Chapter The Hydrogen Sail
“Ow!” Grimes said. “I just burned my hands!”
He held out his hands as he floated in the spacious cockpit. “Don’t touch anything!” he said. “It’s hotter than a Hormolian bathhouse in here!”
Genie disregarded his complaint. She was hurriedly attempting to hack into the cruiser’s central computer and hoist the hydrogen sail, but the computer was not responding. The circuits were fried.
The cruiser’s velocity rapidly increased as it slipped backward toward the fiery binary star. Altiva Cantos now had the cruiser in its weighty grip. The enormous gravity fields were pulling them in.
Genie floated up from her chair. She pushed herself across the cockpit to the decompression chamber. Her strong cyborg hands manually forced open the hatch.
“Where are you going?” Grimes asked.
“Outside,” she said.
“Come here and look at my hands,” he said.
“Stand by,” she said. “I will be back in a moment.”
She shut the hatch behind her, leaving him inside staring out at her through the small hatch window. The air flushed from the chamber. Genie forced open the exterior hatch and then climbed out into the vacuum onto the cruiser’s scorched hull. She climbed hand over hand up the side of the ship as solar radiation bombarded her sleek, naked form.
She stood up atop the charred hulk. The infernal twin fireballs of Altiva Cantos exploded in a monstrous fusion conflagration behind her. Solar radiation blazed down upon her in powerful waves.
She had never been this close to a star before, much less a binary star. The glare of the solar light lit up the cruiser’s hull in harsh and brilliant illumination. Her body was being subjected to a tremendous torrent of radioactivity, causing her to glow white hot. Her cooling systems worked overtime to prevent her internal organic cells from being broiled.
A solar flare would surely be the end of her. If she stayed out here much longer, she would soon liquefy into a glowing molten glob.
The cruiser accelerated at an alarming rate as it fell back, soon to be crushed and then incinerated in the solar fire.
She found the encasement that housed the hydrogen sail. She bent down and ripped open the housing. Chunks of metal fell away into the vacuum, caught by the forceful gravitational pull. The intensity of the gravitational field threatened to rip her from the hull and pull her into space toward the hungry stars.
The connections between the sail and the cruiser’s computer had been severed and were blackened and charred. She held fast to the hull as she quickly fused the tattered circuitry together.
She restarted the data flow and the sail came online.
Genie sent digital commands to the ship’s central computer. She stepped back as a long, slender boom slowly lifted from the housing. A foil sail unfurled and fluttered as it was buffeted by the gale of a radioactive solar wind.
The boom supporting the giant sail straightened and extended vertically from the hull. The foil sail shimmered in waves, and then bulged taut as it was blasted by an unrelenting onslaught of ions.
The cruiser’s backward velocity slowed and then gradually reversed. The sail caught the ionic winds, which slowly began to propel the cruiser forward.
Genie stood on the blackened hull looking up through the blinding light at the giant sail aglow against the backdrop of empty space. The Craaldan Five Cruiser now had the power it needed to break free from the powerful gravitational pull.
The ship gained momentum, and then shot forward, pulling away from the twin fireballs of Altiva Cantos.
Genie walked across the hull and then pulled herself down the side of the cruiser. She reentered the decompression chamber, opened the hatch and stepped back inside the cruiser.
Joe was waiting for her, floating in the cabin with his burned hands still held in front of him.
“Where have you been?” he asked. “Come here and take a look at my hands. They’re all blistered.”
Genie pushed herself over to him. She took Joe’s hands in hers. His black gloves were in tatters, barely clinging to his red and blistered palms.
“Are you in pain?” she asked.
“It hurts like hell,” he said.
She removed the gloves and examined his hands, and then bandaged them.
“Your hands will be fine, Joe,” she said.
“So did the hydrogen sail raise or what?” he asked.
“It did.”
“I knew it would,” he said.
Grimes pulled Genie into his arms, smiling brightly as he looked into her iridescent eyes. “Genie-baby, I told you my plan would work. How could you have ever doubted me?”
“One can only wonder.”
“Stick with me, babe,” Grimes said. “Like I’ve always said, with your beauty and my brains, the two of us can take on whatever the galaxy throws at us.”
“I am stuck with you, Joe,” she said. “It’s a bond I am unable to break.”
Joe planted a big kiss on her silver lips. Genie’s circuitry lit up as a wave of endorphins flooded her neural networks.
She pushed him away and floated to her chair in front of the control panel. “I am setting our heading for Portogallos,” she said.
“I thought that city was just a myth—a place that prisoners dream of to take their minds off how much the Craaldans suck.”
“Portogallos is real,” Genie said.
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been there,” Genie answered. “Twice.”
“Isn’t Portogallos supposed to be on the galaxy perimeter?” he asked. “Can we make it that far?”
“Maybe,” Genie answered, “if we are lucky. Without power, and at our present velocity, we could drift to Gallos, but it would take us eons to reach our destination. And if we are forced to change course, our drift through the vacuum might be permanent. I will attempt to repair the cruiser’s engines. If I am successful, it would hasten our voyage.”
“OK, Genie-baby,” Grimes said. “Let’s get to work.”