I walked down the cold corridor toward the bowels of the Hyper Drive engine. There was no light except for the dim glare of my flashlight. As I took a left towards the primary cooling tank the ship gave a sudden lurch and and something on the wall fell off and erupted in a shower of sparks.

A voice crackled over the intercom. "Dammit Jim, we need Hyper Space capability in...5 minutes ago!" I was really starting to think that the glory of being a merchant was nothing more then a cheap gimmick.

I broke out in a sprint and found the cooling tank as I expected, leaking. Severely leaking. I stepped into an inch of dirty water and made my way to the tank. The ship gave another lurch and something else in the hallway went up in sparks. "Thank God for rubber soles," I thought as two or three of the sparks came dangerously close to my in-ground pool.

I reached over to the intercom and pushed the "Send" button,"Yeah... uh, Captain, we're kinda screwed at the moment. We have about an inch and a half of rising cooling tank water, and I'm guessing the by the sudden jerks of the ship that we're in a tight spot. Just lettin' ya know, say your prayers."

As I had hoped I heard the sound of the "Emergency Evac." siren. Even though I was now in about three inches of water I made pretty good time to the door. I heard the Captain over the garbled intercome for a final time,"Crew... um... we're in a bad spot now and so... we're abondoning ship."

"Ahh, our Captain, never a man of many words," I thought as a deafening explosion rocked the ship and a third thing fell off the wall and exploded in a thick cloud of sparks. For some reason I was almost happy to be running for my life through an exploding Light Freighter towards an escape pod that might not even be there. Go figure.

As I rounded the corner towards the christened Wall-O-Freedom I fiddled with a control pannel on one of the pods. There was a whine and the sound of a portal opening. I started to fingure the wrench in my back pocket as two figures emerged from the mist on the other side. Ohh. I thought. Just the captain and a space pirate holding him hostage. (Wow, did I just think that? Damn am I relaxed!)

Without even thinking I leaped towards the pirate and belted him with the wrench. He went down like a stone. The captain fainted. I grabbed the pirates Kill-O-Zap gun and shoved the Captain intp my pod and set it to eject. I then glanced around for another pod and found only one. "Jesus," I thought. "Why me?" I thought this becuase my particular pod was bright yellow and had triangular purple-tinted windows. "Oh well." I said out-loud.

Within 45 seconds I was out of the ship in the Gay Pride pod. Lucky me. Anyway As I looked out the purple windows (Why me?) I saw that our attacker was an Argosy. Pirate, no doubt. Wait, sorry, no der. I thanked my lucky stars and as I asked myself "Why Me?" agian I made sure that all my credits where safe in the National Galactic Bank of our Galaxy. Go figure, again.

I took a quick scan of our system (Vulcan, if it matters) and found an eligiable rescuer. A Corvette merchant ship (Yeah, right) christend Thlaly. I sent out a distres signal in there general direction and low and behold they got it. I only hoped th Captain was so lucky. As the Thlaly altered course, I took out a Desert Bar and left the supplied rashions to rot. "Oh wait," I thought. "Those rations don't rot. Oh well..."

(This message has been edited by moderator (edited 12-03-2001).)