The Rings of Tautee Read Free Page A

smell the distinct odor of overheating equipment.
    Scotty dove for the machine on the right but was too late. Something exploded and sparks flew everywhere.
    "Mister Scott," the captain's voice came over the intercom. "We have a power drain."
    "Aye," The word held a mixture of sadness, regret, and loss. Scott took a step back from the smoking machines. He shook his head.
    "Mister Scott?" The captain's voice did not sound happy and McCoy smiled.
    "Give me five minutes," Scott said, "and I'll fix your power drain."
    "Then I'd like a report," the captain said.
    "Kirk out."
    THE RINGS OF TAUTEE The smoke was thick and smelled of electrical cables. McCoy suppressed both a cough and his smile. He held out the tricorder.
    "Is it broken?" Scott asked.
    McCoy shook his head. "I need some modifications."
    "Ach, so do these poor beasties. I'll clean up this mess and then come to sickbay."
    McCoy slung the tricorder over his shoulder.
    "Thanks." He opened the bay door, thankful for the fresh air of the corridor. He coughed once, then stopped outside the door. "One more thing, Mister Scott."
    "Aye, sir?"
    "Why are you building a golf course?"
    Scatty rose to his full height, as he often did when his pride was assaulted. "I am a Scotsman, lad. We invented the game."
    McCoy nodded.
    And then waited until he was in the turbolift before he started laughing.
    Chapter Three PRESCOTT SAT in her chair in the dimly lit amphitheater. The screens had been dead for hours now. The environmental controls were running on emergency power, and the gravity had gone from normal to low.
    The chair was bolted into the floor for just this sort of emergency, and she wore the restraining bands on her ankles and thighs, roping her in place. The idea had been to bolt everything down in case the gravity controls failed. That way the researchers could continue their work even under the lowgrav conditions of the moon. She doubted that the designers ever thought the bands would come in handy in the almost zero gravity of the remaining hunk of the moon.
    The center's planners had thought that the gravi18 THE RINGS OF TAUTEE ty controls would break down monthly. Instead, this was the first time anyone had had to use the system. Yet another miscalculation in a whole, disastrous series of them.
    The room shook slightly, stirring the dust. Every few minutes the base rattled. It was already unstable. With each shake, she assumed the containment would break, and the cold darkness of space would rush in and take them all to a very quick but very painful death.
    She licked her lips. They were dry and caked with grit. Dust, dirt, and debris floated around her, unhampered by bolts.
    A computer had broken through one of the screens and was at the moment floating near the ceiling, sent there by that last moonquake. In a few minutes it would settle slowly back to the floor somewhere.
    She had thought she was going to die in this room, but so far it hadn't worked out that way. Somehow, by some miracle, the base had held together when the moon broke apart.
    All the ripping and tearing and screaming and shaking she had expected to hear, but couldn't, as she watched the fifteen planets in the Tautee system silently blow apart had happened when the moon shattered. But, apparently, a large chunk of the moon had held together.
    Within that large chunk resided the center.
    Lucky her. Lucky all of them. They had a few extra days to think about dying.
    Folle was pleased; he somehow thought they 19 Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch might survive. He was scavenging, seeing how bad the damage was in the rest of the center.
    And who else was alive.
    She estimated that a few hundred had lived. The computer terminal in front of her had shown her a schematic of the center just before a power surge shut the machine down. Several sections appeared to have collapsed. But several had survived.
    A few hundred tired, injured, homeless Tauteeans to carry on until their air ran out, or their