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– Chapter 2 –
Mervyn waited expectantly for the third of three red launch lights to shine. After a short pause, it would change from red to green. His finger hovered over the launch button while his stomach churned with nervous. He sat expectantly in the cockpit of his sled waiting for the race to begin. To distract himself he thought about the conversation he had interrupted the night before. What mischief were De Monsero and Hidraba plotting? If only his grip had held for a few more seconds he would have learned why the Raiders were so confident of winning. Frustration boiled within him -- he’d been so close to finding out. He would just have to keep his wits about him.
Mervyn’s focus snapped back to the race as the third light turned red -- any moment now they would launch. His eyes watered with the effort of staring at the lights and trying not to blink. Suddenly, the lights turned green. He stabbed the button.
The launch tube exploded into dazzling light. His pilot’s chair grasped him firmly and the sled shot forward. The race was on. All around him other sleds launched. Tower control lasted for ten seconds, until the group had safely dispersed on their pre-planned trajectories. After that, it was all down to Mervyn’s skill as a pilot.
‘Nice and easy now,’ Loren reminded her pilot.
‘I know,’ they had been over this a hundred times: don’t waste fuel, save it for the home straight. Mervyn knew Loren meant well, but she desperately wanted to win this race, and for the same reasons – to humiliate De Monsero.
Mervyn licked his finger, to make it glide smoothly on the slip pad, and eased the throttle up; the sled’s speed increased exponentially (something to do with the properties of space: an object will continue accelerating until acted on by an equal and opposite force). The launch was not brilliant, there were six sleds ahead, but Mervyn steadily gained on the hindmost. The first obstacle, a newly formed nebula, approached fast. Mervyn checked Loren’s flight plan: across the nebula’s shock wave, through the cloud of supper heated gas, and gain speed from a slingshot round the new-born white-dwarf star; then out the other side towards the next obstacle.
An ancient giant star had exploded one hundred and fifty years before, at the end of its life, giving birth to the gleaming white dwarf, the nebula, and the huge gas sphere. The nebula looked like streaked marble. The shock wave from the explosion would travel through space for thousands of years. When they hit it, the sled leaped and bounced through the turbulence, and their pace slowed. With an effort, Mervyn restrained himself from hitting the throttle to recover their headlong charge. The gravity kick from the white dwarf would more than make up their speed loss without wasting valuable fuel. Besides, Mervyn could almost feel Loren’s razor-sharp eyes drilling into his back. Ahead, two sleds burned fuel and accelerating away, including the one they were chasing.
‘They’ll pay for it in a minute, Merv,’ Loren warned. ‘They’ll have to fly a higher orbit so they’ll pick up less speed from the slingshot.’ Mervyn could tell Loren was bursting to tell him what to do, but she restrained herself admirably. The gravity of the white dwarf pulled them in, faster and faster.
‘You’re too low, Merv.’
‘Don’t worry, she can take it, and we’ll save even more fuel for later.’
‘It’s not on the flight plan, Merv.’ Stuff the flight plan, it felt right, and there wasn’t anything Loren could do about it.
Just then, the proximity alarm sounded -- amber lights flashed in the corners of the cockpit.
‘Impact warning: altitude too low, raise altitude immediately,’ the computer crooned. Mervyn ignored it and flew even closer to the White Dwarf. The computer increased its volume and the urgency of it’s warning, ‘Red proximity breach imminent, automated course correction standing by,’ it blared.
‘Merv?’
‘Don’t worry, Loren, I got it covered.’ Loren wasn’t the only one concerned.
‘Mr Bright, you’re too low,’ Cage shouted over the biolink. He had his technicians stationed throughout the course.
‘It’s ok, sir, it’s only the amber warning, I’m still out of the red zone.’
‘Damn you, Bright, you’re as bad as De Monsero. If you hit the red zone you’re grounded for a month. Do you hear me?’
Mervyn gulped, a grounding was the worse punishment he could think of -- he loved flying, but he kept to his course, ‘Affirmative, sir.’
Cage cut the transmission and left them to it.
‘That’s how De Monsero does it,’ Mervyn said, feeling excitement welling up through his chest. ‘Well if he can do it, so can we.’
‘Of course. Simple really.’
Mervyn eased the sled even closer to the red zone, ‘Loren, rehash the flight plan -- from now on we’re flying a quarter point off the red zone. Can we tell Aurora?’
‘She’s too far ahead, she’s out of our biolink range, and I don’t think you want to go through Cages technicians with this one.’
The sled hurtled away from the white dwarf in fourth place. Only De Monsero, Hidraba, and Aurora were ahead now. The gap soon closed, and they could pass their discovery to Aurora.. Mervyn could almost hear Aurora kicking herself.
‘We’ve got them now,’ Aurora said. ‘There’s no way the Raiders are going to win this race.’ Mervyn thought about the conversation he had overheard in the Stardome. They had probably just discovered the Raiders winning secret, so there was little point in worrying his team-mates further. He decided to say nothing.
The next obstacle, the Globulus, was uneventful. Just a thick cloud of cooled space dust that dragged on the sled’s integrity field slowing it down. The only hazards within the cloud were pools of dense dust; one day these might just collapse under their own mass and form new stars. They were easy to spot due to their strong gravity fields.
In free space again Mervyn eased up the throttle. The first test of their new strategy would come with the star cluster. Loren uploaded the new trajectory to Mervyn. She had worked in two tight loops around stars to regain even more speed. One around a supermassive red giant, and another round a small yellow star.
The proximity alarm triggered as they grazed the outer atmosphere of the first star. Mervyn let it go, knowing he was only in the amber zone. It sounded repeatedly as they skipped between the gravity waves and tucked in as close to each star as they dared. Twice Cage’s technicians warned him to stay within clear tolerance levels. Mervyn politely acknowledged their request, and ignored them. Didn’t they know this was a race? All the sleds had taken different routes through the cluster. When they emerged, Mervyn found he had slipped ahead of both Aurora and Hidraba.
Next was NCZ2398. The tatters of the blue star’s gas clouds, like black lace, tugged at the sled as they skimmed the dazzling jets erupting from its north pole. Magnificent they may be, but deadly, and avoided at all costs, as was the rocky disc around its equatorial plane where planets were being born . To achieve the maximum slingshot, Mervyn flew a corkscrew path: over the jets, right round the North Pole and off at right angles to their original trajectory. He took the sled to the limit as they rounded the pole and rather too close to the equator.
‘Look out!’ Loren cried, as a tower-block sized chunk of rock hurtled towards them– he had strayed into the planetary disc.