Dusters TEN

Fagan got sick about the minute he arrived on Chaffee. Maybe allergic to something in the stale air. He was dropped from the second test mission and Gildo offered to take his place as co-pilot.

Dinah sat down and talked to Geoff who had appeared on the scene without warning.

“Gildo is a great operations manager, but I am more than qualified to co-pilot Two, I designed the damn thing and flew the last test flights.” She said.

Aidyn was behind her standing above them. “She’s right.” He said, “As usual.” He left the mess hall.

“I don’t care who flies it Dinah, just take care of it because this project is bleeding cash and needs to show some real progress if you want it to continue.” Geoff spoke in little more than mumbled. He was reading something on his COM.

“Great, done.” She said, standing.

“Don’t fuck it up girlie.” Geoff said.

Gildo stood up, looking upset. Dinah wasn’t sure if he was upset at Geoff’s tone towards her or that he wasn’t going to fly. He left while Geoff mumbled into his COM. Dinah followed him out.


The second test mission of the new configurations began two days later. They had the permits from Mars Control and Opoku programmed the plan into Two’s Nav system as they departed and drifted away from Chaffee.

Fagan rode along, still not feeling great, but well enough to ride along and get a feel for the ship in flight.

They again rode into orbit around Mars, polar this time and not as close as before. They would be cleaning up debris from several old Mars reconnaissance missions by flown by NASA.

Dinah was at the helm, being watched closely by Kelley. She was also eyeing the screen to her right, which was scrolling data on the field as it came online. “Full power now” she said.

“Great.” Kelley said. “Time to really earn that paycheck, huh?” She asked.

Dinah ignored the insult and figured she knew where Kelley stood now. She must think all her work was a joke, to this point. “We have a slight variance in the field”. She reported

It was another vibration in the performance of the field and the harmonics of it spread over the entire ship, it hummed separately from the engines which fired periodically for course corrections. They were in between the Mars equator and North Pole when it happened.


No one on board noticed the change, but alarms started sounding at the Nav’s station immediately and she panicked. The portal to the left of Kelley and Dinah went black and they didn’t notice it, there was no change in the hum of the engines or the field systems. They were both mumbling over the performance of the arrays and trying figure out what was causing the field’s instability. “It’s a very minor fluctuation.” Dinah reported.

Opoku chirped over the intercom a few seconds later, “What the hell just happened?” She sounded very distressed.

“What are you talking about?” Kelley said into the nearest mic. With the intercom open, the comms on the ship were being piped all over.

“Where’s Mars!?” she shouted.

Both Dinah and Kelley turned to look out the portal to their left and saw only empty space where they had seen Mars just seconds earlier.

Norrie’s voice came over the speaker, “Stop fucking around up there.” She didn’t know what had happened or noticed anything either. She was annoyed at the banter.

“What the hell.” Kelley mumbled, now scared himself. “Where is it?” Turning to Dinah.

Dinah swung back to the panel and kept tapping the buttons to change views of the field monitor. She was reeling inside, completely confused about that had just happened. She shuddered and closed her eyes for a moment, composing herself.

Kelley spoke loudly into the mic, “Opoku, can you try to find Mars for us?” She paused, “Or anything!?”

Opoku clicked off the intercom and took a deep breath, sliding into her console chair again. “I don’t get this”, she thought as she started up the scanner and plugged in the position of Mars and asked the system to seek the vector. “Let’s find it Amatucci”. She said.

The visual scanners on the top and bottom of the ship began a circular survey of their surroundings and fed the findings into the navigation system.

“Shut it down.” Kelley barked and the field and engines were cut off in seconds. It got very quiet across Two.

After a minute, Amatucci had their location. She cracked the intercom. “Um, we are about as far out as Neptune and at a 23 degree upward deviation from the solar system plane.” She reported flatly. “Any ideas down there?”

Dinah froze and slowly raised her arm to check her watch against the ship’s chronometer, they were close enough. “How did we move that far in an instant?” She said in dismay.

“What are you talking about”? Kelley replied.

She wasn’t ready for the question and ignored him. She left her station and went to see Norrie.

Dinah burst into the main engine room and seemed ready to burst herself. She shouted, “How did we move that far that fast??” Planting her hands on the desktop between them. Norrie stared at her for a few seconds, considering if she should report her to the Captain as incompetent.

“What?” she said.

“How did we do that?” she leaned in towards Norrie.

Recoiling, the she answered “Do what?” Norrie had no idea what she was on about.

Dinah stopped her pending emotional explosion and explained the situation. She called the NAV for verification and they got it. They were over 4 billion kilometers from the sun and had no idea how they had got there.

“What were you doing to the field generators when this happened?” she asked.

“I was trying to compensate for the failure in coil 35.” She said. “I wanted us back at peak performance.”

“What did you do to compensate?” Dinah asked, as they both turned to the Engineering Console to try to recreate the scenario.

They spent the next 2 hours poring over the system logs and discussing possibilities. Kelley came down to talk with them and was swished away by Dinah, who locked the hatch behind him as he exited the room.

They analyzed the model of the magnetic field and the compensations Norrie had made and eventually found a resonant flux in the field that must explain their speedy trip across space.

“We have to do that again” Dinah said. “And point back to Mars when we do it.”

She was very matter of fact about the comment, like it was going to be repeatable, easily. Norrie was less enthusiastic about the idea.

“What if we go farther or faster this time? We could wind up in another solar system or in the middle of nowhere.” She said. “We are folding space here and remember what happened to One..”

“Undo whatever you did to compensate for coil 35 and we will do the exact process again. It’s our only chance to get back.”

She was trying to not think about the fact that they would never get back alive from this far out conventionally. They had a day’s worth of food and some emergency rations. Water is recycled, but it wouldn’t help much in the long run.

They would all starve and run out of oxygen before they could motor home on their normal engines. And that was if they had the usual fuel source out here, which they didn’t. There was no particulate propellant waste to suck in and reuse out here.

They were on their own. A Duster with nothing to clean up.