second place, and the Argo still bringing up the rear.
The first five ships followed a predetermined route to get to Ganymede, which was their next checkpoint. It was a reasonable route, and a safe route. They had to go through the Asteroid Belt, of course, but bad stories and worse videos to the contrary, most of the asteroids are so far apart that actually seeing two or three while traversing the Belt breaks the monotony (and monotonous it is, for Jupiter is a lot farther from Mars than Earth is).
But not all the Belt is like that. Some of it is what you might call densely populated, not by people but by asteroids, and in fact there are a few places where there are so many and they are moving so swiftly, that they can be damned dangerous. Moreover, there’s a lot of rubble out there, rocks the size of bricks, or footballs if you prefer, that are so small and so fast that a ship’s sensors will miss half of them, but any one of them, if it hits the right spot at the right angle, can put a ship out of commission … and I mean permanently .
Of course you’ve figured out by now what I’m going to tell you, and you’re right: FarTrekker decided the only way to make up lost time was to take the shortest route to Ganymede, a route the other five ships had avoided because of the danger involved.
A number of media ships had been posted along the route, reporting back on the race, but when the Argo changed its course they followed it only long enough to determine where it was going, and then wisely refused to follow it. As they reported, only a crazy man would take this route, and especially in a ship with a solar sail, which presented a much bigger target to the myriad of flying rocks, and of course once the sail was destroyed the ship was without motive power. (“What will they do then?” asked one of the self-appointed pundits. “Row?” Twenty-seven other pundits used that same line during the next day, and eleven presented it as their own, which is of course what self-appointed pundits do.)
The Argo entered the Belt, and Knibbs the navigator—no one ever knew his first name—went to work, charting all the asteroids that were big enough to chart, and trying to position the ship so that anything too small to chart was more likely to hit the hull than the solar sail. They figured to be eight days crossing the Belt, but if they made it to the other side, they’d have picked up more than a week on their rivals.
And, oddly enough, they were not touched by so much as a pebble for the first five days. The sail remained intact, they actually were running two hours ahead of schedule, and Knibbs announced that they’d passed through the worst of it, that the asteroids were starting to look like baby planets again, rather than large rocks and small boulders.
And then, on the sixth day, the co-pilot (whose first name was Vladimir, and I won’t bother with his surname since no one could pronounce or spell it anyway), Vladimir was sitting at the control panel when he fell asleep, and his head or his hand—they never knew which, and it doesn’t really matter anyway—brushed against some of the buttons and switches and knobs, and suddenly the Argo was filled with this haunting sound, like a melody you heard when both you and the world were younger and more innocent, and try as you would you could never quite remember it, though you knew it had brought tears to your eyes the one time you’d heard it. In fact, you probably looked for it on and off for years, but privately, because you didn’t know quite how to tell anyone you were looking for a melody that made you cry.
“What is that?” asked FarTrekker, suddenly alert.
“I don’t know,” said Vladimir, blinking his eyes. He checked the control panel, but while a number of the switches and buttons had been flicked and pressed, none of them had anything to do with the ship’s radio.
“I know that song,” said Knibbs wistfully. “I heard it once, a long time
The first five ships followed a predetermined route to get to Ganymede, which was their next checkpoint. It was a reasonable route, and a safe route. They had to go through the Asteroid Belt, of course, but bad stories and worse videos to the contrary, most of the asteroids are so far apart that actually seeing two or three while traversing the Belt breaks the monotony (and monotonous it is, for Jupiter is a lot farther from Mars than Earth is).
But not all the Belt is like that. Some of it is what you might call densely populated, not by people but by asteroids, and in fact there are a few places where there are so many and they are moving so swiftly, that they can be damned dangerous. Moreover, there’s a lot of rubble out there, rocks the size of bricks, or footballs if you prefer, that are so small and so fast that a ship’s sensors will miss half of them, but any one of them, if it hits the right spot at the right angle, can put a ship out of commission … and I mean permanently .
Of course you’ve figured out by now what I’m going to tell you, and you’re right: FarTrekker decided the only way to make up lost time was to take the shortest route to Ganymede, a route the other five ships had avoided because of the danger involved.
A number of media ships had been posted along the route, reporting back on the race, but when the Argo changed its course they followed it only long enough to determine where it was going, and then wisely refused to follow it. As they reported, only a crazy man would take this route, and especially in a ship with a solar sail, which presented a much bigger target to the myriad of flying rocks, and of course once the sail was destroyed the ship was without motive power. (“What will they do then?” asked one of the self-appointed pundits. “Row?” Twenty-seven other pundits used that same line during the next day, and eleven presented it as their own, which is of course what self-appointed pundits do.)
The Argo entered the Belt, and Knibbs the navigator—no one ever knew his first name—went to work, charting all the asteroids that were big enough to chart, and trying to position the ship so that anything too small to chart was more likely to hit the hull than the solar sail. They figured to be eight days crossing the Belt, but if they made it to the other side, they’d have picked up more than a week on their rivals.
And, oddly enough, they were not touched by so much as a pebble for the first five days. The sail remained intact, they actually were running two hours ahead of schedule, and Knibbs announced that they’d passed through the worst of it, that the asteroids were starting to look like baby planets again, rather than large rocks and small boulders.
And then, on the sixth day, the co-pilot (whose first name was Vladimir, and I won’t bother with his surname since no one could pronounce or spell it anyway), Vladimir was sitting at the control panel when he fell asleep, and his head or his hand—they never knew which, and it doesn’t really matter anyway—brushed against some of the buttons and switches and knobs, and suddenly the Argo was filled with this haunting sound, like a melody you heard when both you and the world were younger and more innocent, and try as you would you could never quite remember it, though you knew it had brought tears to your eyes the one time you’d heard it. In fact, you probably looked for it on and off for years, but privately, because you didn’t know quite how to tell anyone you were looking for a melody that made you cry.
“What is that?” asked FarTrekker, suddenly alert.
“I don’t know,” said Vladimir, blinking his eyes. He checked the control panel, but while a number of the switches and buttons had been flicked and pressed, none of them had anything to do with the ship’s radio.
“I know that song,” said Knibbs wistfully. “I heard it once, a long time
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