Fortune's Light - Michael Jan Friedman [36]
Teller grunted. “You could have been famous.”
“I’m not complaining, though I wish that last tremor hadn’t come when it did. Then I wouldn’t have fallen, and I wouldn’t have lost consciousness—or my communicator.”
Another grunt. “I would have preferred that, too. What made you climb that catwalk in the first place?”
Riker smiled sheepishly. “A cat—what else? He must have scampered up there when the quakes started getting bad, and he wasn’t about to come down on his own.” A pause. “It was stupid, I know. But my mother always had a soft spot for cats, and … hell. Anyway, we found him later on—reunited him with his owners and all that.”
“Terrific,” said his friend. “I love happy endings.”
“Teller … I heard you volunteered to go in and get me.”
“Somebody had to. Why waste real officer material?”
“Somebody didn’t have to. The captain wanted to conduct a sensor search. He said it was too dangerous for anyone to beam down. The understructure was too delicately balanced.”
“All the more reason to go. The sensors would never have found you in time.”
“You know that now, but you didn’t know it then. By rights, you should’ve stayed put.”
Teller chuckled, his blue eyes dancing. He brushed back some of that unruly reddish blond hair. “Lucky for you I was stupid and irrational, huh?”
“Yes. Lucky for me.”
“Say, Will … while you’re here, why don’t you make yourself useful? Hand me that glass of water, will you?”
“Sure. Here.”
“Thanks. I owe you one.”
“I think it’s the other way around.”
“Uh-oh. I had a feeling this was coming.”
“You saved my life, not only by finding me but by covering me when the place started coming apart. I can’t just let that slide.”
“If I’d known you were going to get all teary-eyed on me, I’d have left you there.”
“Bull.” A hard swallow. ‘“I appreciate what you did, Teller.”
His friend looked at him. “You’d have done the same thing for me, right?”
“Sure. But that’s different—you owe me half a month’s salary after the last card game.”
Teller smiled. “Right.”
“Not to mention the card game before that.”
“You’re a real bloodsucker, Riker. No wonder they made you a lieutenant.”
“Um …”
“What?”
“Don’t look now, but I’m not the only lieutenant around here.”
“You’re kidding.”
‘“I wish I were. But the captain insisted. Something about bravery and a job well done. I forget the exact words.”
“You sure you’re not kidding?”
“I never kid a kidder, Teller. It’s bad form.”
“Boy, Will.” Teller whistled softly. “Can you imagine if you were somebody important? They’d probably have made me an admiral.”
Riker sighed. Teller had saved his bacon without even a thought for his own life. If he hadn’t taken the brunt of that ceiling collapse, at least until their transporter chief could beam them up …
He had to return the favor. No matter what his friend had done, Will had to get him out of this mess. Put him on his feet again.
Certainly he owed him that much.
Suddenly the door opened. Before Riker had a chance to react, he saw Lyneea slip inside and close the door behind her.
“So?” she asked.
“So what?” he responded.
“What was so important that only you could hear it?”
“I think I’ve got a lead.”
“Oh?” She took a seat on the couch. “Tell me more.”
“There we were,” said Geordi. “One mangled shuttle and three apple green rookies, lucky to be alive. The damned photon storm made communications impossible, so our ship had no idea which Beta Bilatus satellite we were on—and Beta Bilatus happened to have twenty-two legitimate planets, not to mention a whole mess of oversize moons. Our food dispenser was squashed in the crash, we had one working phaser among us, and the local fauna had decided we looked tastier than lemon meringue pie.”
“Sounds rough,” observed Guinan, seeming to absorb the story with every pore in her body. Nobody listened the way she did. “What did you do?”
“Glad you asked,” said the chief engineer, plunking his glass down on the bar. “The first thing I did was calm my buddies down. The two of them were as fidgety as guinea