Jack was uncomfortable with the idea that someone who knew this ship and knew where the extra fuel was kept had robbed them. Plus, how were they able to get inside? For now,he kept his suspicions to himself. He didn’t want to add stress to this traumatic situation.
But then, Madelaine’s call with the Secret Keeper registered. “Do you think Dirk Zandis is responsible?” he asked, wanting to get an idea of where her head was.
Madelaine sucked in a deep breath and seemed to consider that prospect. “I don’t know. I hate to think he’s caught up with us when we only learned about him ten seconds ago, but it is a very likely possibility.”
“Do you think he’s stuck down on the planet?”
Madelaine shrugged. “Honestly, anything is possible. However, I hate to waste my time with what-ifs right now.”
“Agreed,” he said. “We definitely have bigger problems.” He looked at the broken fuel locker, his whole body briefly tightening with anger. He forcibly relaxed. His rage would not help now.Shake it off.
Jack glanced toward the cockpit, where the navigation display threw pale light over the worn pilot’s chair. “How much fuel do we have?”
Madelaine walked to the front of the ship and he followed her. She bent over the pilot’s console, all business. She dropped into the pilot’s seat and pulled up the fuel readout with quick, sharp movements, checking the level of their fuel. Jack remained standing and leaned over her shoulder to see for himself the dire fuel gauge reading.
The numbers blinked red.
Jack did not like blinking red numbers. In his experience, blinking red numbers were never saying anything friendly. Red meant angry numbers.
Madelaine’s voice was very quiet. “Two hours, maybe a little more.”
Jack leaned closer as if the display might reconsider if he looked charming enough. “Two hours and a bit of fuel left. That’s it?”
“Yes. We can safely go just over two hours in any direction, plus or minus a few minutes, but that’s not very far, given where we are,” she said. “And I get the impression that the Class Four windstorm below will last longer than that, since Dr. Butler’s wife mentioned days with regard to the storm approaching right before we started running to Jeb’s cart.”
“Yeah. Jeb’s cart. Great memory. Not.” The only good part was sharing the experience with Madelaine. It offered a funny story to tell in the future. Maybe.
“Are we sure that we don’t have enough fuel to wait out the storm on the planet?” he asked.
“Not completely sure, but my guess is no. And I’m not certain I want to go back there anyway.”
Jack nodded. “Convenient that we had to leave our four-wheeler on the ship and get local transportation to Dr. Butler’s homestead.”
Madelaine sighed. “I mean, I knew that up front, but now I don’t trust anyone down on that planet. Even if it might be Dirk Zandis being a sore loser, we have to cover all other possibilities. Including the what-if I didn’t want to waste time with before, regarding Dirk having loyal friends in low places.”
Jack agreed with her assessment. “I think you are right about that. We don’t know what Dirk is capable of, or what friends he might have. And I hate to say it, but we don’t know if there are any other baddies out there waiting to thwart this errand of yours. For example, who else besides you and possibly Dirk would know exactly where to go in this locked ship to steal our backup fuel?”
Madelaine pushed out a sigh of despair, bending at the waist as if getting ready to roll out of the pilot’s chair and fold herself onto the floor.
There was nothing two hours away. Just space and more space. She straightened back up as Jack pulled up the map on the front vid-screen, noting the ship’s position and looking to see what might be within two hours of the fuel they had. There was nothing two hours away except more space.
They looked at each other briefly, silently acknowledging they were in a difficult situation, and then went back to the map, seeking a miracle.
“How far is the nearest place to get more? Because by my recollection on our way to Verdara, we are four or possibly five hours from any sort of lifeforms whatsoever. Am I wrong?”
“No. You’re right.” She tapped the navigation map. A scattering of stars expanded, then narrowed to one flickering point near the outer rim of the chart.
“Five hours to the closest place we can get fuel.”
Jack stared at it. “That math seems personal.”
“Well, it’s certainly not ideal. And not that it matters at this point, but it’s also in the absolute opposite direction of the next package retrieval location.”
“Yeah. That tracks right along.”
“Two hours doesn’t seem like enough time to figure this out,” she said under her breath, as if to herself.
“Is that your way of saying we are about to become a permanent decorative object in space?”
