In the Draco, Friar Theomendus Raphael Carcciccio worked with shaking fingers in the gutted corpse of his ship to connect hand-made lead buss bars to the last of his small lighter's energy cells. In the raving winds, jerry-built lines lapped viciously against the outside of the pitted ship, while shimmering distortions played along the cable lengths there. Not like before, not the ghost-like demons that crashed my ship.

This was just ionization, a kind of St. Elmo's fire caused by the thin gas, blowing sand, and a raw outpouring of radiation from the distant star the rock circled. A hollow groan vibrated through the canting hull. Friar Theomendus howled softly in sympathy with the wind. Evidence of extensive cannibalizing scarred the cabin, where pulled down panels spilled hanging cables and circuit boards into the confined, reeking interior. Outside, howling, high pitched methane gales pounded the small broken ship against the austere ice-scape of the primitive planetoid.

Images of desperation stuttered behind sunken eyes.

Mothers lifted sweat slicked infants before him, pleading. Small blurs drifted across primitive fields, like damned souls. Horror ridden farmers ran from their fields. Everywhere, plants and people were dying, sickening, helpless.

"Everything is so thin!" he babbled. "So thin, thin, thin! Devil's work. The Apocalypse, the end! I must sound the h-horn. Revelations, look to Revelations!"

As his sight dimmed, his hands flicked weakly over the rigged connections. He sucked in the carbon dioxide heavy air through blue lips, and powered up the transmitter one last time.

He engaged the signal pad with shaking hands His vigorous work had worn through the suit's liner, exposing flesh to the cold,worn-out wrist seals of the environment suit.

"Eight-seven, eight-twelve." His blackened fingernails jabbed the numbers repeatedly on the rigged keypad. He hadn't thought of eating durring these last two days. Was it two days? Just as well since there were no more rations left...

A wracking spasm seized him, and the pad left his numbed fingers, falling to the littered floor. He followed the pad, rolling over, glazed eyes focused on the viewport, soiling himself as he died, watching sparkling blurs run up and down the slapping cable that connected the radio transmitter to the ship's ice-crusted broadcast antenna.

High above, something that could have been an orbiting ore freighter scanned the small wreck, but passed by, like an ocean liner picking its way past an iceberg. The nameplate riveted to the hull of the freighter winked slightly in the reflected albedo of the oversize moon. Corriander.