Rick was brought out of his musings by a scrape of metal-a screech, really-that set his teeth on edge and had him alert for danger.
He'd grown used to the endless dripping of water condensed on or leaking from pipes, not even registering it anymore, and could identify most of the ship's sounds-giant circulation systems and the vibrations of far-off machinery. But this one was something new.
It was Minmei. "Let's see: Yesterday was Thursday. Now Friday…" She held a triangular piece of scrap metal in her hand, one edge sharpened against the deck, finishing the line she was gouging in Mockingbird's upside-down fuselage, under the starboard nose canard.
There were two of them, irregular verticals cut deep into the racer's vulnerable skin. She'd picked a spot where there was room for quite a few marks, he saw.
"Hey! What're you doing?"
She turned to him with a smile, happy to be doing something that yielded tangible results, however slight. "I'm keeping a record of how many days we've been stranded here." She offered him the improvised cutter. "Would you like to help?"
It had obviously never occurred to her that his Heiko had a day/date function. Rick kept the fact to himself; her personal calendar seemed to lift her morale. "No thanks. You're doing fine. I'm gonna get back to work."
"See ya." Minmei grinned and watched him walk off, slinging his clipboard around his neck for another exploration-survey mission.
That was a brand-new paint job! He blew his breath out. It didn't matter anyway; Mockingbird would never fly again. Some help she is! Well, I don't suppose too much else can go wrong today.
Which was just when he clunked his forehead against a low-hanging pipe. Recoiling back in pain, he hit another with the back of his skull. Hissing in anger and pent-up frustration, he berated himself for not wearing the Veritech helmet as a hardhat.
But he refused to turn back. Marking off the different routes and possible escape paths available to them had seemed easy at first, until he'd come to realize what a tremendously complicated and far-reaching maze they were trapped in. He'd come to so many dead ends that he constantly saw them in his dreams.
Banging on pipes and bulkheads with the metal bar had produced no results, and even sending shorts and longs over a severed power cable was a failure. Depression was hard to fight off, and he couldn't bear the thought of what would happen if he didn't come up with a solution soon.
There was one long shot he hadn't mentioned to Minmei yet, not so much because it was a life-or-death risk for him but rather because, if he tried it and failed, she would be alone. Still, his alternatives were fewer and fewer with every passing hour.
When he finally dragged himself back to the plane after more fruitless searching, he was pleasantly surprised to see that he hadn't been the only one hard at work.
"Well, Rick, how do you like our new home?" Minmei asked him, eyes shining.
Rick broke into a smile for the first time he could recall. "It's great!" was all he could say.
Minmei had somehow figured out how to get the parachute out of the back of the pilot's seat-maybe after reading the ejection instruction plate, it occurred to him. It couldn't have been easy with Mockingbird hung upside down eight or nine feet off the deck.
More than that, she'd draped it over the ship to make a roomy red and white striped tent. And best of all, she'd located the survival gear, set up the tiny camp stove, and put together a meal whose smell had his mouth watering until his jaws hurt.
The compartment lights were going dim according to SDF-1's twenty-four-hour day/night schedule. The two moved in under the tent, Rick sitting tailor-fashion while Minmei knelt by the stove, stirring with a plastic spoon.
"By making stew we can make our supplies last longer," she explained. Rick repented of his earlier thought-that she couldn't pull her own weight.
"That's right; I forgot," he said, determined to make it up to her. "You're in the restaurant business."
She was sprinkling bits of what seemed to be seasoning into the stew, only he couldn't remember spices being listed on the rations contents listings. Whatever she'd done, she'd come up with something that smelled heavenly.
"No, the White Dragon was my Aunt Lena's restaurant," Minmei responded, shrugging. She thought a moment, then added, "Actually, I want to be an entertainer."
Rick cocked his head in surprise. "You're planning on being an actress?"
"Well, I studied acting, singing, and dancing." She'd been dishing up his portion. "Here."
"Thanks." He was silent for a while, taken by the image of Minmei dancing. Then, "That doesn't exactly prepare you for something like this, huh." Ruefully, he looked down at his clipboard and the growing map of dead ends.
Five days went by.
"Can you believe they're rebuilding the city inside the ship?" someone was saying as Lisa Hayes entered the officers' wardroom. "It's amazing."
She saw by his insignia that he was a Veritech pilot off the Daedalus, one of the few who'd been in the air during the spacefold jump and had thus been spared. He and his kind were like specters these days, watching whole new groups of pilots being crash-trained to fly the fighters that the carriers' dead could no longer man.
His comment about the refugees and their rebuilding was grudging. Open area of any kind in a naval or space vessel was always held dear, and now…
"You can leave the trays, steward," Claudia was saying at the table where she waited for Lisa. "Thank you very much. It smells wonderful."
"Yes, ma'am." The steward served awkwardly, a new recruit; everybody with military training had been tapped for higher-priority work these days, and it was most often serve yourself. But things were tough all over, and complaints were very few. This particular steward, Claudia had found out, was to be posted to a gunnery class next shift.
"So he expects me to volunteer and go out and get this castaway shelter module all alone, and I sez, 'Sir, I'm brave but I ain't crazy!" the VT pilot continued.
"So you didn't volunteer," his tablemate said. "But did you go?"
The first pilot shrugged unhappily and made a zipping motion with his hand, thumb and pinkie spread to indicate a Veritech's wings. They both laughed tiredly.
Some things never change, Lisa thought. Contrary to what most civilians thought, real combat veterans seldom bragged among themselves of their heroism; it was a mark of high prestige to go on about how scared you were, how fouled up things were, how hairy the situation had gotten, how dumb the brass were. Because among them, everyone knew; boasts were for outsiders.
"Oh, there you are," Lisa said, collapsing into a chair across from Claudia.
Claudia lowered her coffee cup. "What's the latest on the refugees?"
Lisa pursed her lips, weighing the answer. "We finally have them divided by city blocks and the construction's going on twenty-four hours a day."
Claudia's dark eyes were unfocused with fatigue and with the strangeness of what had happened and what was going on.
She could only manage an understatement. "Really? That's incredible."
Gloval had known at once what must be done. His relentless effort to get the Macross survivors and as much salvageable and recyclable material aboard as was possible had yielded amazing results. It was the only way the humans could make the long voyage home.