PART 1

'Something is wrong!'  Not the best words to hear when there's nothing around you but the empty vacuum of space.  There's not a lot of leeway in making things right, so understandably I shot a worried look across the control cabin at Bailey's craggy face, and noticed his eyebrows going up and down.  For the ever-calm Bailey, this was the equivalent of hysterics, and my worry meter shot up a couple of notches.

'What's up, Skip?'

'We used too much fuel during the take-off, so we've got to go through everything with a fine tooth-comb to see what happened.'

I knew that we meant me, as I was the engineer on this old bucket, grown old on the Luna Space Station passenger run.  Everything was calculated down to the last minute detail, so if we were short by just a couple of litres of fuel, then our lunar landing could be a bit messy.

'Probably just a dicky gauge,' I suggested as I unbuckled my belt and moved across to our diagnostic computer and settled into the seat.  After a few hours of hard work, I had an answer, but not one that I liked.

'We're overweight by about twelve kilos,' I told Bailey.  Not much by normal standards, but up here, a variation of only ten kilos could kill us.  The weight to fuel ratio was calculated down to the last gram.  Extra weight meant extra fuel, which meant extra weight; you get the picture.  One seat too many in the passenger cabin could make it impossible for us to make escape speed.  It was time to really start worrying.

'What the hell do you mean?  I thought you checked it all out before we left.'

'I did, Skip, but Megabrain here can't be wrong.  Somewhere along the way we've put on weight.'

'Did you leave the ship at all after checking?' Bailey demanded to know.

'Now you come to think of it, yes, I had to go back to the office for the passenger list for the return trip.  You think somebody might have smuggled something on board while I was gone?'

'Well, if you didn't add your birth date into your calculations, that's my best bet.'

I sighed.  Now I had the unenviable task of searching the passenger cabin and all the lockers there, not to mention the nooks and crannies in the engine room.  If I found the mystery item, I would eject it through the airlock to reduce our payload to what it should be while Bailey tried to work out a new trajectory to compensate for our lack of fuel.

Feeling glad that at least everything was empty, as we had no passengers on this particular run, I soon had the passenger cabin and its lockers checked, and made my way to the engine room.  Its shadowy interior and hushed noises gave it an eerie ambience, even under normal circumstances, so the hair on the back of my neck rose as I heard an unfamiliar sound, and immediately jumped to the conclusion that we had a bomb on board.

Wishing that the Luna Corporation provided its flight crews with teleport facilities, I gingerly made my way to the source of the sound, a kind of squeaking noise.  As I rounded the side of the matter converter, I could see straightaway that it was no bomb, though the sight was just as unexpected.

'Skip, I found it!' I called out, 'But we can't ditch it through the airlock.'

You see, Spock the station cat was curled up in the corner, but she wasn't alone.  She'd found a warm quiet corner to give birth to a litter of half a dozen or so kittens.

Bailey abandoned his pilot's seat to come and look at my find, and a soppy look made itself at home on his broad features as he came face to faces with the new family.

'Aw, we were wondering where she'd got to.  Never would have thought she could get past security to get in here.  Dizzy bloody cat could have killed us.  Serve her right if we did shove her out the airlock along with her brats!'  His threat didn't worry me, as he had campaigned for pets to be allowed on the Space Station as a morale booster.  Spock was among the first, and though community property, Bailey always thought of her as his own.

'Did you manage to calculate a new trajectory?' I asked.

'Nope, we're too close to the moon's surface for that to make any difference now.  We'll have to jettison something.  Hmmm...!' a grin crossed his face as he looked across at me.

'You wouldn't!' I protested as he reached out to run a hand over my pride and joy, a custom made sleek silvery space suit, much more of a magnet for the ladies than the regular grey cumbersome issue.  I'd pulled more birds in that suit than anybody else on the Luna run.

'Well, it's that or you walk home,' he threatened.

Grown men don't cry, so I didn't as I watched my precious suit float away from the airlock.  Perhaps light years from now, somebody would find it and wonder how somebody managed to lose a space suit.

Still, it wasn't all a disaster.  We landed safely with barely a teaspoon of fuel remaining in the tanks, and I made the headlines of the Daily Lunatic as I stepped out into the docking bay with an armful of kittens, while wearing only a pair of scarlet silk boxer shorts.  That sure attracted the ladies during that stopover, and the company eventually reimbursed me for the loss of my space suit.  They even named one of the kittens after me.  I might have preferred a more dignified way of securing my place in spacing history, but beggars can't be choosers!

Gerry Dorman, July 2030

***

PART 2

'OK, the pool's open.  Ten credits a guess, winner take all!  Boss, you get first go.'

'I reckon it's a piece of junk they lost track of when they were building La Grange station.'

'Too general, Boss.  Of course it is, but to make it fair, be more specific.  We can't have you scooping the pool with the first guess.'

I looked across at my first officer, and decided not to choke him on this run.  I'd do better to wait until we'd safely made port, then teach him how to show more respect to his superiors.

'OK then, I'll put my money on it being a solar panel.'

Out here on the long haul between Mars and the Jovian moons, there was little to do other than dodge asteroids, so the crews of the long haul ships turned their considerable talents towards betting on anything and everything, with fantastic amounts of money being wagered on each trip.  As these trips lasted from three to seven years depending on the placement of the planets, they had little else on which to spend their over-inflated salaries, so the lucky ones ended up very rich.

 After a few of these lucky ones ended up dead in various spaceport laneways, murdered by losers who owed them the rest of their liVes' earnings, the company made it a rule that only current finances could be used for betting, and that wagering future earnings was strictly out of bounds.  This settled things down somewhat, and the crime rate dropped sharply.   I made it a further rule that all bets were to be restricted to ten credits each on my ship, the Sally B.  This worked out very well, though as we only had a crew of six, the sums involved were relatively small, though I was to find out later that there were degrees of relatively small!

The subject of this latest pool was the appearance on the radar screen of an unidentified blip, just as we were passing inside the orbit of the Martian moon Phobos, preparing for a Mars landing, two days hence.  It would be four or five hours before we were close enough to see for ourselves just what the object was, so there was plenty of time for Jonas to run a sweep on its identity.

Guesses ranged from my solar panel to toolboxes, unpopular captains, lost escape pods and small alien probes.  One ingenious guess came from O'Hara, our science officer, who suggested it was the invasion fleet of an alien species much smaller than our own human size.  I didn't fancy his chances of walking off with the total prize pool of sixty credits, but I admired his vivid imagination.

'More likely to be a flock of wild geese,' grumbled Rogers, a chronic loser.

As we closed on the object, every viewport was surrounded by eager spacers, all wanting to be the first to identify the thing on radar.

'Its a man!' came the cry from sharp-eyed young Blake.

'Its a dead man!' corrected Rogers.  'The Sally B's the first ship in these parts for over a month.  No-one could survive that long out in space.'

'It's an alien!  That's not a regulation suit,' declared O'Hara.  'I told you it was aliens.  Didnt I tell them?' he appealed to me.

'I think it's time to send someone out of the airlock with a grappling iron to tow it in.  It's pretty far off, so take a booster gun with you.'  I pondered briefly, then nodded to O'Hara.  'OK, go get your alien.'  I was faced with instant mutiny as the other four tried to claim it as their right to go out and get it.

Since the company didn't choose its Captains by ballot, I had enough authority, and quickly quelled the row.

O'Hara suited up and exited the airlock, then, with the aid of a harpoon type gun, began casting the grappling iron in the direction of the still distant object.  After five unsuccessful attempts he made contact and slowly reeled it in.

'Captain,' came his hushed voice over the intercom.  'Its empty!'

'How the hell did somebody escape from a space suit?' asked Blake.

'And why?' asked Rogers.

'Maybe the aliens can teleport out of anything,' said O'Hara, still clinging to his theory.  'How's the weight situation?  Can we afford to bring it inside?'

'Sure, remember the lateral thruster that broke off last year?  We're running light, so bring him aboard,' I ordered.

O'Hara refused to part with his prize until he'd wriggled out of his own space suit, but then he brought it over to a work bench where we spread it out and began to examine it.  It was made from a very smooth silvery material, and was undamaged by space dust, and instead of a solid helmet with a perspex faceplate, it boasted all round vision, and was years ahead of any design wed ever seen.

'Well, so much for your aliens,' Rogers said.  'It's built for a human, right size, right shape, but very pretty.  The company never issued this one.'

I turned it over to inspect the back, and found the name G DORMAN stencilled on the back in neat fluoro green letters.

'Blake, whistle up Phobos base and ask if they have a G Dorman there who might have lost something.'

After a couple of hours the answer came back. 

'We've just found a little piece of history, Captain,' reported Blake.  'The suit was jettisoned near the moon thirty-four years ago.  One of the lunar shuttles had a weight problem because the station cat strayed onboard and had kittens just before take-off.  Those little buckets were so touchy that if the pilot grew a beard it threw their weight to fuel ratio out of whack.  The only thing they could dump out of the airlock was Dorman's custom-made space suit.  By all accounts, it damn near broke his heart.'

'And it took it thirty four years to drift out here.  You think he might want to claim it back?' asked Jonas.

'Come on, what about our salvage rights?  It should be worth a packet by now,' said Rogers.

'Sorry fellas,' said Blake.  'I asked Phobos base about that, and they said the company paid Dorman out for it, so technically it's their property.  We don't get a bean.'

'Not even the bloody pool!' grumbled Rogers.  'None of us came close to guessing what it was.'

'Oh yeah?' I remarked. 'What's that just above the name on the back?  Its a small solar panel.  Nobody stipulated it shouldn't be attached to anything.  Hey guys, back off, you can't treat your Captain like that!  I won it fair and square.'

I slept with my cabin door locked for the rest of that trip, and had to ship out on the next run with a strange crew.  And after that, I never entered another ship's sweep!

Captain Ray Nesbitt, September, 2064

***

PART 3

Jock Tordoff sat back in his seat and roared with laughter.

'You're having me on!' he gasped, the tears rolling down his cheeks.

'If you don't believe me, look at the July 30^th edition of the Daily Lunatic for the year 2030.  Dorman did lose his space suit that day.  Trust me, I was there.  That's how come it was picked up in orbit around Phobos by the crew of the Sally B last month.'

Jock Tordoff was the local reporter for the Daily Lunatic, and when he had heard that Gerry's space suit had been found, he'd come looking up his old colleagues for some background material.

Twenty years had passed since my days of ferrying passengers between Luna and La Grange space station, at the halfway point between the earth and the moon, but my memories were still sharp.  I've never forgotten the sight of all the flash bulbs going off in Gerry's face as he left the shuttle draped in only boxer shorts and assorted felines.  I still keep one of those pictures in my album, showing the mortification written large on his face at his plight, his blush almost as red as his shorts.  I never did have the nerve to tell him that it was I who'd got through on the radio to alert the Daily Lunatic, while he was busy shoving his beloved suit out of the airlock, though he must have had his suspicions.

'Whatever happened to him?' asked Jock.  'Has anybody thought of reuniting him with his suit?  It would make a great human interest story.'

'Not possible, Im afraid.  He died about eight years ago out in the asteroid belt.  He was always one for the ladies, as I said, and rumour has it he shagged himself to death out there.  Pity, he'd have liked to get his old suit back.  He used to brag that he pulled more birds with that suit than anyone else ever did.  And there are a lot of youngsters around with that red hair and big feet of his.  I reckon it wasn't all bragging!'

Captain Mark Bailey, October, 2064