Whitey’s Gift Copyright ©1998 by Peter Prellwitz CIS: 73051,1502 All Rights Reserved.

December 25, 3491

Whitey was a wreck.

Born a thousand years earlier on a planet a thousand light years away, the ancient freighter had made a thousand long forgotten runs for hundreds of years, no doubt providing a living for long forgotten crews. Somewhere in its dim history something had happened, and the ship had gone adrift, somehow managing to travel this vast distance to the Thargout system.

It might have been manned when it entered orbit, or perhaps had been taken over at the last minute - no one really knew. It had been under command, though, when it was crash landed onto Thargout by the Pilot, a man of uncommon skill. Perhaps the Pilot had planned the landing area; perhaps not. But it certainly appeared planned, for the huge craft had landed on an even keel and for the most part intact on the leeward side of the Pilot mountains. It lay half-buried in a deep grove of evergreen trees, less than one hundred meters from a permanent hot spring and only fifty from a permanent spring of drinkable water. From that point on, Whitey would never fly again.

But Whitey didn’t die.

T

(continued)

Appearing in Short Story Form on

DOUBLE DRAGON PUBLISHING and FICTIONWISE in 2006

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