Meteor Strike!

Harvey Ricks has always talked a big game, and somehow always managed to back it up. But nothing in his earthbound life prepared him for the vacuum of space, where a meteor has struck the cargo bound for the Lunar Quartermaster Base and now threatens to kill everyone aboard the station. When the accident leaves the crew dependent on an untested engineer with more mouth than experience, Harvey must decide whether he's the man he's been pretending to be. Westlake builds real tension from the physics of survival in hard vacuum: the impossible repair job, the oxygen clock, the isolation that amplifies every fear. But the real drama is internal. Harvey's bravado isn't mere swagger - it's armor against a lifetime of feeling like a fraud. In the cold silence between stars, with death drifting outside the viewport, he finally has to confront whether he can deliver when it matters most. The action sequences crackle with technical precision, but the novella's heart beats in Harvey's psychological unraveling. This is space adventure as character study - a compact, gripping story about a man forced to become the hero he's only pretended to be.