Vapor Trail

Chuck, a test pilot, finds himself in a pickle while testing a spacecraft over the rings of Saturn

Chuck  stifled a yawn and disengaged the drive. Geez, six hours of continuous burn was exhausting!

Enormous chunks of ice flew past the canopy at incredible speed, making them appear like a solid sheet. The boredom of the last few hours clouding his judgement, Chuck rolled the craft over twice, ending the maneuver by pointing the canopy at the field of ice, and nudging the craft closer to the massive chunks that were silently flying past the canopy.

"Let's cut the hotdogging, Chuck!" said a disembodied voice within the cockpit. "Don't forget that this is a flight test, not a show."

With a sigh, Chuck rolled the craft back over to its previous position.

"Copy that. A roll is necessary prior to the return run."

"That's correct, but the test card states the roll is to occur at the beacon, not before. We don't rewrite the test cards mid-flight, Chuck."

At the moment, Chuck’s craft, the XLRS-11, was skirting a line on the planet’s icy rings that divided light from shadow. Eight hundred eighty six million miles away, the Sun cast its light toward Saturn. That light, after traveling through the vacuum of space for nearly an hour and a half, was now blocked by the gas giant.

A light on the instrument panel illuminated - a five minute warning before Chuck would reach the beacon that indicated the test-flight's half-way point. Suddenly, the ice was no longer a blur outside the canopy but a receding cliff, and the XLRS-11 was was in the empty space between Saturn and its rings. Chuck would be approaching the beacon in 3…2…1…

Chuck pulled on the stick to perform the prescribed roll while simultaneously firing the drive again. Only this time, the craft did not roll. There was no response from the flight controls and the XLRS-11 was now burning hard and fast straight down the barrel of the gas giant's gravity well.

Instantly awake and his heart in is throat, Chuck pulled at the stick in vain. The attitude jets were not responding. He reached forward and killed the engines.

“System reboot. Authorization Charley Bravo XP-86.” The lights in the cockpit went dark and the small craft continued to fall toward Saturn.

Chuck lifted a safety cover and flipped the power back to the “ON” position. The cockpit lit up again, but it took Chuck a moment to realize that the light was coming from outside the craft. His small spacecraft had begun to enter Saturn’s upper atmosphere and the friction was causing the outer skin of the craft to glow.

“Status report!” The voice from the radio again.

“I’m a little busy here!”

Chuck pulled on the stick gently, attempting to re-orient the craft so that it was descending into the clouds tail-first. He could feel the drag. It wanted to roll him over like he used to lie down and roll down the hill at his school when he was a boy. But this sort of uncontrolled roll was likely to rip his ship apart.

Without leaving time to talk himself out of it, he pulled hard on the stick, flipping the craft over nose to tail and jammed the throttle forward. At once, the engines ignited and his descent slowed.

A glance out the canopy provided a view unlike any Chuck had ever seen. The clouds were magnificent! They were enormous. The flames from his engines had ignited the cloud directly beneath him and fire danced away in the powerful winds.

As the craft began to climb out of the well, the sky darkened and the wall of ice loomed in front of him again.

“Let’s see what this baby can do.”

Chuck pressed the throttle the rest of the way forward, pushing the engines to their maximum capacity. Within moments, the ice wall flew past him and he was once again blazing a trail across the icy rings, the heat of his engines melting the ice as he passed, vapor rising up away from the rings and then slowing falling again like snow.