Chapter 18

It was almost like Red's own arms had been torn from her shoulders. "Aaahhh! My ship!" she screamed in anguish. "Did you see that? Did you see what he did to my Little B?"

Mavis tried to comfort her. "Red, it's okay. It's just a ship. You'll be able to buy fifty of them with the information in these books." She patted the volumes of Fletcher's work that lay on the seat.

"Yeah, besides Fletcher got what he deserved," Ethan added.

Tasha was sitting right behind Red and put her hand on Red's shoulder, "And we would have come after you even if Garth wasn't with you."

"Gee, that's comforting to know."

Red's suit COM started to pop, crackle and come to life.

"Help! Help me... Please!" Fletcher's panicked voice echoed through the cabin.

"Oh my God, he's alive," said Jody.

Garth pushed the thrust lever forward. "He must be tangled up in the ball of scrap. We have to try and help him."

"And just how are we going to do that, Garth?" Red asked cocking her head. "This is a bus, not a work-ship. And with the way it's jury-rigged, it's barely a bus at that."

Rosie's image spoke from Alex's Pocket Pal computer on the top of the instrument panel. "Garth's correct, Red. Whatever he's done, he is still a human being and deserves our best effort."

"Rosie's right," said Alex, "We at least have to try."

"Well..." Garth began, "I suppose I could match orbits with it."

Yavi chimed in. "Yes, Mr. Garth that is right. Match orbit and then..."

"Extend the airlock tunnel," Farhad finished.

Ethan connected with them, "Yeah, then seal the cabin off from the tunnel with the inner airlock and..."

"Then Red could go down with her suit on and pull him out," Tasha joined in excited to be part of the solution.

"No way. Look what he did to my ship. Let the K-P save him."

"We don't know if the K-P will ever get here. Red, you're the only one with a suit. Who else is gonna' do it? Besides, you love the dangerous part," Garth smiled at her.

"Not after today. I don't," Red resigned herself to the job at hand, "Fine then, but I'm not gonna' be nice to him when I get him."

"Thank you, Red. Rosie, will you help me figure the orbit equations and program them in?" Garth spoke into the computer in front of him.

"It's already done, Garth," Rosie's image responded.

"Boy, she's good." Garth said to himself as he punched in some commands on the panel and then increased power. "All right, Rosie, I'm going to match forward speed with the mass. When the Rascal comes into view start firing the attitude thrusters."

"Very good, Garth," answered Rosie.

"Everyone keep an eye out for the Rascal."

Garth eased the controls forward, made his way around to the sunward side of the junk-ball and quickly matched speed with it. Now, they were traveling on a parallel course while it spun around. Newton's laws of mass and gravity seemed to be working perfectly with this object as pieces of everything imaginable seemed to be a part of it and the larger it became the more junk seemed to attach itself.

Jody pointed and called out, "There it is!"

The Rascal came into view as it spun around from the top of the junk ball and the entire bus gave a collective gasp at the sight. The little work ship was almost unrecognizable from its former state. The entire front view screen was smashed, and the spindly grappler legs were just twisted pieces of metal. Fletcher could be seen flailing inside the destroyed ship.

When Fletcher saw the Beast he began screaming into his helmet mike. "Help me! Please... I'll do anything you ask!"

"You don't deserve it Fletcher, but we're coming after you. At least I am. But you gotta' promise one thing." Red spoke into her suit mike.

"Yes, yes anything. Just don't leave me here to die in this junk," he pleaded.

"You have to promise to help put the Earth right and..." Red looked over at all the kids in the bus and smiled, "You have to start caring about something other than yourself."

The kids all smiled back.

"Yes, yes of course I will. Anything you ask. Only don't let me die here!"

"All right, Rosie go ahead and lock on to him, even though he doesn't deserve it."

Rosie had already locked on to Rascal's and begun firing the attitude thrusters to match Rascals spin and maintain a safe distance as well.

"Good going, Rosie," said Garth.

Within seconds the Yellow Beast matched the rotation and spin of the junk ball. The Junk Zone and the Earth spun in and out of view on one side of the Beast while the junk ball and Rascal remained motionless on the other.

"All right, Red," Garth reached over and pulled the lever that extended the tunnel, "it's Fletcher saving time."

"Oh lucky me." Red quipped as she opened the inner door and started to climb through.

"Be careful, Red," Jody called to her.

She poked her head back through, "Careful's my middle name."

"No it's not," Garth said. "If 'careful' was your middle name, we'd all be home by now."

Red glared at Garth, but before she could say anything he cut her off. "Anyway, be careful just the same."

"Thanks," she said and disappeared through the door. It sealed behind her.

Everyone watched through the bus windows as she made her way the fifteen feet down the translucent walled tunnel to the remains of her Little B.

Fletcher's faced looked more terrified than crazy as Red approached.

"Get me out of her, Red! I can't stand it any longer."

"Keep your space bloomers on Ellsworth, old boy. We'll cut you free." She pushed a button on her suit control, which activated a small vacuum torch from a pocket on top of her wrist. Wires and metal tube cut quickly as the torch sliced through them. "Boy, Ellsworth, you're lucky those kids in there have big hearts or else I mighta' left you here with the other relics." She began pulling away loose pieces of metal, wiring and plastic. "Fortunately, I'm gonna' be rich and I'll be able to buy work-ships for every Scrapper in the Zone if I want too." She smiled at him.

"Yes, yes, that's all well and good. Could you cut a little faster?" Fletcher responded sourly.

Red stopped cutting, "Hey now, what happened to the help-me-I'll-do-anything-to-get-out-of-here voice we were hearing."

As the wrecked Rascal started to be freed from around him, Fletcher began ripping away the bits of metal.

In the Yellow Beast, Ethan watched with the others. Something caught his attention and when he turned his head, he saw the remains of an ancient giant Neptune 15 rocket booster hurtling towards them. "Garth! Look!" He pointed out the window.

"For Pleiades sake," He screamed at Rosie's image on the Pocket Pal. "Rosie, tell Red to get out of there, now!"

"There's no need to shout, Garth," she replied calmly.

Red was clearing stuff away from Fletcher when she heard Rosie's voice through her suit radio. "Red, Garth suggests that you increase your pace significantly."

"I'm doin' the best I can, Rosie."

Alex pounded on the airlock door and screamed, but as the tunnel was in the vacuum of space, his screams went unheard. Everyone else started shouting and flailing their arms to get her attention.

Red quickly glanced over her right shoulder and saw the kids in the bus waving and pointing.

The Neptune booster grew larger as it bore down on them.

Red now moved frantically pulling away junk, which floated around them. "Hurry Fletcher, there's no time left." She grabbed his arm and pulled him as hard as she could. "Come on, old man."

The booster was one hundred yards away and closing fast. Smaller pieces of junk bounced off of it and went spinning wildly in other directions.

Red braced her legs on the tunnel walls and strained,

"Oww! You're pulling my arm out!" Fletcher shouted.

"That's... just..." it was a challenge now, like an old piece of scrap she wanted that wouldn't come free, "too... baaad."

The wrecked ship finally released him and the two of them, tumbling in zero gravity, floated back into the tunnel along with various pieces of debris.

"Mr. Garth! You must get us out of here, now," Yavi screamed to the front of the bus.

The leviathan booster spun in slow motion and now dwarfed the Yellow Beast, but before Garth could react it slammed into the junk ball with tremendous force. The bus shook from the collision of the two objects and pieces of junk flew everywhere.

"Everyone duck," yelled Tasha as the scrap began to pepper the outside of the Beast.

Garth looked over to see if Red and Fletcher were all right and heard the sound of metal tearing. They hadn't made it back to the airlock before the tunnel sheared off the bus and the junk ball/booster went in one direction and the Yellow Beast in another.

"Arrrgh!" They all screamed when they saw the tunnel, with Red and Fletcher still inside, thrashing around like a severed tentacle without a body.

"Garth, do something!" everyone shouted from their seats in their own way.

The Beast's stabilizers automatically kicked in but when Garth tried to engage the thrust controls, nothing happened. The Beast was dead again.

"No, not again. Not now." He tried everything to get it going, but nothing worked. "Rosie, tell me what's wrong. I can't get anything to work."

"Garth, it seems that the polarity inverters have become misaligned again. I can realign them, but we won't be able to do a thing until they're fixed."

Garth slammed his fist into the bulkhead, "That's just great. Well, Rosie, what do we do now?"

"Garth, I think your answer will arrive quicker than you think," her usual demure image spoke from the small screen.

The bright yellow delta wings of three ships passed close by the Yellow Beast. Behind one of the ships was a Gravity Lasso Beacon being towed on a cable.

Jody started jumping up and down against his seat belt, "Look! Look everyone! It's the K-P."

"Yeah, all right! Check it out," shouted Ethan, "Mavis, we're saved," he started to hug his sister who hesitantly returned his affection.

"Thank God. I thought this would never end."

One of the ships came to a rest directly in front of the Beast. The helmeted patrol officers were visible through the cockpit view-screen.

"Rosie," said Garth to the small image in front of him, "we're close enough, can you patch through to the K-P ship?"

"I'd be happy too, Garth. Go ahead."

"Boy, are we happy to see you guys. Red Fargo and Ellsworth Fletcher are in our docking tunnel somewhere just over there." He pointed just to the right and above the patrol ship.

"What's your docking tunnel doing over there? Shouldn't it be attached to your ship? And what are Red and, did you say Fletcher? Ellsworth Fletcher?"

"Officer, it's a long complicated story that your superiors and the Station governments are going to be sorting out for some time to come."

Red's suit Com crackled to life with a familiar voice, "Don't worry Red, the cavalry's here to save you."

Red never thought she would see the day when she'd be happy to hear that voice in her suit.

"Cranston? Is that you? How'd you ever get that bucket o' bolts to work? I thought for sure I'd end up scrapping from it after you were hit."

"We're a little worse for wear I admit, but we're here."

The tunnel stabilized when the grappling arm from ship forty-two deployed itself from the hidden receptacle and latched onto one end of the tunnel. Red and Fletcher softly bounced off one side. The second, larger K-P shuttle settled on the opposite end of the tunnel.

Fletcher suddenly came alive and began pleading his case, "Thank the heavens you're here. She tried to kidnap me and was going to hold me for ransom after she disabled the Gravity Lassos and then..."