chart. As she bent to examine the chart, Kas couldn’t help but notice the sweet fresh scent of her.
Jane frowned, and then called Lar to the bridge. They huddled over the chart, muttering animatedly. Finally, Jane straightened, slapping the chart in frustration. “Damn! I wish I had the Lady Jane ’s charts!” Lar turned and silently moved to Rom’s terminal, where he began typing. She turned to Kas.
“Captain,” she began formally, “We can’t be sure without the Lady Jane ’s large-scale charts of the rim, but I think this system is one that’s uninhabited for a reason. Lar’s checking the stellar index, but if it’s the system I’m thinking of, the primary seems to have been very unstable at some point. Anyway, it either never developed planets or its planets were broken up by extreme tidal stresses. The point is that instead of a normal system with planets, this system is just full of asteroid rubble. Everything from micropebbles to asteroids tens of kilometers across wandering around the system. It could be dangerous as Sheol. I’d at least recommend raising your shields the instant we emerge.”
Kas cursed. “Is anything going to go right on this trip?” He asked no one in particular.
A few moments later Lar confirmed that their target system was, indeed, the system he and Jane remembered.
Kas scowled at the chart. “So, what can we do about it?”
Lar’s scowl matched Kas’ as he shook his head. “I only see two choices,” he said. “Either we traverse the system dead slow, depending on our shields to deflect the small bits, and hoping we can veer around the big ones, or we turn right around and jump back out as soon as we can compute an angle.”
Kas shook his head. “Jumping back just puts us back at To-Han, with Tarn getting curious. That has to be the last resort!”
Lar shrugged. “It may be the only practical course of action, Captain. It would take us several weeks to traverse that system going dead slow. I don’t think we can stay sharp enough to dodge all the boulders for that long.”
Kas’ temper began to flare. “My crew is Fleet! They’ll be sharp enough however long it takes.”
Lar started to reply when Lady Jane interrupted. “Easy, boys. There may be a third way.” Kas and Lar rounded on her hopefully.
“Look,” she began, “We all know that if it could be seen from outside, a stellar system would look like a big disk, with the star at the center. The star’s gravitational forces eventually pull nearly all the matter in the system into the same plane, so instead of resembling a ball of string, the system ends up resembling a disk, right?”
Kas nodded. “Sure. The ‘plane of the ecliptic’. So what’s… Of course!” He shouted excitedly. “We can get out of the plane of the ecliptic!”
Jane nodded. “Right. So here’s my recommendation. As soon as we emerge you set your shields on full. Once your Astrogator locates the next jump point, we boost toward stellar north and pull out of the plane of the ecliptic. When we get clear, we can drive toward the other jump point, and only dive back onto the ecliptic when we reach the coordinates of the jump point. That should reduce our hazard time considerably.”
Kas cursed. “I should have thought of that. That’s first year academy stuff!”
Jane shrugged and grinned. “It’s not something we normally deal with. After all, all the planets we want to visit and all the jump points between them are on the plane.” She paused. “I wonder why the jump points tend to be on the plane.”
Kas shrugged. “Tera may know, if you’re really curious. My Astrogation training was more the ‘nuts and bolts’ type than the theoretical. I don’t care. All I care about is that your suggestion improves our chances of survival and success by several orders of magnitude. I’ve got to talk to Tera!” He hurried over to the Astrogator’s station.
Tera wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as she frowned over the chart. “It’s easy to say that the plane of the ecliptic forms a disk,” she said. “Unfortunately, it’s just not that neat. The term ‘disk’ implies little thickness. Actually, the plane may cover anywhere from ten to twenty degrees of arc. We’re talking about millions of kilometers in depth. So, it’s not going to be just popping up a few kilometers and later popping down the same.”
She shrugged. “Even when we’re out of the plane itself we won’t be out of danger. We could still run into asteroids and comets wandering the fringe of the plane, or knocked out of the plane by collisions with other bodies. Oh,” she continued, “I don’t have a better idea. I just want you to know that getting out of the ecliptic won’t mean getting completely out of danger. The jump point is about a third of the way around the circumference of the system and just inside its outer edge. We’re still going to have to boost slowly and keep our sensors at max.”
Finally, it was only minutes until emergence. “Remember, Rom,” he fussed, “The second our emergence is complete, raise the shields at maximum power.”
Rom grinned. “Relax, Skip. We all know what to do. I’ll get the shields up, and Tera’s ready to calculate our orientation to the jump point, and decide whether we should boost north or south.”
The actual emergence was something of an anticlimax. Starhopper emerged without difficulty. Rom was as good as his word; the shields went up almost the instant they emerged. The only indication that this was not a normal system was a slightly higher-than-normal load on the shields as they deflected micrometeorites.
It was an interminable two minutes before Tera announced, “Got it! Captain, we should drive to the stellar south about eighty million kilometers, dead slow. Once there we should be able to use more velocity.”
It took more than thirty hours to traverse the eighty million kilometers to near-clear space. They were only about halfway when Rom cried, “Asteroid on collision course! Estimate sixty seconds to impact!”
“How big is it?” Kas barked, “And can we steer around it?”
“It’s big!” Rom replied. “Over a kilometer in the long dimension. Recommend emergency maneuver toward stellar east. I’m not sure we can avoid it, though.”
Kas’ only reply was max blasts on the maneuvering jets. Silence dragged until Kas said, “We’re not going to make it! Edro! Use all the quick-firers! Maybe we can divert it just enough. If not, maybe the recoil will help the maneuvering jets enough!” He flicked a switch on his panel. “All hands brace for impact!”
The little man didn’t reply, but immediately there was a deep thrumming, more felt than heard, that told Kas the weapons were firing. The collapsium-plated projectiles massing over a hundred kilograms would have an almost negligible effect on the asteroid, but even ‘almost negligible’ could help. Seconds dragged. Suddenly the ship lurched, as a loud metallic grinding sounded throughout Starhopper.
Kas shouted “All hands suit up! Possible hull breach!” as he reached for his own suit. He kept expecting to hear the loud hissing that would tell him that the ship’s atmosphere was venting to space.
It was with a definite sense of relief that he sealed his faceplate. He scanned the instruments on his panel. All gauges were steady. He focused on the life support gauges. Atmospheric pressure steady. He relaxed with a huge sigh.
He keyed his helmet comm. “Toj, We seem to still be tight. How long before you can give me a damage report?”
Toj’s voice had the loss of timbre that indicated a helmet comm. “’Bout half an hour, Cap’n. No hull breaches apparent. That rock seems to have clipped our stern.”
Twenty minutes later, Toj reported that Starhopper seemed sound internally, and requested permission to make an external survey.
Kas shook his head. “Not until we’re out of the ecliptic. The hull seems to be holding, and the risk is too great.”
Just over twelve hours later, Tera confirmed that they were out of the plane of the ecliptic. She and Kas set their course for the jump point, and Kas permitted half-normal acceleration. Tera estimated sixty-two hours until they must re-enter the plane of the ecliptic to traverse the jump point.
Toj again requested permission for an external examination of the damage. “Permission granted,” Kas told him, “But take Gran along. No one goes outside alone.”
Nearly another hour passed before Kas’ readings indicated the cycling of the passenger airlock to permit the two to reenter Starhopper. Kas fretted as he waited for the engineers to report to the bridge.
When they did appear they were unsuited. Kas unsealed his own helmet. “Well?” He demanded impatiently.
Toj and Gran exchanged glances. “Well, sir,” Toj replied, “Integrity’s all right. I was right; the damned rock just brushed us as we passed. Instead of hitting the hull, it hit one of the sponsons housing a landing jack. Totally trashed the landing jack. We won’t be able to ground without repairs, but other than that, we’re totally functional. Just a couple of dented hull plates and our antirad coating’s scratched up some.” He shrugged. “It could’ve been a
