"Luck, light mercenary work, and an ability to do my own ship repairs certainly played a large role. As for how I was able to extract myself from the purrgil -- they did rather a larger part of the work. We were only fortunate that the system they chose to migrate to had a reasonably habitable planet, and their chosen breeding ground was close enough for us to reach it in time."

Again, his mouth quirks at one corner.

"That Bridger of yours has some minor skill in engineering, which also helped."