Chapter Two


"Are you okay, Trev?" Donald Watson asked, a concerned look on his face. "You look a little pale."

Trevor Avery took a deep breath and looked around. He was sitting in the colony mess hall eating something that resembled Jell-O, but could have been any number of other things. The autochef didn't worry about appearance when it came to food. Or taste, now that I think about it.

"Do I?" Trevor said quietly. "I feel fine."

"Are you sure?" Donald asked, holding a cup of warm coffee.

"Yeah," Trevor said, taking a bite of his "food". He grimaced and said, "On second thought..."

Donald smiled and chuckled quietly, setting down his coffee. He stared at Trevor for a moment longer, still trying to figure out if he really was all right. But then he was eating his mashed potatoes and talking about the day they both had ahead of them.

Donald, a man of thirty-five who was already beginning to bald, was the colony's senior mechanic. Trevor, who had just turned twenty-four, was the only other mechanic on the entire planet. The two men were still trying to figure out what the hell went wrong with one of the power loaders. With such limited manpower, it often took a while to find a problem. Unfortunately, the Company was too damned busy (and too damned cheap) to ship a couple more mechanics out to Pheonix.

The colony, which had been named Pheonix (some say because the planet somewhat resembled Arizona), was falling apart, and there wasn't a damn thing anyone could do. Technicians and engineers could barely keep the place from falling down on their heads. Everything was going to Hell in a handbasket.

"Forget the power loader today," Donald said, finishing the last bit of mashed potatoes on his tray.

"Huh? Why?" Trevor asked, taking a bite out of a fried egg, which tasted faintly of recycled cardboard.

"The truck's broke down again," Donald muttered.

"Shit," Trevor hissed, disgusted. "We fixed the damn thing a week ago! What the hell's wrong with it now?"

"Front axel's busted up real bad. Thank God the Company had the brains to have a whole shipment sent over, otherwise we'd be fucked."

"Who the hell managed to bust the axel?" Trevor said.

"Davis and Phillips," Donald said, taking a sip from his coffee. "They were bringing in a load, thought they could make it over a rather steep incline, and quickly discovered they couldn't."

"What happened?"

"The damn morons rolled it," Donald said. "The door is busted, too. And the left rear tire was torn almost completely off."

"Aw, fuck," Trevor mumbled. "Just another shit job for us, eh?"

"Looks that way. And the two bastards walked away without a scratch on either of 'em."

"Fucking morons," Trevor said with bitter disgust. "Well, we'd better start early today. I'd like NOT to miss dinner again tonight."

Donald nodded and the two men grabbed their trays and stood. After placing their trays in the Cleaner, they walked out, not saying a word.


The truck looked less like a truck and more like a large tractor. It was about fifteen feet tall with a large bed in the back which could hold roughly five tons of, well, anything. Each tire was about six feet tall, and there were four of them. At that time, the truck was sitting in the shop, which was nearly completely filled with half-fixed gadgets and gizmos from all over Pheonix. It was a real mess.

Donald Watson called it home. Trevor Avery called it claustrophobic. It didn't matter where you walked, you usually had an average of a foot of free space on either side of you. Very crowded indeed.

The two men immediately got to work on the axel. Normally it wouldn't have taken them long to remove the busted axel and replace it with a brand new one, but in order to have enough space in which to work, the two men had to do a lot of rearranging. With the two of them working together, it took them only an hour or so to clear away enough junk to make room for them to work in.

After that was done, they each took a short break to curse the Company, as well as Davis and Phillips. Immediately afterwards, the two of them were able to replace the damaged axel.

Next, Trevor worked on replacing the useless rear tire while Donald removed the door on the driver's side. After Trevor had replaced the tire, he helped Donald carry a replacement door, which weighed over a hundred pounds, to the truck where they attached it into the frame where the original door once resided.

Overall, it took the two men a little over four hours to complete the work on the truck. Very proud of themselves, they felt it necessary to go down to the local pub and get good and drunk. And they did just that.