[center][h2]”If I Knew You Were Coming…"[/h2][/center]

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Suddenly, China Doll was alive; not a body among her crew didn’t feel the electric sense of excitement.  Paydirt.  Big paydirt.

With only two days in their window before the asteroid’s orbit moved to China Doll’s ‘bingo fuel’ point, Captain and crew made hay while the newly profitable sun shone upon them.  The bulky snuffler had been reeled down in record time, putting Yuri and Abby to work churning up dust in steady, neat furrows.  Occasionally, the greedy walrus mustache brushes would suck up a treasure.  A candlestick here…a displaced jewel there.  All were collected and catalogued by Edina in the cargo bay.

Others were getting ready to join them on the surface.  As China Doll repositioned herself for another search grid with the snuffler, Abby stood beside Yuri, gazing into the yawning depths of a seemingly bottomless crevasse and the day’s biggest discovery…one of the three containers they’d come all this way outside the ‘verse in hopes of finding.  Hand torches shone downward, beams playing over the crumpled poly alloy surface held fast in a stone embrace.  “Looks tah be wedged in there right firm,” she observed.  “Might just serve best to cut our way in and take what can be took.”

“Mmm,” the First Mate nodded.  “If we had good intel on how that container held up for the past three centuries, you and I would be breaking out the cutting torches right now.  Those poly alloys could be cheap.  Some were known to get brittle after longterm exposure.   We go cutting into that end cap, we could break the last dynamic tension that’s keeping the whole thing from collapsing in on itself.  We’ll have to play it careful,” he said.    “Repel down, check the crane connect points and get her anchored before we conjure the next move.”

Yuri set to orderin’ hardware from the boat.  Abby caught sight of the basket, reeling it’s way back up into China Doll’s open belly hatch.  [i]Auspicious[/i] Cap’n had said about this day, the girl ruminated.  It surely was that.  But She still wasn’t easy in her own thoughts.  There was a mess to clean, one of her own making.  She waited til he’d finished with his list, then spoke.

“Yuri?”  Abby’s voice filled the silence on comm.

“Go ahead.”

“Can we switch off channel fer a tick?”  She lifted a gloved hand, four fingers up.

He answered with a nod, then tapped the channel select on his arm’s keypad.  “You here?  What’s up?”

“Yeah,” she answered.  “Just wanted tah say Ah had no call tah come off at yew the way Ah did t’other day. Yah had ever’ right tah ask what’s been goin’ on with me an’ muh ways of late, an’ Ah feel most bad an’ sad fer how Ah blew it back on yah.”

Normally, Yuri would rush to fill the void with a reply.  This time, he paused a beat, then keyed his mic.  “I really appreciate you sayin’ that, Abby.  I’ve been feeling much the same.  You and I both know I didn’t handle my part of that exchange at all proper.”

“Yah done better’n me,” the girl replied.  “Ah know this ain’t place or time, so when we’re not so busy Ah’ll sit down an’...”  She stopped, her head lifted slightly. “Yuri,” Abby spoke again, curiosity and a growing alarm in her tone.  “Yew seein’ that?”

“What?”  The First Mate turned, eyes following the deckhand’s raised arm as she pointed toward what by rights should’ve been empty black.  Four lights twinkled there.  As he watched, their color shifted from a hot white to blue.  The fact they were steadily increasing in size didn’t tell him everything, but it told him enough.  “Drive plumes!”  Yuri exclaimed.  “The boat won’t see ‘em.  We’ve got our radars trained on the surface!”  With hasty fingers, he switched channels back to the public comm.

[i][b]“China Doll!  China Doll!   You’ve got four boats inbound, closing fast at your seven o’clock!  Rabbit!  Rabbit now!”[/b][/i]