The Resolute by G. Weldon Tucker

Author:G. Weldon Tucker [Tucker, G. Weldon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2016-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

The following morning, 0700 hours, the appropriate announcements were made, unnecessary, since the rumor mill had been running for hours, but the truth had to be told. Captain Washington gave the whistle for attention, then the particulars. Mostly ho-hum stuff, a report of what, where, and who.

Finally, she announced the part everyone was worried about. “We find we are approaching an unknown asteroid belt, and could be passing through it for several days. However, we are not going to go straight through, as these things are orbiting something we cannot see. That is most likely a black hole. It is in an odd place, almost a light year above the Milky Way, but surprises happen.”

She paused to let them come to terms with the approaching danger, then gave them the solution, “We will adjust first to parallel the asteroids, in the same direction, slow to match the fastest one we can find, then pop out of orbit on the far side. It may get bumpy. As much as possible, all personnel, military or civilian must stay near the center length of the Resolute. Too, unless absolutely necessary, stay in restraints, wherever you must be. We will advise when the danger is passed.”

In the meantime, Captain Washington suggested to the Council that they triple the spacewalk teams and move this repair completion to as short as possible. Dr. Rollander agreed. He felt the pressure, too.

Something as mammoth as the Resolute does not turn in a short radius, not at any speed. They could be a third of the way through the belt by the time they got turned with it, and they were also attempting to rise above it, above being relative to the bridge and the keel.

On top of that, they were slowing, all thruster rockets pointed forward, trying to bring them down to a more reasonable twenty thousand miles per hour. It was a long, long way down.

The belt appeared to be about two point six billion miles across, outer ring to inner clearance, and somewhere north of sixty-five hundred billion miles in diameter. It was also almost three billion miles thick. They were not even two million miles from the upper edge, and that was the breakout target.

Like most planetary and debris orbits, it was disc shaped, but made up of billions upon billions of asteroids, some mix of ice and rock. Some of them were the size of dust and marbles. Too many were simply huge, dwarfing the Resolute.

Not a soul that was not paying attention even noticed the slight change in direction. Steering was provided by relatively small thrusters mounted in various points on the ship.

Relative meaning nearly the diameter of the back end of a bus. It was a big, big ship. They would turn it around fairly quickly, so that it was going ass end first, usually only in an hour or so, but it would still be doing better than a hundred and seventy thousand miles a second… just backward.

They completed the

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