“Ilika!” Sata called from her station where she and Boro had been peering at solar system charts ever since they entered stationary orbit. “What’s this nonsense about Sonmatia Five? There’s nothing there but a bunch of rocks spread out in a wide band all along the planet’s orbital path!”
Ilika looked up from the steward’s console where he was working with Kibi. Rini stepped out of the galley to listen, and Mati looked up from her knowledge pad at the table.
“It was a nice little rock and ice planet once, I hear,” the captain said,
“about four billion years ago. Even had a bit of primitive life. Then it got too close to Sonmatia Six, the big gas giant. When gravity from another source interferes with the internal gravity of a planet, it usually falls apart.”
“There are more than a million fragments,” Boro noted, studying Sata’s display. “You want to visit them all?”
Mati frowned from the table.
“One will do,” Ilika said as he began tapping at Kibi’s console. “Let’s visit
. . . five-three-three. It’s a metallic core fragment.”
Sata and Boro went back to work.
Mati looked happy again.
“Ilika was serious about going over or under, instead of through,” Sata explained as she stood at the end of the big table near the steward’s station.
She touched some symbols on a knowledge pad and their next flight plan
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appeared on the large display. “If we went straight along the plane of the solar system, we’d have to worm our way through thousands of rocks. If we go in from the north or south, there are only six or eight rocks between clear space and fragment five-three-three.”
Mati gazed at the display. “Why did you pick going in from the bottom . . .
I mean the south?”
“Ilika’s idea. He wanted us to get used to the fact that over and under are exactly the same in space.”
The pilot nodded.
Boro stood up, touched his knowledge pad, and a photograph appeared on the screen. “Five-three-three is a very irregular metal thing, two kilometers across, big pointy spikes sticking out all over it, gravity about one-thousandth of what we’re used to. It’s not just floating peacefully in space, it’s tumbling.
Ilika says if we can land on it, we can land on anything.”
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Nervous chuckles came from all around the table.
Ilika smiled. “It will require canceling Manessa’s proximity responses, and good teamwork from watch, navigator, pilot, engineer, and steward. Are you up to it?”
Mati grinned and nodded, with Rini only a heartbeat behind. Sata and Boro joined a little more slowly.
Ilika looked at Kibi.
“This wouldn’t be a good time to go back to the desert and eat lizards, would it?”
“No,” Boro and Sata both said with stern looks. Ilika kept his mouth shut.
“Then . . . count me in!” she said, cocked her head, and smiled.
The departure from Sonmatia Four was completed with hardly a word from Ilika. Mati engaged her ion drive at its highest power level, and the Manessa Kwi followed an elliptical course that avoided the outer moon’s orbit.
The flight leg ended a little more than an hour later, after traversing almost fifteen light-minutes of interplanetary space, on the southern edge of Sonmatia Five’s asteroid belt.
A black sky full of shimmering rocks greeted them, some large enough to reveal the crescent shape created by the harsh light from the sun, most so small they were no more than points of brilliance.
“I thought you said six or eight rocks in the way,” Mati said as she touched symbols to transfer helm control to the ship.
“Er . . . um . . .” Boro mumbled from his station, gazing at his display while moving his hands to shut down the ion drive.
“I can explain,” Ilika said from the command chair. “There are so many fragments in an asteroid belt, all the way down to dust particles, and all in constant motion, that it would be impossible to chart them all. We only attempt to keep track of those one-meter across and larger. There may be six or eight of those between us and fragment five-three-three, and millions of smaller fragments.”
“We don’t need engines for this,” Boro began, “we need a shovel!”
The bridge erupted with laughter.
“There’s one in the utility room,” Kibi said, grinning from ear to ear.
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Rini doubled over with laughter and almost fell out of his chair.
When everyone finally collected themselves, Ilika cleared his throat. “As you know, in space we have to avoid asteroids down to about a millimeter because they can be moving at very high speeds in relation to the ship. Here, there are too many to avoid, so we use a different solution. We go in slowly, with Manessa in her minimum profile, and the repulsion field at maximum
. . .”
“Shape selected,” Mati said, moving her hands on her console.
“Repulsion field three,” Boro confirmed.
“. . . and Rini will give us a real-time, color-coded, three-D view that will be much more useful than the sparkling visual scene before us.”
Rini started making selections at his console.
“Sata will not plot an exact course,” Ilika continued, “but instead will map out corridors that avoid the large fragments. Mati’s job will be to fly the corridors, avoid rocks one-eighth of a meter and up whenever possible, and ignore everything smaller. We’ll feel some reaction when we bump into things. Kibi may need a bowl.”
The steward pouted silently for a moment, but when she saw that everyone else was too busy to notice, she sighed and stepped into the galley.
“Okay,” Mati said, “I have the color-coded three-D, the big rocks on the chart are red, I avoid yellows, greens are little. What’s the big purple thing?”
“That’s our destination,” Rini explained.
Ilika took a few minutes to help Sata plot the corridors, then went from station to station to see if everyone was ready. “Inertia straps,” he commanded as he returned to his chair. “Maneuvering thrusters. Manessa, cancel all proximity responses.”
Mati turned and looked at her captain. “No bolting allowed in that mess!”
“That’s right. If in doubt, stop and be still. These rocks all orbit together, and rarely collide.”
For the next quarter hour, the bridge was very quiet as Mati concentrated on guiding the little ship through the asteroids, following Sata’s corridors to miss the worst. The pilot did her best to avoid the medium-size rocks, but was not always successful. None of the bumps caused Kibi to lose her lunch.
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It was the sight of fragment five-three-three, slowly spinning and tumbling directly in front of the ship, that did the trick.
Deep Learning Notes
The navigation diagram is a cross-section of the asteroid belt Sonmatia Five.
Where would this solar system’s sun be in relation to this diagram?
We have theories about how the asteroid belt in our solar system formed, but no proof. Interference from the gravity of Jupiter is our main suspect.
Whether Jupiter tore apart an existing planet, or just kept one from forming in the first place, is not known.
An asteroid field would be an extreme challenge for any pilot. A brilliantly-lit white rock could be blinding, and a dark rock in the shadow of another could be nearly invisible. That’s why Mati used an image generated by the ship, with useful color codes, instead of a visual display.
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