Why Should Our Tears in Sorrow Flow?

“Perfect,” Captain Miles Anderson said to himself. A few cotton clouds punctuated a sky as blue as any he’d ever seen. He’d dreamed of a sky like this ever since the mission briefing at Copernicus base. The ground cover wasn’t grass, but it was green and it had tiny yellow and blue blossoms.

This was mankind’s best, first outpost among the stars and he felt proud of his role in it. School children would probably have to memorize his name. He chuckled at that.

“Excuse me, sir.”

The sound of Beth Greening’s voice roused Miles from his reverie. Look, but don’t touch, he thought.

“The trace metals assay came back. No worries there,” she said.

“Perfect,” he replied.

Beth was a wisp of a girl with dark hair pulled back into a bun, large brown eyes and a round face in perfect proportion with the rest of her features. She never said much but she had a will of iron. If she said she’d get something done, he could make book on it.

Only thing wrong with her, as far as he was concerned, was a big guy at Copernicus station. Miles had met Beth’s fiancé at the pre-flight party—a Captain from Advanced Weapons. A man one did not want as an enemy.

“How’re you handling the gravity?” Greening had grown up under the Copernicus dome, and Miles worried about how she was adapting.

“Doc’s got me on steroids,” she replied.

“Don’t be ashamed to ask for help with physical therapy.”

“Yessir.”

Miles left her to walk the perimeter fence. The local fauna was still learning to avoid the electrified razor wire. Though Pisces sat a quarter-mile outside the compound, Command lay at its center.

They named the planet Kent because of the similarity to southern England in terms of temperature, precipitation, and topography. This was much better than an ice moon circling a gas giant at Alpha Centauri, or Sirius, where a sublight ship was still en route. Kent seemed perfect, being just one hyperspace jump from Earth.

When Miles reached Command he got status reports from his department heads. Perfect. He melded them together with a few last-minute observations, and clicked the send button to upload to the message drone. Moments later Miles watched it rise through a now cloudless blue sky.

Just before supper, the neutrino flux detector in Command went crazy. Something nearby was generating more power than ten starships. When the south fence alarm went off, Miles checked the security cam, only to see a squat silver disk push through the fence. Six more disks followed in close order.

Miles hit the general alarm. He grabbed his rail gun wishing for something heavier—like that man-portable plasma cannon Beth’s fiancé had bragged about. No help now.

“Get the Pisces in the air for fire support.” Miles jammed a transceiver in his ear. “Patch me through to the ship when it’s airborne,” he said, sprinting into battle. He surmised they were tanks. They moved like them.

Flames erupted from the barracks. A ray of light flashed from the lead tank. The mess tent exploded. There had to be casualties.

“Where’s the Pisces?” His interocular display drew a schematic map onto his retina, showing the starship lifting off. He focused on the lead tank. “Designate.” The interocular drew a red “X” on the tank. He repeated the process with the rest of the tanks.

An explosion knocked him off his feet. Command was gone.

He rolled into a prone position and was pleased to see his system had handed off target designation to Pisces. He heard shouting and wished for a squad of Marines.

A thunderclap shook him as Pisces’ plasma cannon lanced fluid energy onto the primary target. It disappeared in a flash. The fire shifted to the secondary target. A half-second later the primary tank reappeared, unharmed. A ray flashed skyward from it to the Pisces. A second ray converged on the point, then a third and a fourth.

The Pisces held for a second—its ablative armor boiling off with the metal beneath glowing red, then orange. The ship answered with another blast that had no effect. Escape pods started popping out of Pisces. Smoke erupted from the ship in a dozen places. A brilliant flash marked the ship’s thermonuclear death.

Enraged, Miles ran for the nearest tank. Flipping his rail gun to full auto, he poured rounds into the tank’s seamless metal. He got as close as thirty feet, yet its polished surface remained unmarked. The tank bore down on him as his gun ran dry.

Sealed Was the Tomb

Sid Feynman’s watch showed that ninety seconds had crept past since he’d last checked. He picked away at his clipboard computer, rereading files and fussing with the wording of the presentation that would make or break his career. He frowned at his work.

The tests seemed promising, but he needed to be sure.

He looked around the office for the tenth time. The secretary avoided his gaze. General Interplanetary’s headquarters looked like any other office. Soft light diffused through the room from the walls and ceiling. Except for the company logo sparkling in the carpeting, he could be back in Ann Arbor. The secretary’s desk guarded the door to the inner sanctum, where Olga Miller and the other exalted personages were running late.

Sid didn’t know much about General Interplanetary’s top management. They were Spacers. He didn’t trust Spacers. He just wanted to get his funding approved and get back to his research.

The outer door flew open and a tall woman breezed in. Long lavender hair flowed in her wake. She wore black leather pants painted onto long dancer’s legs and a loose white silk peasant’s blouse. Seeing the door to the conference room closed, she grimaced and flounced into a chair next to Sid.

“You’re the Engineer,” she said.

“What?”

She extended her hand for Sid to shake. “I’m the Historian Nell Playfair from Clemson, but I did my undergrad at Michigan. If this works out I’ll be moving back to Ann Arbor.” She had a strong grip.

Sid felt the blood rush to his face. A historian at this point? he thought. “I don’t understand.” It was too early for a historian. He should have been warned.

“What’s your name? Where’re you from?” she asked.

“I’m Sid Feynman.” The words came slowly. Sid could not afford to visibly lose his temper. “Exo-Systems Integration. I’m from the University of Michigan.”

“What’s Exo?”

“It means I study, uh, non-human artifacts.”

“You mean the Roswell craft?”

Sid’s mouth went dry. “How do you know about that?”

Nell just grinned.

This was going way too fast. He was supposed to come to Houston, give a pitch to General Interplanetary for a grant, and go back to his lab at the University of Michigan. The last thing he wanted was a historian getting in his way. He foresaw an accelerated schedule, weeks instead of years, and thought it reckless.

Sid didn’t notice time after that. His thoughts kept turning through the implications of this annoying woman’s presence at the meeting.

The door to the conference room opened. Olga Miller stood in the doorway and waved Sid and Nell inside. She seemed tired, and Sid’s hopes of an easy pitch for the grant sank.

Inside, he took his seat and looked around. Lin Tolerude, the inventor of the hyperspace drive, sat with arms crossed, his pale Nordic complexion red. Sid got the impression that the first part of the meeting had not gone well.

“Please have a seat, Dr. Feynman. Miss Playfair.” Olga handled introductions. “You probably recognize Lin Tolerude. This is Dr. Herbert Climpton of the International Space Development Authority and Admiral Valery Rothschild of the Unified Space Command.”

Sid nodded politely.

“Dr. Feynman,” Admiral Rothschild stared hard at Sid, “I’ve read your reports about the Roswell artifact and, frankly, I think you’re lying.”

Sid’s eyes went wide. “What?”

“You’re either lying, or you’re incompetent. You claim that the reason we haven’t been able to reverse-engineer the craft after all these years is that it’s a time machine. I happen to have proof that it is not.”

“I have my evidence right here,” Sid replied. “Admiral what game are you playing?”

The admiral typed a bit on his notepad and one of the wall displays showed an image of a starship. Sid recognized the shape.

“You found an intact ship?”

“No. This image was taken last week by a message drone at an undisclosed location.”

The bureaucrat, Dr. Climpton, spoke in a tone of voice that was smooth and soft, like a silk hangman’s noose. “Dr. Feynman, this image would indicate that the Roswell artifact was a starship.”

Sid shook his head. “I’m telling you. I went through everything in the wreckage and there’s nothing even remotely similar to a singularity generator. But I have confirmed that the wreckage includes a temporal translator—a time machine.”

Sid glared at the Admiral until he heard someone clear his throat. It was Lin Tolerude.

“Gentlemen, you could both be right.” He paused for a moment to make sure he had everyone’s attention. “My grandfather is in cold sleep aboard a sublight ship bound for Sirius. Suppose that at the outset of his journey, he had moved back in time sixty years. He’d be there already. With a time machine, sublight speeds suffice.”

The bureaucrat nodded serenely, pretending that he had known this all along. The admiral grunted, visibly annoyed at Tolerude.

“If a time machine were used in that fashion,” Nell said, speaking up for the first time, “it would not change history.”

This caught Sid’s attention. The timeline was the real problem now. He had wracked his brain and consumed months of simulation time on the university’s quantum computers trying to gauge the effect of the temporal translator on the timeline.

Testing its effects in deep space would not risk anything on Earth. Any perturbations of the timeline would be light-years away. Sid sat up a little straighter. This would solve several problems he’d foreseen.

“That still doesn’t explain why the same race of aliens who crashed at Roswell were,” Climpton paused, “shall I say—observed—in another star system.” This disturbed Sid’s reverie.

“We could ask them,” Nell said. “Just go back to Roswell in 1947 and snatch the aliens off the ship just before it crashes. They’ll be grateful we saved their lives and maybe give us a reward.”

“Hold it. We aren’t ready to do anything like that.” Sid felt blood pounding in his ears.

“That would be rather rash, Ms. Playfair. We have no idea what it would do to the timeline question that Dr. Feynman has spent so much money researching.”

“We wouldn’t interact with anyone.” Nell gazed at the ceiling as she spoke. “Just pop onto the deck of the alien craft, snatch one of the aliens, and pop back.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Playfair,” Climpton said, “but we don’t know how much we can do without damaging the timeline.”

Tolerude cleared his throat again. Everyone stopped to listen to him.

“Since the aliens use this temporal translator to travel between stars, any damage to the timeline doesn’t propagate across interstellar space. I can transport the device to some uninhabited star system where Dr. Feynman might perform whatever tests he deems appropriate.” He smiled. “If those tests prove successful, it should take no time at all.”

“Well, what do you think, Dr. Feynman?” Olga Miller asked.

All eyes turned to look at Sid. He wasn’t ready for this. Testing the temporal translator as Tolerude suggested would require space flight. He’d have to leave Earth. He didn’t even like flying. Why couldn’t everything go according to plan? Just give the pitch for funding and go back home. People got killed in space.

“I, think ah…” Sid felt his career slipping between his fingers. He’d fended off requests to transfer the project to Space Command. He stopped and thought through the technical issues. The room was deathly silent. There was no time for a proper answer. “I can’t think of any reason why not.”

***

Sid gazed at the blue and white sphere turning two hundred miles beneath him. He studied the view until he picked out the mitten shape of Michigan’s lower peninsula. Down there was where he belonged.

“Look out. Coming through.”

Sid jumped. His Velcro slippers came off the carpeting. He twisted and saw Nell flying toward him in zero-G. He tried to duck out of her way but to no avail. He flailed his arms and only succeeded in achieving a slow windmill spin. Nell gracefully twisted sideways, executing a maneuver that was something between a martial arts move and a gymnast’s vault. She passed feet first between his now-upside down legs and grabbed an ankle along the way. She touched down on the far wall’s carpeting and pulled Sid to a point next to her.

“That was fun.”

Sid started to sputter, but didn’t actually say anything before she’d leapt down the corridor toward the wardroom and was gone.

“What jurisdiction would try me for murder?” he muttered.

“No trial. I’d just throw you out the airlock,” a female voice said. Sid turned to see a short brown woman with thick black hair billowing in a zero-gee nimbus. She extended her hand. “I’m Tara Visiwanathan, the Boss’ fiancé.”

“Sid Feynman.” He shook hands.

“You ought to hire one of the crew to show you how to get around in zero-G. Your friend takes to it naturally.”

“She isn’t my friend. I just want to run my tests and get home.”

Tara eyed him for an uncomfortable moment before replying. “You’re a lubber, all right.”

“I’m sorry.” Sid rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. “Flying into the sun scares me.”

“The singularity generator needs curved space to work. The sun’s gravity well does just that.”

“There is the small matter of being vaporized,” Sid replied.

“You’ve seen our fusion reactor. The same kind of shield generator that keeps the reactor plasma in keeps the sun’s plasma out. It’s proven technology.”

“What if it fails?” Sid asked.

Tara shrugged. “We die.”

***

Sid felt an undercurrent of tension between the military support personnel—technically, that included him—and the ship’s crew. Colonel Josiah Banks was in charge of the mission. He’d arranged to get several technicians seconded from various labs and borrow more equipment than Sid could possibly use. It was a pity Banks wouldn’t let Sid use any of them.

The crew was cordial enough, but they seemed guarded, as if they were hiding something. They were openly contemptuous of EarthGov and incessantly complained about the safety regs that Banks and his people insisted upon. Sid didn’t understand the hostility, because EarthGov had made the regs for their own good.

Though Sid would have preferred to be on one of the new Sagittarius-class starships, he needed the cargo capacity of the Fat Chance. Lin Tolerude won the ship from Olga Miller in a bet, and he had changed its name. Every other working starship in humanity’s possession was purpose-built for exploration and planetary survey. But this one had been designed to carry cargo between Mars and Jupiter. It had plenty of delta-vee and a cargo hold as big as a gymnasium.

The temporal translator sat in the middle of the cargo hold looking like the bones of a starship’s carcass, because that’s precisely what it was. It had been built into the frame of the alien ship that had crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in the 1940s. Most of the original ship had been cut away, leaving a collection of field coils of alien manufacture supported by the remaining superstructure. Thick power cables ran from the framework to the console that Sid was working on. The whole arrangement was bulky, but happily, it didn’t mass much.

Sid believed it could send things back in time and yank them back to the present, but now he had to prove it. To that end Sid, was working after everyone else had knocked off.

“So, you’re the master of time and space?” a man’s voice behind him asked.

Sid turned to see a gangly blond with a mocking grin. It was Captain Lin Tolerude.

“Oh, hi,” Sid replied. After a moment’s silence, he thought of something clever. “If this works, I’ll take time and you can keep space, Captain Tolerude.”

He laughed. “Sounds fine by me, but I’m not here as the captain. Right now I’m just a curious physics geek slash inventor being nosy. So, call me Lin until I start acting like the captain again.”

“All right.” Sid paused. “Lin, that console controls power to the field coils there, there and there.” Sid pointed. “They aren’t powered directly, but through capacitor banks collocated with the coils.”

“That makes sense,” Lin replied. “I thought your power requirements were off by an order of magnitude. You’re charging capacitors now, aren’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“Have you characterized the math of those field coils?”

“No, I’ve just got a handful of first-order approximations stitched together with a heuristic.”

“Work it out and there’s a Nobel Prize in it for you.”

“You’d know,” Sid said.

Lin looked smug. “If you want some help with the maths, I can go over your data sets. I suspect my theory is a special case of what makes your device work.” He chuckled. “Making you the master of both time and space.”

“Whoa,” Sid replied, “I don’t think I’m ready for that right now. I’ll be happy to run some experiments.”

“Tell me about them,” Lin said.

“First we send a neutron back to an unobserved quantum system.”

“Okay. I hope you won’t immediately repeat the experiment with an observed quantum system,” Lin remarked.

“Sorry to eavesdrop, guys, but what’s an unobserved quantum system?” Nell asked, having floated into the cargo hold. “I’m getting restless.” She secured her Velcro slippers to the carpet.

“I can give you some work to do,” Lin replied.

“First tell me what’s so magical about observed versus unobserved quantum systems,” Nell asked.

“You want a go at it?” Sid asked. “You’ve got the Nobel Prize.”

“Nah, she’s your minion,” Lin answered. “Tara doesn’t like me talking to strange girls.”

“I’m not a minion, and who are you calling strange?” Nell objected.

“Quiet,” Sid said. “Centuries back, they did experiments with light to see if it was a wave or a particle. They got different results depending on whether it was an observed quantum system or not.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Nell said.

“Tell her about Schrödinger’s cat. That’ll blow her mind.”

“In 1930, Erwin Schrödinger proposed a thought-experiment. He suggested putting a cat in a box with a sealed vial of poison gas and a hammer rigged to break the vial and release the poison when a quantum event occurred.”

“Sounds like cruelty to animals to me,” Nell said.

“More like cruelty to physics students,” Lin remarked.

“The point is that you can’t know whether the cat is alive or dead until you open the box. He said the cat is half-dead and half-alive until you open the box,” Sid explained.

“What if the cat mews?” Nell asked.

“That’s cheating,” Sid said. “That’s like putting a window in the box. When we send something back in time, it will have some effect on the present. If it’s an unobserved quantum system, it won’t change the timeline. We don’t want to mess with observed quantum systems because that will alter the timeline. Instead we’ll just send bigger things farther back into unobserved systems and look for side effects.”

Lin asked, “Ever drink hundred-year-old Scotch?”

“No, why?”

“I’ve got a case of Scotch to send back a century or so,” Lin said.

“That’s a great idea,” Nell said. “A lot more fun than half-dead cats.”

Sid scratched his head. “I wish I’d thought of that.”

“It was Tara’s idea,” Lin said. “She’ll have an environmentally secure crate set up when you’re ready.”

“I don’t think she likes me,” Sid replied.

“She likes me just fine,” Nell said.

“First time I met her, she punched me in the gut,” Lin said. “Don’t take it personally until she pulls a knife on you.”

Sid chuckled without mirth. “I get the same impression from the rest of the crew.”

“Of course, you’re lubbers. We’re spacers. The crew is a family and you’re outsiders—folks they don’t quite understand.”

“What about Colonel Banks?” Nell asked.

“Oh, we understand him perfectly—and loathe him for it.”

***

When the Fat Chance arrived at Mercury, Sid was called to the bridge by Colonel Banks. Banks was red-faced and whirled on Sid when the door opened.

Opposite the colonel, Captain Tolerude and Tara stood with their arms crossed. Everyone looked angry with the possible exception of Nell who was leaning against a bulkhead with a bemused look on her face.

“Doctor Feynman,” Banks said, “explain your experiments to these civilians.”

“I don’t see why. Captain Tolerude understands the physics as well as me. And we’ve gone over everything already.”

“Explain the risk of altering the timeline,” Banks snarled.

“What’s wrong, captain?” Sid asked. “You proposed testing the device in an uninhabited star system so any side effects wouldn’t propagate back to Earth. I thought we were going to do that.”

“We aren’t going to Sirius,” Tara said.

“Am I correct in assuming the disagreement is where we’re going to conduct the experiment?” Sid asked.

“Yup,” Nell said.

Colonel Banks gave her a dirty look. Sid imagined Nell was enjoying the conflict.

“Am I also correct in assuming that Captain Banks wants Sirius over the objections of Tara?”

“And me,” Lin said.

“May I ask why?” Sid asked.

“When I proposed an uninhabited star system, I had Wolf 359 in mind. The contract I negotiated specified Wolf 359—not Sirius. Though Sirius is not currently inhabited, it will be when the Endeavor arrives twenty years from now. I will not do anything that even potentially endangers my grandfather’s ship.”

“Tell him that’s foolish. There’s no risk,” Banks said.

“Well, I don’t know. Personally, I think we can safely test the temporal translator within the solar system, but I couldn’t convince the temporal Committee and EarthGov,” Sid remarked. “Colonel Banks, why do you want to go to Sirius?”

“That’s classified,” Banks replied.

“I see.” Sid didn’t see, but he didn’t feel like taking Banks’ side, either. “Can you say why Wolf 359 is unacceptable?”

“That’s classified, too,” Banks said.

“Okay,” Sid said, exasperated, “Are there any other stars in the galaxy?”

“There’s Epsilon Eridani,” Captain Tolerude offered.

“Colonel Banks, is there a classified reason why that is unacceptable?”

“No, but I specified Sirius,” Banks said.

“Captain Tolerude has a contract to take my experiment to Wolf 359. I presume in the spirit of compromise he’s willing to change it to, say, Epsilon Eridani. Is that correct?” Sid asked.

Captain Tolerude nodded.

Sid continued, “It seems to me that Epsilon Eridani is a reasonable compromise.”

The veins in Colonel Banks’ neck stood out. “I’ll get back with you.” He turned on his heel and left the bridge.

Nell smirked. “So, what’s the real reason you won’t go to Sirius, captain?”

Lin eyed Nell for a moment before answering. “It’s classified.”

***

It took the rest of the day for Colonel Banks to send an encrypted message back to Copernicus Base and get a reply. It said an escort ship was en route.

This entailed another day that Sid used verifying circuit breakers and shunts to cut power and discharge the capacitor bank in the event of an emergency. Fully charged, the capacitor bank held as much energy as a bomb and had to be discharged carefully. The controls were tied into the bridge, and Sid had crawled beneath a console to check them. Thus, he heard a low whistle when the escort ship arrived.

Sid looked up to see Tara shaking her head in admiration. “That’s not the Pisces,” she said.

The monitor showed an escort ship unlike anything Sid had ever seen before. It was painted flat black, with lines that looked more like a sports car than a starship. Twin massive rail guns ran the length of the ship, their field coils standing out from the sides like ribs.

“What is that?” Sid asked.

“I have no idea,” Tara replied.

Captain Tolerude burst in and called up a sensor display in a corner of the monitor. The IFF designator said the ship was named “Mako.”

Sid gasped when he saw the neutrino flux.

“How are they generating that much power?” Sid asked.

“Very good question. I don’t believe it, Sid. The neutrino flux triggered half a dozen alarms in Engineering.”

“I take it you were expecting a different ship.”

“Yeah, this is a whole new class,” Tara said. “They’ve been rotating the Sagittarius-class ships fairly regularly, and nobody’s seen the Pisces in months. It’s due.”

***

Sid stayed in his quarters and kept away from all the displays. He picked up a hard-copy file of the Roswell salvage operation and started reading two hundred years’ worth of findings. He did this to make sure he never knew when the ship flew into the sun. And he only felt a moment of disorientation during the hyperspatial transition to Epsilon Eridani. He plowed through the yellowed pages, ignoring the fact that any failure of the sun shield would vaporize the ship instantly.

He grew tired, but every time he set the file aside he remembered where he was. Then he went back to the file some more.

The next thing Sid knew, he heard pounding on his door. Disoriented, he realized he’d fallen asleep at his desk. He looked around, and it took a few moments to remember where he was. The pounding continued.

He went to the door and opened it.

Nell held a tray. “Breakfast,” she said, pushing past him. She set the tray on top of the file, where it wobbled. Turning to face him, she said, “If you’re looking like that, I hope you got properly drunk last night.” She grabbed a breakfast sandwich and orange juice from the tray and sat on Sid’s bed. “Don’t just stand there. Eat.”

The aroma of eggs and bacon reminded Sid that he’d skipped supper last night. He snatched up a breakfast sandwich and began pulling back the wrapper. “Thanks, Nell,” he said between bites.

“No problem,” Nell replied. “When I heard you’d holed up in your quarters, I figured you’d be hungry.” She ate slowly, and was half done with her meal when Sid finished. “I got a question. How do we come back?”

“I don’t understand.” Sid daubed the edges of his mouth with a napkin. “We fly into the nearest star. Activate the singularity generator. Fly out of the sun.”

“Not the spaceship—the time machine.” Nell took a sip of orange juice. “Do we carry it with us? Like in the H. G. Wells story?”

“Not necessarily. Though the temporal field can be expanded to encompass itself, in the mode we’re using the machine maintains a quantum entanglement with everything it sends back.” Sid looked in the mirror and cringed. “We just have to signal the device to yank us back to the present.”

“So, if we lose the device, then what?”

“Then we pass the time normally. When we go back in time, make sure you don’t lose your return device.”

Nell finished her juice and picked up the tray. “Thanks for the info,” she said.

“Thank you for breakfast,” he replied. When the door closed behind her, he wondered what she was up to. Nell didn’t have the personality to be a political officer, so the obvious explanation was out. He hoped she was sincerely interested in the project.

***

Testing had only one major inconvenience—Sid had to work outside in zero-G. He didn’t mind suiting up, but he couldn’t get used to things floating off when he was working. He’d hoped to get some kind of fixed walkway rigged from the ship to the control console and then to the temporal translator, but Colonel Banks had refused it. He was adamant that they might have to evacuate with short notice: Just an umbilical connected ship to console to temporal translator.

Only Sid and Nell were working outside. He could have used one of the techs instead, but she would have to become acquainted with the temporal translator sooner or later. Banks’ orders specified the ship be kept ready to evacuate immediately, and that meant abandoning equipment and personnel if necessary.

No stars were visible, because the ship and equipment deployed outside shone in reflected light a million times more brightly. This made it all seem like a tiny island in a vast black ocean.

He was still hopeless at zero-G movement.

But Nell wasn’t. Thus, she proved useful fetching what tools and instruments Sid needed from the ship, or zipping back and forth between the console and the temporal coils. To keep the random floating bits from drifting off, Sid contrived a large net that he tethered to the staging gantry.

“Nell, what are the capacitor banks at?” Sid worried that one of the power couplings had come loose, because he’d seen a drop in the voltage that he couldn’t explain.

“Bank three is at seventy percent, and everything else is at ninety-eight plus,” she replied.

Sid held an imaging field meter to the coupling and said, “Ease the power to bank three slowly, and call out what you’re seeing.”

Nell began droning a series of numbers that increased in fits and starts.

When the numbers reached ninety-eight percent, Sid said, “Cut power.”

The image of the coupling glowed pale lavender—as it should.

“I’m untethering,” Sid said. He looked at the cargo container floating secured inside the staging gantry and wished for the best. He clumsily pulled himself along the umbilical back to the console.

“You should hire Raj to show you how to get around in zero-G,” Nell said.

End of this sample Kindle book.

Enjoyed the sample?

Buy Now

or

See details for this book in the Kindle Store