Doug Altroid: Spaceman Extraordinaire

THE UNKNOWABLE

      Doug Altroid Spaceman Extraordinaire returns weekly publication this spring! Don't miss it, space cadets!

Take my heart and set it free

Carried forward beyond the waves

No where left to run

I'm a navigator's son

Chasing rainbows all my days

Where I go I do not know

I only know just where I've been

Dreams they come and go

Ever shall be so

Nothing's real until you feel

- Iron Maiden

THE UNKNOWABLE

Andy Reynolds released the throttle on the Faster Than Light travel. His blood settled into his legs in a warm rush. He shook the daze off and fumbled on a panel of dozens of multi-colored lights, keenly picking out the one his hands were looking for. The shutters outside the window of the cockpit hissed and retreated into their slates. He searched for an anchor point in the horizon but found none. Outer space pressed in on all sides, completely and utterly black. Not a sight of piercing starlight; no far away giant of burning gas and hydrogen; no waltzing planets and moon... He was alone in the cockpit and completely alone in the maw of dark empty cold space. Adrenaline became him and his sweat underneath his leather jacket drove as cold as steel daggers.

It always unsettled him to be in the middle of deep space, and it shouldn't be held against the lad. There was no up there, no down, no side, no middle, no back. There was a sardine can with an engine and a blanket of nothing. At times a peculiar berserkdom overcame pilots in such conditions. Even a veteran spacer on his thousandth expedition into deep space may crack when he looks into the maw of darkness for the thousand and first time. It was no small feat to be a freehand space pilot. Most space vehicles relied entirely on the navigation computer to get them where they were going, but some pilots, like our, flew by throttle and steering column. To hell with the goddamn computer, the young man thought. I'm a pilot. I was born to dance close to the fire. He took a deep breath, stilling his heart and praying. He looked directly into the void.

There's still a few hours to kill, he thought to himself. He did not know what the name of the planet was that he journeyed to. He did not know what the name of the planet he had come from was. He was a pilot. His captain told him to fly so he did it.

After three hours the space in the far distance seemed to Reynolds to be slightly lighter, what would be almost imperceptible to most people. Panic shot through his arteries, turning his heart into a rapid sledgehammer trying to break itself out of his chest.

Reynolds pulled up on the touchscreen display in front of him the ship's map. He saw that Doug was sitting with Church in the general purpose room. He tapped the room on the display and selected the intercom from the sub-menu. "Captain! 10-11," He said. "There's an uncharted nebula ahead."

"I copy." Captain Altroid's voice was crystal clear over the wireless transmission. "Can we circumvent?"

Reynolds saw the ship's fuel, the status bar now yellow from green. "Negative sir," Reynolds said. "It's not a patch. It's the entire goddamn horizon that's turned. I'm afraid we're headed into it. The nearest Resource Station is on the other side of the nebula. We just don't have the fuel to go anywhere else." He tried to slow his galloping heart. A nebula had been the grave of many better men than him, he knew. A nebula is a cloud of dust or compressed gas in space. When trillions of tons of dust gather it generates a hell of an electrical current. Even taking the safe low-voltage charted routes through a nebula will knock out your finer instruments of pilotry such as the scanners, sensors and navigator's computer. This is where an old school mother like Reynolds comes in. He never relied on these items. The only thing in this world or the next he trusted was his own eyeballs. Still, it was highly unusual to see a nebula block out the entire horizon. The space before him tinged ever so slightly light purple as they approached it. Reynolds could see a faint glimmer of light ahead.