“Dunkerque to landing party. Come in, landing party.”

Yili and Moo listened intently. All they could hear was static.

“Right frequency?” the colonel asked.

“Standard Skywatch hailing frequencies. Zony should be able to hear this during a fireworks show,” Yili replied. “Dunkerque to landing party. Come in, please.”

The static popped and crackled a little louder. There was no response.

“Interference of some kind. Maybe from all these rocks. Could be a signal reflection. Is there any way to set up the transmitter to account for that?”

“At this range, it shouldn’t be affecting us, but now that you mention it, that might be affecting Zony’s equipment. They’re running on battery power and probably don’t have much left.”

“How much time do we need to navigate to the station cargo lock?” Moo asked, activating one of the nearby consoles. “We can at least plot a course from here, can’t we?”

“If we’re careful and we make absolutely sure we’re not going to bump into anything fragile, I can put us on station in about forty minutes. But that’s with Zony’s help. Without the landing party, I’m going to have to navigate by sight, and that’s going to take at least ninety minutes, maybe longer.”

“Will the landing party’s power last that long?” Moo asked. His concerned look reminded Yili the commlinks were the least of their problems. She knew they had about two hours of life support left, if that.

“There’s enough oxygen on the station to last a few days, but the temperature will become a problem long before then. The longer we try to hail them, the colder it gets over there.”

“Quite a dilemma, engineer. But that’s why they pay us the big bucks.”

“What are your orders?”

“I’m a marine, not a flight officer.”

“You’re also the rank equivalent of a full commander, sir. It’s your call.”

“Fly us down there. We’ll keep trying to raise the landing party in the meantime, but we can’t take the risk of waiting.”

“Affirmative. Let’s set the control view to use hull cameras one through four. I’ll drive the engines from main engineering. I’ll need you to monitor the beacon and navigational computer in forward control.”

“Very good. Let’s get underway.” Colonel Moody put his gear down on the console and opened the service hatch to the forward control room while Curtiss started the multi-step process of bringing up the Dunkerque’s drive field.