Fifteen: 3020 AD

Frog's rescue became high drama. Blake's crews reached him only after he had idled down and gone on intravenous and drugs in an extended, deep sleep free of the distress and pain of radiation sickness. He had emptied his oxygen tanks.

His rescuers had to tunnel under his crawler to reach his belly hatch. They found it fouled with splash scale. They stung a heated hose through his tractor skin into his oxy main. A couple of Blake hogs chipped the scale off his hatch. Others sprayed the tunnel walls with a quick-setting epoxy. They scabbed a pumper trunk over the tunnel mouth and flooded it with breathables.

They had to do it the hard way. Near the end, too pained to think straight, Frog had shed his hotsuit again. His stupidity came near costing him his life.

The expenses of the rescue came out of Blake's PR budget. The holonetnews snoops were on the scene, their cameras purring. The head office saw itself picking up a lot of cheap advertising. The name Blake Mining and Metals would get exposure all over Confederation.

Old Frog had gotten more than he had bargained for. He had not impressed just a little girl and the people of his home town. He was a seven-day news wonder Confederation-wide. His adventure was being broadcast live from Edgeward. Taping crews braved the Shadowline to get his rescue recorded for later broadcast.

He would have been amused and disgusted had he known about it. It was not quite the notoriety he had been seeking.