Free Sanctuary by Christopher Golden

she pulled her hands quickly from the ship with a frightened gasp.
    The material of her pressure suit around her hands had been too near a sharp edge of metal hull. Had she continued to press, distractedly, on the tom section, she might well have ripped a hole in her suit. Back on Earth, Rogue thought herself nearly invulnerable to injury. But without the pressure suit, she guessed that she'd be dead just as quickly as any of them.
    "Thanks a lot, " she said, sighing in relief, then grabbed hold of the hull yet again.
    "No problem," Cyclops answered. "I know you're tired. We all are. And you've got a lot on your mind. But let's just be careful, okay? We can't afford any accidents out here."
    "You said it," she agreed.
    She finished reshaping a small hull breach, and pulled herself along the surface of the ship so Cyclops could move into place. While his optic beams were normally concussive in nature, when tightly focused, they could bum as hot as the nastiest laser. And with the sun so close, Cyclops seemed to be brimming with nearly inexhaustible power. A reddish glow filled the inside of his helmet, and a small cloud of energy was constantly flowing through it, only to dissipate in space.
    "It's a wonder your head doesn't explode with all that energy you got stored up in there," she said in amazement. "Well I suppose there should be some benefits to being so dose to the sun other than working on our tans," Cyclops responded, keeping his attention on the job at hand.
    "My goodness," Jean's voice filtered into Rogue's helmet on the comm-link, "Did Scott Summers just make a joke?"
    "I try," Cyclops said in response, and Rogue was warmed by their exchange. Though Jean was inside, the communications setup that linked them all reassured her that their resident psi would be on hand if anything went wrong. Not that it was likely to. The work had reached the point where it was almost boring.
    "I feel like an egg fryin' on the sidewalk in July," Rogue said, then lapsed into silence as she watched Cyclops at work again.
    His optic beam melted the metal edges of the hole together like a soldering iron. Rogue was reminded of the time Fred Dukes, a mutant who called himself the Blob, had bragged one too many times about his invulnerability. Nothing could hurt him, Dukes had boasted. Cyclops, usually the picture of calm, had used that tight focus beam to bum a hole right through Dukes' shoulder. Far as she could tell, Cyclops had. felt guilty about it later, but Rogue still chuckled as she remembered the look on the Blob's face. Served him right.
    When Cyclops finished, they moved on to the largest hull breach. Rogue did what she could, but when she was through the hole that remained, it was too large for Cyclops to simply weld closed. Rogue looked around the ship's hull for something to use as a "band-aid," but didn't see anything immediately.
    "Ch'od," she said on her comm-unit, "I need somethin' to patch this dang hole. Any ideas?"

    "Give me just a minute, Rogue," Ch'od said, and the sound of his voice made Rogue realize that all this time he and Raza had been working together in near absolute silence. After years as Starjarnmers together, it seemed they had reached the point where they functioned together as smoothly as clockwork without having to ever say anything
    That was the X-Men at their best. Apparently, the same applied to the Starjammers. No wonder, she thought, since both teams were led by men of the Summers clan. Even if she hadn't been involved with Gambit, Cyclops would never have been Rogue's type. Too squeaky clean, straight and narrow for her tastes. Yet those same traits made her admire him greatly.
    "Now, Rogue, what was it you wanted?" Ch'od asked on the comm-link.
    Rogue boosted herself up lightly to see where Ch'od had turned away from the warp drive to address her directly, though their voices did not carry in space. The Starjammer had two enormous "legs," each of which ended with an engine well, similar to the