“Yep,” the Mechanic said, alone in the desert, “well there’s our problem, right there. Fuel leak. She bled out.”

The carcass of the cargo ship had been baking in the wasteland sun for nearly three years. Its once vibrant paint had chipped off, littering the ground with hand sized flakes. The Mechanic noted this in his records.

“I bet the cargo’s wasted, but we can send a team out tomorrow to find out; probably have to cut the bay open, it’s locked tight. Other than that,” he said, caressing the hull, “she was a fine ship, in her day. It’s a real shame.”

“But the strangest thing,” he continued, speaking into his headset recorder, “I crawled all around that damn ship and couldn’t find any of the crew. There had to at least been a pilot.”

He thought a moment before ending the log. Looking down at the unforgiving land, the Mechanic realized he’d never know what happened to that crew. There’s only so much a man can survive, and sand has a real knack for erasing history.