The other creatures stared at the guinea pig in astonishment for a long, silent moment...before there was suddenly a loud cackle of laughter. It belonged to a creature that looked kind of like a blue, biped horse with a scruffy pink mane, and despite the gruffness of it, had a voice that was somewhat feminine-sounding.

"You can't be serious!" she finally gasped. "You're-you're kidding, right? You're not gonna try-"

The guinea pig put his little paws on his hips, and stared at her flatly until the smile died on her lips.

"...Baldwin, c'mon!" she spluttered. "Take him to Jheselbraum?! Aside from the many problems with that, we can't even get ourselves outta here, unless we wanna just jump in the closest wormhole and see where it takes us! In case you've forgotten, our ship doesn't work anymore due to it being, y'know, DESTROYED!"

"She'll know how to deal with him better than we can," Baldwin said firmly. "Maybe she can convince him that what he's experiencing is real."

The dinosaur-horse-thing shot Fiddleford a baleful glare, before stepping around the fire to his side-and unexpectedly punching him in the arm.

The strength behind it knocked him right off the log, and he let out a pained yelp.

"That real enough for ya?" she asked dryly, staring down at him.

"Syl!" another monster scolded.

"What? I'm trying to speed things up so we don't have to go on any suicidal missions to find her royal oracle-ness!"

"I've been waiting for a good opportunity for us to leave this dimension anyway." Baldwin helped Fiddleford back up and set him down on the log again, before giving Syl a stern look. "Besides, he might be the one in that prophecy she told us about."

Syl rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. You actually believe that hokum about some creature that looks like this-" she gestured at Fiddleford- "being destined to destroy B-"

Everyone flinched and shushed her, as if she was about to say a particularly dirty word. Syl rolled her eyes again, and looked away sulkily.

"I'm sure if we all work together, we can get this fixed." Baldwin wandered over to some of the debris that constituted as part of their Hooverville, and pulled it aside, revealing-

Fiddleford forgot everything else, even his own terror, at the technological marvel lying before him.

Granted, the small spacecraft had clearly seen better days: the metal hull was dented and bruised, and he could see some wires sparking in the control panel, and as Baldwin got two of the others to help him pull it into view a wing fell off with a crunch. But it was still a spacecraft, just like something outta Star Trek, like he'd always dreamed of seeing one day-or better yet, making himself.

Fiddleford got to his feet, entranced.

He barely registered Syl's voice asking peevishly how Baldwin thought they could get this hunk of junk working again when they'd lost all the equipment they could use to-what the grop was the shrimpy guy doing get away from there that's our ship-!

Whether this was a dream or a hallucination or not, Fiddleford had found a spaceship that needed repairs, and his toolkit was still in the pocket of his lab coat, and there would be no peace for him until he was able to use the one on the other.

The group of miner refugees stared, open-mouthed, as the scrawny, gibbering nervous wreck they'd salvaged from the caves changed within seconds into a curious-yet-focused monkey.

Before Baldwin could grab him he'd climbed into the cockpit, and within seconds he was checking out the dashboard, pulling things out of his pockets and fiddling around with their equipment in a series of swift motions.

Syl let out a growl and marched towards the craft-it was unclear if she intended to just give him a piece of her mind, or drag him out and do grievous bodily harm (though knowing her, it was probably the latter)-and stopped short when for the first time since they'd crashed on this asteroid, the dashboard flickered to life.

It was only for a few seconds, but it was still longer than any of them had been able to get it going.

"Any o' you folks got some blueprints or schematics fer this thing?" the man asked, without taking his eyes off the dashboard. "I can fix it easier if I don't haveta improvise the whole system...and I'm gonna need some new wires, and mebbe a blowtorch if ya got one."

The dashboard flickered to life again, a little longer this time.

Trogdor glanced at Baldwin.

"Can we keep him?"

...Hey, at least he's happy now, right?