Starfall: The First Cut

By Victor Pryce

A pilot drops from hyperspace to find his ship disabled by space dust. Unable to rendezvous with a nearby terraforming station, he falls to the planet below. After escaping the landing with little more than his life, he realizes his fiery decent went unnoticed. Now his only chance of returning to his family on the station lay in the data stores of a wrist computer and the sparse resources available near the crash site. Can the spaceman return to the stars or is he destined to remain on a planet with a population of one?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Victor Pryce
• Release date: Oct 8, 2012

Book preview

Starfall: The First Cut

Victor Pryce

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012

Front Flap

A pilot drops from hyperspace to find his ship disabled by space dust. Unable to rendezvous with a nearby terraforming station, he falls to the planet below. After escaping the landing with little more than his life, he realizes his fiery decent went unnoticed. Now his only chance of returning to his family on the station lay in the data stores of a wrist computer and the sparse resources available near the crash site. Can the spaceman return to the stars or is he destined to remain on a planet with a population of one?

The cover art shows the star Mira and its tail in the far ultraviolet. The image was produced by NASA and retrieved from: photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09958

Beginning

For all the time Dave spent in hyperspace, thinking about it still gave him a shiver. He had heard all the explanations, how he wasn't actually traveling through the space between jump points, but part of him could never accept it.

How did his ship travel through all the dust and asteroids and planets and stars without being torn apart? On his better days was too busy to think about it. The rest of the time he pretended his ship and everything in it had become a boson that slipped between the scattered atoms of n-space. Did he know what bosons were? No, but he remembered something about them not minding being in the same place as other matter.

Today he woke up into one of the best days. Today, after three weeks in hyperspace, he would drop back into normal-space. Gently the computer roused him from an uneasy slumber. Most long haul pilots used their ship's deep sleep system, only waking once every week to check up on things. But just as Dave distrusted hyperspace, he also didn't like turning his back on a computer. He ignored the cheery synthetic voice that wished him good morning as he climbed out of his sleeping net.

After floating to the piloting console, Dave began his morning routine while the external monitor showed the solid black void of hyperspace. While all vital systems showed normal, and the computer would have woke him earlier if anything threw a warning, he preferred to see the numbers for himself.

The passive systems, however, were not so normal.

Computer, he accused, why is the radar system offline?

Sir? the computer replied in a defensive voice, TerraCo protocol dictates that n-space systems be powered down during hyperspace travel. I was merely…

Dave deactivated the computer's voice interface. If he ever met the programmers who decided AI computers should have emotion subroutines, he would not invite them out for a beer. Or stop their crippled ship from drifting into a star. He might forward their distress signal, but after that they'd be on their own.

Let their emotional computers save them.

He accessed his personal files then ran a few override scripts. He had deactivated the offending subroutines seconds after he left Central Station three weeks ago, but the computer must have restarted them sometime during the night. Besides removing the computers tendency to get offended, he also reactivated many of the ship's n-space sensors. The company liked to reduce energy use during hyperspace travel to save on fuel, but he preferred to know that his sensors were working before he dropped into the dangerous place that is n-space.

Computer? he said on completion, How are you feeling today?

All systems normal, the computer replied, Drop from hyperspace is scheduled during the minute after twelve thirty-eight PM ship time.

This was an AI Dave could deal with. Now it felt