I Fell From The Dark

12

She sat in a couch in the bridge, and pulled a set of goggles on. She knew where to go in the menus, which icons meant to tap, how to find the data that she needed. The knowledge was crisp and fresh, as if she'd just been revising for an exam. It somehow felt artificial. But then, so much about her experience had felt so strange over the last few days.

She paused. How long have I been awake? Two days? Three?

'I sent two probes ahead. The first was launched sixty five days ago, and the second forty five days ago,' Pilgrim said.

A diagram jumped up in front of her, dots and lines in space: the trajectories of the ship and the probes, the orbits of stars and planets and moons.

'These are the probes?' she asked, pointing to two gold dots.

'Yes, exactly. Oh I'm so glad you're back, Mia. Well, as you can see, the first one passed Halliman's Star ten days ago. Or at least, it would have, but it went dark when it was supposed to get there.'

'That's weird. Did it just fail?'

'Maybe. There's a huge asteroid field around Halliman's. There was no indication of that when we set off. It's possible that the probe hit something and was destroyed.'

Mia paused, amazed at how easily the knowledge popped into her mind.

'Show me the field,' she said.

The view zoomed in. A great disk spread out around the star, thin and flat, a circle carved out at its centre.

'There,' Pilgrim said. 'That's based on observations that the probes took. You can see that it starts from just outside the orbit of Misenus, and then goes way, way out.'

She frowned, and gestured to bring the image closer. It hung in front of her, sparkling in the darkness.

'That's not an asteroid field, Pilgrim.'

'What?'

'It's an accretion disk. When a star forms, it starts with a huge disk orbiting it, made of dust and gas. That slowly coalesces into planets, or falls into the star, or gets ejected, until there's almost nothing left. For whatever reason, this star still has a large chunk of its original disk. The inner planets formed normally; that's why it has a circular hole cut out in the middle. But the rest is still just primordial stuff, gas and dust and ice and chunks of rock. Did you fly the probe straight into it? It would never have survived, and neither will we unless we're very careful.'

'OK, well, that's good to know. But, no. The probe came in at this angle. It would never have intercepted the accretion disk.'

Pilgrim drew a golden line, straight down from above the disk, heading towards its centre, through the central void.

'There. You see, it should have been fine.'

'OK, great. But there still might be debris. This is a weird solar system.'

She stretched in the couch. Her body was still suffering the effects of the sedative, but her mind was like a drill, quick and sharp. I guess that's what happens, she thought. It's because this body isn't connected to my mind.

Am I really in a freezer with my arms and legs cut off?

'Mia, there's more. The second probe also disappeared,' Pilgrim said.

Mia shrugged. 'If the system has loads of junk in it, that's all there is to it. But I agree, we need to be careful how we come in. If we're braking, the engines will blast away whatever's in our way, but only in the direction they're pointing. Manoeuvring will be risky.'

'No, that's not the thing. This is what the second probe filmed, before it disappeared.'

The model disappeared, and was replaced with a view from the probe.