As the stolen star-ship tumbled through the

stratosphere of an uncharted planetoid, Skip thought

with a certain dread that he should have paid more

attention in geography class. The idea of being stranded

out here where no one would think to look for him was

sickening – or maybe it was the descent that was making

him sick. The one-man speed-ship had lost all sense of

equilibrium and was flipping end over end at high speed,

whilst also spinning laterally like a top.

          If I throw up, Skip mused, it is going to go absolutely everywhere.

          So he held it in, and braced himself, and waited for the craft to crash land.

         It happened a lot sooner than he would have expected. Alarms within the ship were whooping and chiming, and there were red lights flashing everywhere. This made it very hard to concentrate on anything other than the growing desire to shut these terribly annoying sounds off. Skip pulled hard on the collective, hoping to right the ship, but the whole navigation system was blown. He slapped at the controls, punching buttons at random on the console, but he gave this up when a nearby vent sent a vile, gaseous emission of something foul-smelling blowing up into his face.

          “Ack! What is that?” he exclaimed, gagging. “Smells like a dead fish beaten with a dirty sock filled with rotten eggs!”

          Skip coughed and yet felt oddly euphoric after inhaling the fumes. He would happily explore the effects of this drug later on, but now was not the time. In the view-screen, he saw the unnamed, unfinished world which was about to become his final resting place. He briefly considered trying to send out a May Day message – but he knew this was useless. There was no life on this rock. Nothing lived this far out in the Archipelago.

          The ship came streaking down from the skies like a bolide, and drove into the hard, pink desert floor of the cracked and dry planetoid. Skip gave a cry as though he were taking a shot for the final point in the game, even if it were a long shot. The ship juddered and rebounded, skipping off the surface like a stone over a flat water. There was a great noise as parts of the ship were rent from the chassis, or fell within as it came to pieces. At last, the ship came sliding to a halt at the very edge of a great precipice, over which its aft ailerons tipped.

          Skip, ruddy in the face from great angst, let out a sigh and began to laugh. In the past couple of months, he had come so far: he had eluded the Molzuum, and dodged the bounty they had put on his head, by entering the Regatta and flying hundreds of leagues away from those he had wronged by theft; of course, he had been obliged to steal the ship in order to do so, but that was after all what he was trained to do.

          Unfortunately, he was not trained to fly the ship. Perhaps if Skip had a full knowledge of how to fly the infernal machine, he might have been able to avert the imminent disaster; probably, if he were a real pilot, he wouldn't be in this position in the first place.

          Now he was marooned, and his only hope of getting off this rock and rejoining his teammates in the Regatta was a rescue.

          He laughed and laughed, because none of that mattered. He was alive, and as long as he was alive, he knew that the adventure of life would continue.

 

          Skip suited up and left the ship to examine its condition and his whereabouts. Both were bleak and offered little hope. He had no idea how to repair it; in fact it looked pretty irreparable.

          I was doing so well in the Race, too! Skip thought with some bitterness. He gave the side of the ship a kick, fearing as he did so that he might send it over the edge of the precipice. Around on the starboard side, he saw the marks of the blasters from the opposing team that had shot him out of the Slipstream.

          Of course, Skip had flown before, mostly in his youth, and he had some skills; but these Racers were trained in all kinds of fancy maneuvers that he didn't know; and they were also ruthless. It was really just blind luck that he had managed to make it this far.

          And now my luck has run out, he observed. I've come so far, but far enough for now, apparently.

         It was common for Racers to be cast out of the Stream during the year that the Regatta took to complete, and only a small number of those that set out ever managed to cross the finish line, but Skip never thought it would happen to him. He had, after all, become a star in the very short time that he'd been involved in the great Race. The boys and girls, men and women who all tuned in to the Regatta from their homes in Ozolo or Maraz – they all loved him despite the fact that he didn't belong in the Race, or perhaps because of it. He was the underdog, the everyman, and when he proved that he could hold his own with the other Racers, he earned the adulation of what became a large fan base. Even his teammates came around to adore him – although they were secretly aghast at first at the notion that Skip was flying with them in the ship he had purloined from the appointed pilot, Zevro, left behind somewhere in Chovolt where he'd been unlucky enough to stop in for a drink at one of Skip's usual haunts.

          None of his seven disgruntled teammates had been able to do a thing to stop him – although a few had certainly tried in the days that followed – and when the Race was on there was no chance for the Astro Guard to catch him up from Chovolt orbit; the speed-ships, or zaolosomn, as they were called, were the fastest things in the Realm of Aum. Eventually, the sponsors contacted him directly and openly declared their support of his unprecedented inclusion in the Regatta. This was, naturally, once he'd already become iconic, and the public was entirely enamored of him.

          Well, it may just be that my charms will save me, Skip told himself as he drifted into an uneasy sleep that first night on the unnamed land which lay at the very fringes of the Archipelago. He slept in the ship, and although he had power and heat, he felt a chill enter him as he considered what lay before him. He was able to put his fears to rest only by thinking that there was no way that his fans and sponsors would be slack in the search once he was reported missing from the Race Track.

         At the very least, he thought with a mixture of excitement and dread, the Molzuum won't give up until they find me!

          He only slept a couple of hours, for he was awoken rudely in the freezing night when the ship was suddenly rammed and thrust over the edge to fall into the abyss, while the hungering monsters that had conspired on high howled in cruel delight and malicious glee.