Collective Hindsight (Book 2) - Aaron Rosenberg [13]
“That’s not in our path, though,” Blue said. “We’d have to turn toward it.”
“It’s our best bet.” Gomez spoke authoritatively—Tev was pleased to notice that she was finally making decisions the way a team leader should, instead of letting others make them for her as she had when they had first met. “Let’s take a look at the Dancing Star’s thrusters and see if we can make this work.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, all of them were frustrated.
“Faugh!” Tev announced, and Pattie nodded her antennae in agreement. The equations were clear.
“Steers like a cow,” Fabian muttered. Pattie did not get the reference, but she agreed with the sentiment. The Dancing Star was too large to turn that sharply, particularly at its current speed.
“Well, what other option do we have?” Sonya demanded. “We can’t leave it here, we can’t fight, we can’t run. We need to get to the nearest star, and that’s the only one we can reach in time. So how do we turn something that doesn’t want to turn?”
“The original crew used gravity wells,” Pattie pointed out. “If we had a planet or even a large moon nearby, we might be able to use that to alter our course.”
“Nothing within range is large enough to provide sufficient gravity,” Tev informed her. Despite his brusqueness, Pattie was glad he was there—she might have been able to figure that out as quickly, but this way she didn’t have to.
“So it can’t turn on its own,” Fabian mused, “and we don’t have anything heavy enough to make it turn. But maybe we can bootleg it.”
The others turned to look at him.
“Bootleg it?” Tev asked.
Fabian shrugged. “It’s an old Earth term. Used to be bootleggers—people who illegally brewed their own alcohol, or moonshine, and then sold it to others. The cops would chase them all the time, and they got pretty good at making fast getaways. One of their techniques was called a bootlegger turn.” He grinned. “Basically they’d throw a rope around a tree and use that to spin the car into a tighter turn.”
“Like wheeling around a gravity well, but using a physical tether.” Tev nodded with understanding. Pattie was momentarily overcome by an image of Tev, wearing overalls and carrying a shotgun, riding in an old Earth car as it spun around a tree with police cars in hot pursuit. Her tinkle of laughter was fortunately overlooked by the others.
“What could we use for the tree?” Sonya demanded, and they all scanned the charts.
“There,” Pattie pointed out finally, enlarging a section and highlighting one spot. “It’s an asteroid, twice the size of the Dancing Star and filled with heavy metals. Not enough to produce a gravity well, but with its mass the ship shouldn’t be able to budge it. And it’s between our present course and Cardienne.”
“Right. So what do we use for the rope?”
“It’s got to be a tractor beam,” Fabian said. “Nothing else could withstand that kind of stress.”
“But the Dancing Star doesn’t have a tractor beam.”
Pattie tinkled in laughter again. “No, but we do.”
* * *
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Gold muttered as he and Sonya watched Shabalala steer the da Vinci into the hold of the Dancing Star.
“I didn’t talk you into anything, sir,” she replied with a grin. “You agreed that this is the best course of action.”
“Being swallowed by a whale, which then hides within in a bonfire? What was I thinking?”
Sonya didn’t bother to reply. Instead, she tapped her combadge. “Tev, how’s the tractor beam coming?”
“Final attachments almost completed, Commander,” came the reply. “We will be ready in ten minutes.”
“Good. Report to the Dancing Star’s bridge as soon as you’re done.”
“And that’s another thing,” Gold told her. “We just got that new tractor beam, and now you’re ripping it off and sticking it on some other ship. And it’ll get turned to ash when we dive!”
Sonya shrugged. “Sorry, Captain. But it’s either the tractor beam or us, and I’d rather give up the