Dusters ELEVEN

They sent a message to Chaffee to let them know their location and predicament. It would take hours to reach them and the same amount of time to get any reply.

Later Dinah sent another message telling them she was going to try to recreate the situation that got them there.

Everyone retired to get some much needed rest before they made the attempt.


Dinah didn’t sleep, she looked at her model of Two in her quarters, now complete and glowing like a night light. She shut her eyes and could only think about their plight. She decided totally that the only chance for their survival would be doing it again, travel faster than light speed.

The thought sat there in her mind. They had done the one thing that has eluded human scientists for ages. She smiled to herself, “And we did it accidentally.”

Later, everyone was woken up when Dinah called the crew to quarters.

Kelley came into the Control Room and complained, “Three hours was not enough sleep.”

“It isn’t my fault if you were not able to sleep Kelley.” Dinah told her, matter of factly. “We had six hours off.”

“I had a little trouble getting to sleep, I’m a little edgy. Aren’t you?” She asked, on the way to her pilot’s station.

“I didn’t sleep.” Dinah told her.

“This should be interesting.” Kelley answered.

“We had a message from Chaffee to not do anything.” Dinah told Kelley.

Opoku spoke up at that, “So we should wait, right?”

“No”, Kelley said. “We don’t have much choice here O.”

“Everyone knows what happened to Welhaven One, ya know? Doing this could kill everyone here.” Opoku argued.

“Every minute we wait, we have less air, food and water O. How long would you like to wait around to die?” She said.

Dinah stayed out of it. They went on for a few more minutes and Dinah monitored the systems getting up and running, like they were before the accident.

The intercom was open, so everyone was hearing everything the crew was saying at their stations. Prestmon spoke up, “Can we get this started?” He chirped.

“You got it P.” Kelly responded. She looked over at Dinah who nodded.

Dinah had the ship’s logs in front of her and was ready to start recreating the events that landed them where they were.

“Opoku, can you please plot a course so we don’t hit anything too big?” Dinah asked.

“Sure thing, the computer can’t pull that off because it won’t allow let me input the speed you want. I have to do it outside the Nav system and then set it manually.” She said. “Give me a sec.”

The ship was up to full power and in full collection mode. The field was functioning exactly as it was before the incident. “Got it, adjusting course now.” They all felt the slight bump as the ship adjusted course.

Dinah started barking off events and scrolled down the log file on her screen as close to the right times as possible.

They went on like this for 20 minutes and nothing happened, they were still in the middle of nowhere.