“I’m afraid so. Something’s wrong with the mechanism. Our technical staff has never encountered a problem like this, and they advise me that any attempt at repair might possibly result in the opposite situation.”
“You mean not being able to get the door closed?”
“Precisely. In other words, we can’t land.”
“I see. Then I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do except advise Sector Headquarters to send an emergency repair crew.”
Captain Fromer sighed. “I’m afraid so, too. How long will it take for a message to get there with your transmitting equipment?”
“Two days, Captain. At a guess, there’ll be a ship alongside within the week. You’ll be maintaining your present position, I assume?”
“Oh, we’ll be here, all right,” Fromer said bitterly. Then he cut contact.
As the single occupant of a large asteroid with nothing but time and boredom on his hands, Hansen was enjoying the whole situation immensely. He allowed himself the luxury of several dozen fantasies in which his name was mentioned prominently in galaxy-wide reports of the episode. He imagined that Captain Fromer was also creating vivid accounts—of quite another sort—that would soon be amusing several hundred billion news-hungry citizens of the Federation.
When the repair ship arrived, it came, to Hansen’s astonishment, to the asteroid, and not alongside Fromer’s ship. He soon found out that there was someone else who shared the Captain’s embarrassment.