The Humans were sitting around the fire with several of their Havenworlder friends. The winds outside the shelter were howling loudly and they were still waiting for the rescue vessel to bring them the rest of the parts they needed to repair the ship enough to limp it to a spaceport for a full refit. It was a stormy night so the Humans decided to have fun and tell ghost stories. -- Anon Guest
It was a dark and stormy night. The winds howled and rattled the very temporary shelter on a small, nondescript planet just off from the major shipping lanes. They would have made it to Pinkus East if only someone patrolling the lanes hadn't been napping and missed one high-velocity paint fleck.
Space travel. It makes even the most insignificant debris into a life-threatening hazard. Alas, in high-traffic shipping lanes, the ships' micrometeor defense systems[1] had to be turned off. Smaller ships and short-hop vessels looked an awful lot like asteroid hazards to defense system AI's. Which was why there were patrols in the first place. Which should have worked. One had not, and now they were here because they were here.
On a passive planet that was set aside as an emergency landing for people like the crew of the Therinbak. All they had to do was wait for a patch kit and a tow back up into space, and they could resume their travels. This, of course, meant that the Humans were already bored. The one with the guitar had run out of songs to show off with[2], the one with the card tricks was still trying to work out what had gone wrong with the last one, and one of the Humans was sitting upside-down. Always a bad sign.
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