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The Fastest Ship in Space
The Fastest Ship in Space
The Fastest Ship in Space
Ebook118 pages1 hour

The Fastest Ship in Space

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For Katie, exploring the far reaches of the Solar System in her family spaceship is just ordinary life.
But living on Earth, now THAT would be exciting!
There seems no way she and her brother, Sam, will ever see Earth, until they accidentally end up on the fastest Ship in space, on its way to the Moon.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherBookBaby
Release dateOct 25, 2011
ISBN9780987215109
The Fastest Ship in Space

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    The Fastest Ship in Space - Pamela Freeman

    The Fastest Ship in Space

    Pamela Freeman

    Chapter One

    ‘OK, Jill,’ Dad said. ‘Two degrees to starboard. Slow and easy.’

    Mum edged the controls of the Ship over a little, and they felt the side thrusters give a short burst of fire. The Aquarius moved gently to the right.

    ‘Two degrees over,’ Mum reported.

    Dad aimed the controls of the robot grabber and pushed the release button. On the main screen they could see the little crab-like robot head out to the iceberg that sat directly in its sights.

    The iceberg was in the center of an asteroid clump. All around it were smaller asteroids of ice and rock. Luckily for the Aquarius, there was a clear corridor leading in to the iceberg. It was big enough to take the Ship.

    Katie craned to see the screen over Sam’s head. Behind the robot stretched a long cable, silver in the lights from the Aquarius. There were already two cables connecting the Ship with the berg, and two grabbers dug down into the icy surface. The third grabber extended its claws and grabbed, taking firm hold of the iceberg. A green light lit up on Dad’s board.

    ‘All secure,’ he said. ‘Start taking her out.’

    ‘Let’s go, Mum said.

    From the front viewport, where Katie and Sam and Gran sat out of the way, you couldn’t see the iceberg at all. It was out the back of the Ship, aft, so that when they got underway they could tow it behind them attached by the grabbers. They could watch it on the rear cameras, though, and out the front viewport they could see the narrow corridor between the surrounding asteroids and, past that, the stars.

    This was always the most exciting part of attaching a berg. Heading off under slow power, threading a dangerous way through the cluster of asteroids that could punch a hole in the skin of the Ship and kill them all, and hoping the cables wouldn’t snap, wouldn’t come snaking towards them, sending the berg tumbling off course.

    Katie didn’t really think anything would happen. But she livened up the waiting by thinking about the danger. She’d watched her parents attach bergs so many times it was almost routine. But not quite. In space, even nowadays, anything could happen.

    ‘Scan alert!’ Dad said. ‘We’ve got a flyer coming in! Fifteen mark forty.’

    ‘Got it,’ Mum said. ‘It’ll miss us, but …’

    Katie and Sam pressed up to the viewport. On that heading they should be able to see the flyer coming in towards them. Flyers were fast-moving asteroids that traveled on their own, outside the stable slow-moving clusters of ice and rock like the one they were in now. It was hard to predict what a flyer would do.

    ‘It’s going to hit the big rock off the port bow.’ Mum readied the thrusters. ‘No telling what’ll happen when they hit.’

    ‘You kids,’ Dad said. ‘Strap in. No time to suit up.’

    Gran and Katie and Sam headed for their seats at the back of the bridge, well away from the controls. In any other kind of emergency, they would have gone straight for their spacesuits, which hung near the airlock in the passageway, but there was no time. They strapped in quickly. Katie’s heart was thumping in a wild, out-of-pattern beat. Sam took hold of Gran’s hand.

    ‘It’ll be all right,’ Gran whispered. ‘It’s not heading for us. Just stay quiet.’

    The screen now showed the view from the forward cameras. They could see the sharp flash as the flyer came down fast into the clump of asteroids just to the left of the screen. There was a silent explosion, light blasting out and bits of rock splintering away from the impact. The shock sent the big asteroid and the flyer spinning away in different directions — and the flyer was now heading straight for the Aquarius.

    ‘Get us moving, Jill,’ Dad said, but Mum was already doing what she could.

    ‘Not enough power up yet, can’t move us up, the vectors are wrong,’ she muttered, checking numbers on the comp while the rock heading towards them grew bigger and bigger on the screen.

    ‘Last chance, Keith,’ she said suddenly, and threw the side thrusters into full port. The Ship tried to move straight left, but the cables held it to the iceberg. So instead of moving just sideways, the Ship moved back as well in a circle. They were swinging around on the end of the cables, with the iceberg sitting still and heavy in the middle.

    On the screen, they could see the graphic of the Ship, a big white blob in the center, and the path of the flyer marked in red coming at it fast. The white blob moved slowly, very slowly it seemed in comparison to the red line, and they were getting closer and closer. The flyer almost filled the view screen.

    Katie and Sam held onto Gran’s hands. Mum and Dad looked at each other over the controls. They all held their breath. Then something zapped past the viewport and disappeared. Behind it came a hail of smaller rocks that hit the hull of the Ship.

    Katie jumped at the noise, and then jumped again as the sirens started to blare. She’d only ever heard those sirens in drills, when they practiced evacuating the Ship. She opened her seatbelt and started for the door, to get to her spacesuit the way she was supposed to, but Gran grabbed her back. She had her other arm around Sam, stopping him too. Sam was trying hard not to cry. They could both feel Gran shaking. Mum and Dad were frantically trying to sort out the damage control reports coming in on the comp.

    ‘Stay where you are,’ Dad ordered. ‘We’ve got some holes and we don’t know where they are.’

    He meant that in some parts of the Ship a rock had gone right through the hull. When that happened, all the air in that section rushed out into space. If the corridor outside the bridge had been holed, and Katie had rushed out to her suit, all the air in the bridge would have been sucked out into space, and they would all have died. Katie started shaking, too, and leant back against Gran.

    Chapter Two

    ‘Are we going to die?’ Sam asked Katie.

    ‘I don’t know. It depends on how bad the damage is.’ She tried hard to keep her voice even, but it still wobbled. Gran hugged her.

    ‘Of course we’re not going to die,’ she scolded them both. ‘If we were going to die we would have done it by now. You just be quiet and wait for your parents to figure out the problem.’

    Katie sat down again and pulled Sam down next to her. Normally she hated being hugged, but now she grabbed hold of his hand. He sat quietly, his face very pale. She whispered to him, ‘Practise our suit-breathing, Sammy,’ and he nodded. They sat there, watching their parents, breathing in the slow, even rhythm they’d been taught to use while they were in their spacesuits. Just like Mum had said, it slowed their hearts down again. Katie watched the color come back slowly to Sam’s face and felt a little better.

    After what seemed like hours, Mum and Dad straightened up from the controls and stretched. They looked at each other and touched hands, then got up and came over to the others. Dad smiled and held out his hands. Katie and Sam threw themselves into a hug.

    ‘No serious damage,’ Mum said. ‘We’ve got a couple of small holes in one of the cargo bays, but it’s all vacuum-proof in there anyway.’

    ‘And we’ve lost one of our solar vanes,’ Dad added more seriously. ‘We’ll have to put into La Place for repairs. This berg isn’t going to Mars, I’m afraid.’ He grinned at the kids. ‘You won’t mind waiting a bit longer to see the red planet again, will you?’

    ‘My stars!’ Gran said. ‘Is that all? Are you just going to shrug it off as though nothing’s happened? We almost died!

    ‘But we didn’t, Ma,’ Mum said soothingly. ‘No real harm done. We’ve just lost some of our food stores. We’ll be eating dried rations till we make the Station. That won’t hurt us.’

    ‘We could all have died,’ Gran insisted, ‘including the children.’

    ‘There’s no use going on about it,’ Dad said

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