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I half climb, half fall into the control room. Rocky is in his bulb.
“Screens flash many colors!”he yells over the din. He points his camera here and there, watching the feed on his textured screen.
A metallic groan screams from somewhere down below. Something is bending and doesn’t want to. I think it’s the hull.
I get in the control seat. No time to strap in. “Where’s that noise coming from?”
“All around,”he says.“But loudest at starboard dormitory wall segment. It bending inward.”
“Something’s tearing the ship apart! Got to be the gravity.”
“Agree.”
But that bothers me in the back of my mind. This ship wasmadefor acceleration. It endured four years at 1.5g’s. Surely it can handle this similar force? Something doesn’t add up.
Rocky grabs several of his handholds for support.“We have sampler. We leave now.”
“Yeah, let’s get out of here!” I throw the spin-drive controls to full. The ship can pull up to 2 g when push comes to shove. And I think push has definitely come to shove.
The ship lurches forward. This is not a graceful, well-executed burn. This is nothing short of panicked flight.
The efficient way to leave a gravity well is laterally, to take advantage of the Oberth effect. I try to keep us more or less level to the ground below. I’m not trying to get away from Adrian. I just want to get into a stable orbit that doesn’t need engines to maintain. I need velocity, not distance.
I need to keep the drives at full power for ten minutes. That should get us the 12 kilometers per second we need to stay in orbit. I just need to point a little above the horizon and thrust.
At least, that’s what I want. But it’s not happening. The ship keeps yawing forward and drifting laterally. What is going on?!
“Something wrong,” I say. “She’s fighting me.”
Rocky has no trouble hanging on. He has many multiples of my strength.“Engine damage, question? Much heat from Adrian.”
“Maybe.” I check the Nav console. We’re gaining velocity. That’s something, at least.
“Hull bending in big room below dormitory,”Rocky says.
“What? There’s no room below—oh.” He can sense the whole ship with his echolocation. Not just the habitable area. So when he says “big room below the dormitory,” he means the fuel tanks.
Oh dear.
“Turn off engines, question?”
“We’re going too slow. We’ll fall into the atmosphere.”
“Understand. Hope.”
“Hope.” Yes, hope. That’s all we have at this point. Hope that the ship doesn’t wreck itself before we get into a stable orbit.
The next several minutes are the tensest of my life. And, if I may say so, I’ve had some pretty tense moments these past few weeks. The hull continues to make horrible noises, but we’re not dead, so I guess it didn’t breach. Finally, after what seems likea whole lot morethan ten minutes, our velocity is enough to stay in orbit.
“Velocity good. Stopping engines.” I slide the spin-drive power sliders to zero. I let my head fall back to the headrest in relief. Now we can take our time and figure out what went wrong. No need to use the engines to…
Wait.
My head fell back into the headrest. Itfellback into the headrest.
I hold my arms out in front of me, then relax them. They fall down and to the left.
“Uh…”
