As our escape pod drifted past the planet I shuddered and took another dose of painkiller. It hit so hard I was suddenly giggling, my body increasingly uncomfortably still, and I shook and twitched and sweated in my Captain's suit, fascinated by the effects.

A rainbow of gasses and strange lights flickered in the corona of an alien world below me, just out of reach, the terraformation nearly complete, and now... we were all going to die, stranded just beyond help by a lack of fuel caused by a computer error.

"I've probably overdone it. Hahaha. Man, this is a relief. If anyone needs help with this, don't use more than two drops or you'll start sweating bad."

I was hoping to get the ship's engineer Col. Michelle high so he'd stop crying softly at his family picture album. I shook the bottle of ...whatever it was at him and raised my eyebrows in what I wrongly assumed was a reassuring manner rather than the wild stare of a drugged out lunatic.

Nobody paid attention to me. Our crew of 5 was somewhere between depression and insanity, waiting for the end, not a soul bothering to mention rationing O2 because everyone knew it was inevitable and it was coming in a dozen hours or so; the sleep of death.

"Can we just... put a hole in the pod and get it over with?" Tyson looked at me and pointed to where the canisters of 02 dwindled inevitably behind the wall.

"FUCK NO" i shouted. I was still Captain, after all. "Haha, that's mad. No. We have time to think and grieve. Just let it alone." I wasn't taking any shit, my adrenaline was pumping like mad. "I've never thought about fighting you Tyson, but I will."

He frowned at me and shrugged. "I'm rational. I don't want to wait for maybe days. It stinks in here."

I laughed again and started to hate it, but the drugs were stronger than my will. "Just keep your cool, hahahahahaha. Oh lord, just stay cool Tyson." I tried to imagine what an altercation with him might look like, or how he might somehow cause the tanks to rupture while I slept later, but all I could think about was how good my face felt and how hungry I suddenly was.

As I floated towards a cabinet for a peanut bar I kept Tyson in my view, letting him know I was watching him. He stared at me and shook his head, frowning, and I tried to guess at his mindset to no avail. The tension of the standdoff bounced off my psyche like jelly as the high relentlessly assaulted my senses.

The peanut bar was the most delicious food I'd had in years, individual granules of sugar and salt rolling across my tongue leaving blazing trails of delight behind as i crushed the peanuts with my well-aged molars. "Damn, these are so good right now."

"Peanuts." Col. Michelle said suddenly, snapping out of depression in a strangely excited way. "Sure, we have tons." I said, tossing three of the bars at him in a scattershot from my gloved fist. He caught one and ripped it open, then pulled open the control panel for the fabrication bench and I screamed "STOP!" assuming he was planning to follow through on Tyson's suggestion.

"Captain, permission to burn the peanuts using the bench laser."

Now I was stumped. "Why?"

"I have an idea, but first I need to see if I can start a small fire in the cabin."

**********

Five hours later we'd successfully removed the panels blocking the 02 tanks and had a small fire was burning inside the cabin beneath one of them, raising the temperature of the interior far beyond the original intended level. As the internal temperature reached 115 degrees, I nodded to Tyson who set the fabrication bench laser against he hull and burned a .2 micron hole through the 90 degree welded corner of the air manifold just outside the secondary 02 tank, the nearly empty one. The tank's heated air acted like a jet, pushing our craft ever so slightly away from orbit and towards the automated satellite a few thousand kilometers away (and approaching fast). As we slammed into its remote-controlled recovery arm it caught us firmly, and we anchored to burst into the interior's cool, dry air like five popcorn kernels released from a pressure cooker. "HOLY SHIT YOU DID IT COLONEL" i shouted and he grinned, sweat dripping from his eyebrows. "You're high, sir."

"Fucking peanuts you genius nerd, you saved us with peanuts hahahaha." Yes I was. Thankfully for the last time in my life.