"You cowboys finished shooting the breeze?" Mary Sue brushed a lock of fiery red hair from her brow. "I need to get these reactor coils powered down before they overload. TERF - the ship's AI - is telling me we have twenty minutes to go before the core goes supercritical."

"Moan, moan, moan," Danner chuckled. "Put on your radiation suit and strap in. This is going to be a bumpy ride."

ANDY hated being corrected by the captain, and voiced his displeasure by waiting for the last possible nanosecond to fire the retrorockets. "Minimum Delta-v required. We're at shut down and the reactor coils can be taken offline."

"Perfect," Mary Sue grumbled. "It's gonna take me a month for these safety belt bruises to fade."

"Package the Q-dust and send a signal to Zilkon," Danner ordered. "I need something to drink before I start bargaining with Rodney."

"Oh please," Mary Sue demanded. "Stop being such a ... man!"

"Being a man's my business sweetheart," Danner's friendly droll dropped faster than a feather in a feather-and-hammer experiment on the moon.