FIRMAMENT 2050 AD

Big Louis felt the slight sensation of a change in motion. He turned in his seat and looked behind him. Dandelion was seated at her station busily cataloguing data streams and acting as if there was nothing unusual. `What's happened?' said Big Louis. `We have veered off course,' Dandelion said, glancing casually at one of the many monitors linked to ship computer. `Yes I know that, but why?' `I do not know yet.' `Where's Turnip?' Big Louis said, looking around the bridge. Dandelion shook her elongated head and shrugged what shoulders she had. Big Louis frowned to himself. Dandelion was his navigator, co-pilot, ship psychologist, crew welfare officer. She kept the ship journal, and recorded events that happened on voyage. She also dabbled in history, galactic biology and stellar science, among other things. She never got excited. If the spaceship were suddenly to plunge into a black hole, Dandelion would probably shake her head and shrug her skimpy shoulders. `Turnip! Where are you?' Big Louis shouted at the top of his mind. Big Louis had a small mouth and never really used it for anything, but he had a seriously big mind. He listened with it and caught the thought signature that belonged to their other companion. Turnip had heard him but wasn't answering. Big Louis frowned doubly hard. Now there was definitely something wrong. `Gyroscopic controls have broken down.' Dandelion said, just to be helpful. `We are 2.3 megaparsecs off course.' `Should we slow up and re-enter normal space?' asked Big Louis. `Too dangerous. We will run among very heavily crowded star bodies. Let's keep going till we hit into clearer space and weaker gravitational fields.' Big Louis's role on the spaceship was more in the nature of an intergalactic truck driver. His job was to get his cargo from A to B quietly and efficiently, without fuss, without delay. Interruptions to the schedule irritated him. `Turnip!' Big Louis said, firmly. `You may as well show yourself and enlighten us as to what has gone wrong.' Turnip came up to the bridge from the engineering deck below. Turnip was the Chief Engineer on the ship. He was in fact the only engineer on the ship. He was bigger than Dandelion and smaller than Big Louis, but twice as ugly. `I was messing with the linear prophylacteries,' he said sheepishly, facing towards Dandelion and trying to avoid looking at Big Louis. `Well?' enquired Big Louis, unfriendly like. `I dropped a spanner.' `What?' `I dropped a lasonic spanner. It fell down the maintenance shaft and hit a nut attached to one of the plates holding the plasma boxes.' `So?' `The bolt must have sheared off and the plate buckled.' `And so?' continued Big Louis, trying to hide his impatience. `The box fell down and disintegrated…' `Yes?' Big Louis said, encouragingly. `The ensuing explosion broke a cable in the gyroscopic conduits' Turnip hesitated again. `Oh please,' said Big Louis, slowly and menacingly, `please do go on. This is really fascinating.' `Well…' said Turnip, `what happened was that, er…' `The steering wheel fell off,' interjected Dandelion, thereby hoping to cut a long story short. The steering wheel was a sophisticated piece of machinery without which the ship would be going nowhere in a hurry. Turnip gave her a dirty look. Being as ugly as he was, it was really tough for him to manage an especially dirty look. `Never mind her, Turnip,' said Big Louis, coaxing. `Finish your story. Get it off your chest. You'll feel better for it.' `The cable whiplashed up through the cubit compartments and hit the remdrive mechanisms … and… and…' Turnip was almost close to tears. `Yes, what happened?' Big Louis said, feeling more kindly disposed towards Turnip now. `The steering wheel fell off,' Turnip blurted out. Big Louis gave a mental sigh of resignation. `Can you fix it?' he said. `Nope.' `Any hope?' said Big Louis. `Nope. No hope. I'm a real dope. No hope.' `Where are we?' Big Louis said, looking at Dandelion still busy over her monitors. `Leaving galactic sector 133 and reducing velocity. 10.52 megaparsecs off our course. Returning to normal space … now. Computer advises shut down of drive engines. Without gyroscopic control the graviton field energies could tear the ship apart.' `What should we do?' Big Louis enquired. `We are heading for the wrong end of the galaxy.' `We'll… um… we'll have to send for the Ulag,' said Turnip, timidly. The Ulag was a type of intergalactic breakdown truck. Very efficient. Speedy response. Full discount for long-term paid up members. `Yes,' said Dandelion. `I'll send out a distress beacon. But we have a problem. There's a solar system up ahead. We'll run smack into it.' `Shut down engine drive,' ordered Big Louis. `Check all buffers, and prepare for a crash landing in case we hit a rock or something.' `Velocity now sub-light,' Dandelion informed them. `Decelerators at maximum. Graviton field strength zero. Velocity now minus one … minus two…. three' The spaceship hurtled along the orbit of Neptune and bypassed Jupiter, but only just. It made a half orbit of the sun and was heading back the way it came when the Earth loomed up in front of it. `Emergency buffers powered up! Defense screens at max!' Big Louis shouted. `Turnip, the anti-radar barrier, in case we encounter hostiles..!' The ship sliced through Earth's atmosphere, circled the planet twice before dropping to the surface and plowing through two hundred and fifty acres of forest, leaving a wake of destruction ten miles long. There it settled, buried in a heap of muck and timber debris and there it remained… quiet and still.