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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 99: Cooper 105
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Afo’s last words still in his ears, Brian repeated them: “We are in Sovereign hands.” Of course, he couldn’t see outside the ship, and he didn’t have the views of the instruments that they had on the bridge; he only knew that it felt as if they were accelerating the wrong direction.
On the other hand, how could he know that? Acceleration always made everything feel as if the rear of the ship was down, and it would feel the same if they were headed up, down, sideways or possibly even in circles. He had no way to know.
What, though, if they were headed back toward the planet? What would explain that?
They had a good captain and solid officer pilots. Presumably the bridge crew knew what they were doing, and possibly they were going to slingshot around Mercury to get the velocity needed to head toward the outer planets. So even if they were headed toward the ground, that might be the right direction. His experience in navigation had not covered such maneuvers.
What, though, if the captain were incapacitated? Everyone had had a lot to drink other than himself. However, the man seemed sober when he was on the intercom. Besides, if something happened to the captain, one of the other officers would have taken over the launch to save the ship.
Unless, he thought, something had happened to them all. That’s absurd. No, it’s not absurd. It is alarmist, and improbable, but if something happened on the bridge--a depleted or contaminated atmosphere, perhaps--there could be no one flying the plane. Of course, there were gauges all over the bridge to check for such hazards, and since the officers were from different planets it was unlikely that all of them would be incapacitated in the same event without at least one of them sounding some kind of alarm or alert. Someone must be in control up there.
It was, he supposed, possible that they had lost control--that some collision with some rock had damaged thrusters or airfoils or steering fins or some other external part of the ship that made it possible to point it in the right direction. There would be redundancies, of course--a ship like this was designed to survive asteroid storms.
If they had lost control, would they sound abandon ship? There were no life pods, only the space suits. He had heard the men chant, no ship, no life. Everyone either lived or died here.
They might be too busy to say anything--but what could they say? Make peace with your gods?
Not something he would say, nor need to hear said. Jesus had made peace with God for him. Anything else would be nonsense.
It occurred to him that had they been heading toward the ground, they should have hit it by now. No, that wasn’t necessarily so. They could be falling in a decaying orbit that would have them circle the planet several times before impact. They might run out of time in another second, or another day.
“Engine room to bridge. Is everything O.K. up there?”
No response. Of course, they could be too busy to answer. Or the intercoms could be down.
He rechecked the engine. Everything seemed to be running properly, as far as he could tell. He wished Zait were here. What would Zait do?
What, his mind echoed, would Jesus do?
To hear his friend from Neptune tell it, Jesus would fix the system with a couple sticks and rocks. It wasn’t a miracle recorded in the Gospels, but that didn’t mean it never happened.
Are you willing to do what Jesus would do?
Jesus would give his own life to save his friends. He would certainly do that--he just didn’t see how.
Maybe the glove could help.
He would have to get outside to do anything like that.
He paused only a moment before springing to his feet and up the ladder. He had to get up a few flights to reach a hatch, and he was working against the gravity-like force of acceleration, but as he grabbed the ladder and tugged it was as if the glove strengthened his grip and his pull. He reached the hatch, secured his helmet, and opened it.
They were too close to the ground.
Remembering how he had caught Afo, he raised his gloved hand and pushed toward the ground. A shock of impact passed through his body, but the ship’s vector shifted significantly. He did it again, and again. The ship was curving away from its crash course.
The fourth strike impacted the ground and shifted the ship, but he lost his balance and fell from the hatch, plummeting toward the ground. We are in Sovereign hands, he thought before he crashed with the hope that the ship wouldn’t.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
