There had been something he'd forgotten. He couldn't quite wrap his mind around it at the present moment, but he was sure that he'd left something behind when they'd been forced to abandon ship. Quiet introspection was cut short by the monotone voice of the escape pod's computer system.

"Six hours of atmosphere remaining." It's voice was almost soothing. He leaned back against the cushions of the couch, turning his focus and attention towards the small screen that charted his location, and the various locations of the stellar objects around him, a small window in the foreground displayed his current game of blackjack. He was proud of himself, he was up by nearly twenty percent. A quick of check of the astrogation program showed that the small pod was at least a hundred thousand kilometers from the now lifeless luxury space liner, the Luftevagen.

He chuckled to himself, recalling the ad brochures, touting the ship line's titanium hull that could withstand a direct hit from a one hundred kiloton nuclear warhead. Of course, no one had considered that in space, alien materlials in small asteroids might possibly prove to be of a denser material than titanium, but this point was moot. It had been an interesting experience, watching from the escape pod as the front section of the ship ripped away from the rest.

He wondered, mind idle, why they hadn't thought to turn on the back-up navigational computers in another part of the ship. Redundant systems weren't just a good idea, they were required by the law. He had thought about this as often as he'd thought about the hand he'd been building.

Two queens, split, double-down, the dealer was showing a deuce and there'd been only one ace in play since a fresh deck had been started. His lips curled into a smile as he recalled it fondly. The fat man from Old Louisiana had laughed and shook his head when he split on a twenty and risked losing his entire hand. Most people would laugh if they didn't realize what had been going on, but not him; he was no stranger to black jack.

"Five hours of atmosphere remaining."

He scowled grimly and returned to his winning hand on the computer. He wasn't upset that he was probably going to suffocate in a few short hours; he just wanted to remember what he'd left behind. Again, he went over the check-list in his mind.

His luggage? Currently orbiting Tau Ceti.

His palm top computer? Somewhere in the bowels of the waste processing facility of the Luftevagen. He cursed under his breath, still sore that he'd been so careless with his most prized possession.

His shaving kit? Still sitting next to the sink of his stateroom's bathroom. The shaving gel had probably frozen solid... maybe even expanded and destroyed the plastic casing of the laser-razor. He shrugged a silent "oh-well" to himself. If he lived -if- then he'd just have to write it off as an unavoidable expense and have the company reimburse him.

There was something else. Something he felt he should have remembered.

Turning from his thoughts to his hand, he licked his lips and looked affectionately at his two of hearts and four of spades. A quick assessment of the other players' cards -artificial intelligence controlled by the computer- told him that a good number of the high cards had been dealt out.

The dealer showed a five. What the hell? he mused, then hit and stood on the ace he'd been dealt. The dealer flipped his remaining card, a seven, hit and came up with a queen. He smiled, watched his virtual bank account increase, then leaned back to ponder his missing item again.

He wondered at his fortune -and the insomnia- that had found him in the casino when his room, and the front portion of the ship, had been torn apart from each other. Had he been sleeping, like a normal person he reminded himself, he'd be quite dead right now.

This hadn't been the first time that insomnia -and blackjack- had barely saved him from catastrophe. There had been that time in Old Vegas when he'd just gone down to see the night life at the Goldstar Casino's tables. An hour later he returned to his room for his money clip, only to discover that the girl he'd brought up to the room with him earlier in the night had been trailed by her ex-boyfriend, who had thrown her off the balcony in a jealous rage.

His thoughts returned, as they had the habit of doing, to the black-jack table of the ship. He had been up for several hands, and was carrying on in a rather animated and interesting discussion with the fat man when- a light went on in his head, interrupting his recollection. Sitting bolt up-right in the couch, he hooted and pumped the air once with his fist. He remembered!

"Computer!" He barked. It chimed at him, indicating it's readiness to accept verbal commands.

"How long would it take to get back to the Luftevagen?" He drummed his fingers on the console as he spoke.

"It would take approximately four hours, sir." It spoke, after a moment.

"But sir, might I remind you that we've abandoned ship? There's no need for us to re-"

"Mute!" The computer complied, silencing it's audio output, but finishing it's sentence in text on the monitor. "Come about, one hundred and eighty degrees, and blast towards the Luftevagen." The computer began to type it's protests. "No arguments! Just do it!"

With an icy silence, the ship came to a rest, then turned, and restarted it's propulsion engines, burning just long enough to get them underway again.

"Would it please Sir to have me correct the trajectory for any drifting that might have occurred from our initial escape path?" The computer said, via it's text console.

"Yes, if you would, please." He rubbed his temples. "Also, be a sport and dock in one of the bays where the ship-to-surface vessels are held."

A little over four hours later, he was in docking bay eleven of the ship -wearing an atmosphere suit for good measure- wondering why they'd bothered to abandon ship at all, when he recalled that the Captain and a goodly portion of the Officers had been in the front portion of the ship as well, which had left the ship essentially without a crew. He glanced at an instrument panel that displayed the ship's atmosphere levels. Several decks had completely lost pressure when their main bulkheads had been ripped away, but the docking bay and every deck up to the Promenade deck were still with both atmosphere and pressure, as well as artificial gravity.

In a slow jog, he made his way from the docking bays to the ship's casino, in a record seventeen minutes and change. With careful consideration, he looked about for the black jack table he'd been sitting at when the call to abandon ship had sounded. He removed his helmet and took a breath of ship's air -the pressure suit's air hadn't moved in weeks and was a tad stale- then removed the gloves he wore as he strolled to the table. He smiled again, the ghosts of the games that had come before returning to him in a rush. Eyes closed, he stood, remembering the event.

He had two queens, had split them when he saw that the dealer only showed a deuce, and the rest of the table had insultingly bad hands. The fat man from Louisiana had laughed when he doubled down.

"You're either very smart or very, very stupid." The fat man had said. He liked to think that he was smart. In fact, he had been.

His lips twisted into a smile as he sat at the table, and looked at the cards that still sat, untouched by the gamblers who had been forcibly evacuated hours earlier. His eyes drifted to his own magnificent hand; over each queen, silent and somber, were two aces. Double black jack, six times the ten thousand he'd put down; the largest pot in his life. With quiet calm, he collected his winnings, tipped his hat that didn't exist to the dealer who was no longer there, and sauntered out of the casino to the nearest bar. Sure, he'd die when Tau Ceti's gravitational pull finally claimed the ship, but he'd beaten the house and that was good enough for him.