Read Helium3 - 1 Crater for Free Online

course at an angle to intercept the roller, catching vacuum as his shuttle leapt across a narrow, collapsed lava tube. Empty shuttles were fast.
    Crater had an angle on the roller so he caught up to it, did a hard steer in front, and jumped off just as it slammed into the shuttle. When Crater looked up from the dust, he saw the roller ricocheting off in a harmless direction. He also saw the shuttle was smashed. The maintenance shed was untouched.
    Suit integrity confirmed , the gillie said, making an automatic report of Crater’s biolastic material.
    â€œWhat about Thumper Tom and Petro?”
    Petro nominal. Thumper Tom fifteen seconds to suit failure .
    Crater cringed. “Petro, where are you?” he called, fearful of the answer.
    â€œAt the entry hatch,” Petro replied, his tone so calm it sounded as if he were about to yawn. “Paramedics are with me.
    Thumper Tom’s going to be okay.”
    â€œYou saved him!” Crater cried, then let his breath out for what seemed like the first time in hours.
    We saved him,” Petro answered. “And you saved the “orangutans and the entire maintenance shed. We’re heroes, Crater!”
    â€œNo, we’re not,” Crater answered miserably. “We’re in trouble. We drove the shuttles without permits.”
    Petro laughed and said, “If you could sell simple, brother, you’d be a rich man.”
    Crater didn’t know how to respond to that, so he didn’t.
    In any case, it was about then that the blue banger arrived.
    â€œWhat happened?” she demanded as the other miners climbed up the slope to where Crater was standing. They gawked at the shuttle, which lay smashed in the dust, and the gigantic roller that had finally stopped a mile away. When no team leader seemed to be able to find his or her voice, Montana Bill told the blue banger how the devils had accidentally blown loose not one but two rollers, how one of them had rolled over Thumper Tom’s scraper, how Crater and Petro had taken the shuttles and pulled the scraper off Tom, how Petro had dragged the scraper driver clear, and then how Crater had knocked aside the big roller by sacrificing the shuttle, concluding with, “That dang roller would have surely killed every worker in the maintenance shed, Mrs. Hook, and that’s a fact.”
    Mrs. Hook looked at Crater, then at the devil leader, a man who called himself Boston Blackie. “What do you have to say for yourself, Blackie?” she demanded.
    Blackie wasn’t about to take the blame. “Third shift probed that area, ma’am, and gave me and my team the all clear. They must have missed those blamed old things. It happens.”
    Mrs. Hook turned to Crater as Petro came walking up. “I told you two to stay put,” she growled, but before they could reply, she waved their potential excuses away. “You two boys did a brave thing. Don’t expect a medal for what you did but, just for the record, I’m grateful.”
    Mrs. Hook warily eyed the flock of white-suited engineers and managers emerging from the airlock and coming in her direction, then said, “All right, people, get back to work. I’ll whistle up a float scraper and shuttle and we’ll sort this all out later.”
    She subsequently did her whistling, then reported to the ghosts as the engineers and managers were called, while her miners, including Crater and Petro, went back to work. Crater tried not to think about how much trouble he and Petro were in for driving the shuttles without permission and destroying one of them too.
    Astonishingly, the shift met the production schedule, but just barely; and after it was over, Montana Bill prayed, beseeching the Big Miner to look after Thumper Tom in the company clinic, and wrapped it up with, “It was a scrag shift, Lord, but we got the Colonel his heel-3 anyway. Thank you at least for that. Amen.”
    â€œAmen,” the miners chorused,