below you!" Perro looked over at Narchi with his four eyes and said,"He is below me. Right now, with his floppy thing waving in the wind." Narchi laughed, as 399 groused,"God. I'm being put down sexually by an EX-robot! So becoming a machine-life has given you a sex-drive?" Narchi turned on his flash-light and framed Perro, and went,"Ho-ho-ho! Answer the question, Perro!" Perro turned back to Narchi and said irritatedly,"Oh shut the hell up, Narchi! We don't have time for that." Narchi and 399 laughed, as Neblae said with a smile,"I think you embarrassed him!" Perro shook his green metal head and went back to gesturing 399 to pass the pipe up. Girtset remarked, "I think the power-distributer is actually an optical beam-splitter, isn't it?" Narchi jumped and said over his shoulder,"I forgot we were in Neblae's sphere of influence, and we can understand each other, again. You were catching on to our language fairly well." "Anyway--yes. It's nothing more than a glorified beam splitter. Why is this significant?" Narchi was curious about what their visitor was thinking. Girset looked very thoughtful as he said, "When the Lady Toxic destroyed my ship, enraged by Lady Izkabell, she only blew up the residence section, NOT the fusion drives OR the Time-Space-Matrix-Distortion drives for passage into Hyperspace. You know...they are still in orbit." An I-beam fell next to the fusion engine that 399 was working on, to strike other beams on it's way to the ice below. The noise was deafening. Narchi flashed the flash-light up to frame Thistledown grasping another I-beam, and his daughter ,Violet, in a hovering Space-Pod. Over the PA, she said,"Oops. Look out. Falling beam." Narchi gave out a terrified sigh and shouted,"GOD-DAMMIT, You...sloppy bozoes! Watch what you are doing! We're trying to cut off the damaged sections WITHOUT killing anyone!" Thistledown gave a thumbs up, and radioed to Narchi, "Got you, Chief! Won't let it happen again!" Narchi paused and flashed a thumbs up, and went,"Roger THAT." He turned to Girtset, who said,"I like your fuzzy hat." Narchi groaned,"My wife gave me hell that I didn't make her one,too. Now where were we? FTL and fusion engines in orbit. Hmmm, if we can spark the Tuat Dropships' fusion drives by charging up their capacitors...they could fetch anything in orbit for us." Girset waved at the light pipe,"Will your plan work?" Narchi shrugged. "We lost all our coolant, when engineering was shot to crap. We've had all the rest of the crew shoveling snow and ice to fill the coolant tanks as water. It SHOULD be enough to run the fusion engine for one and a half minutes. Enough to charge up every capacitor on the ship and the drop-ships. The APR should kick on, and the drop-ships engine be ignitable, and we should have LIFE-SUPPORT again! A warm room! That would be good." "My ship's Fusion drive and FTL might fit on this vessel" Girtset's simple statement stunned Narchi into silence. --TO BE CONTINUED!!--