You pull back on the control stick but the vortex rips it out of your hands. Before you can make another grab for it, a boulder of ice side swipes the ship. Your hand is knocked away from the controls and alarms go off at once. "Starboard boosters inoperable," the female computer calmly explains. Another smaller chunk then strikes but with much greater velocity causing the whole ship to shudder. "Air leak detected," the computer adds, explaining the high pitched hiss you begin hearing beneath you. "Cabin depressurization in approximately 6 minutes."
As your ship spins in the direction of the ice and water, you see one of obvious alien design come into view. Compared to your tiny craft it is gigantic. In fact, the thing sucking you in is but a little tube extending from the vessel's hull. You look in the opposite direction and see a field of icy asteroids and it dawns on you. 'They must be harvesting water.'
Without your thrusters all operating, you'd just wind up putting the ship in a spin if you tried the controls again so you let the water carry you along, hoping maybe that the aliens will detect your ship once within their storage tanks. Swirling about the tube like water above an open drain you travel in a tightening orbit of increasing speed. The centrifugal force squashes you against the out facing side of the ship, releasing you only once you are sucked into the tube's dark interior. There the water continues to carry you along. Lights from the ship illuminates a bland interior of endlessly segmented metal cylinders. From wall to wall the tube looks to measure 50 feet. Glad at least that the ship wasn't about to get jammed you turn your eye to a now more pressing dilemma: the rising pool of water at your feet.
"Computer?" you ask, "how long till the compartment fully floods." "Ten minutes," comes the unconcerned response. "Damn." While your thinking about your problem yet another rears its head. Just as you predicted the tube spits you out upon the frothing and rapidly rising surface of a titanic cistern, but you don't remain there for long. The metal ship sinks like a stone and within minutes its hull is creaking. "Maximum pressure limits exceeded." Your physics training reminds you that, for all its destructive nature, the vacuum of space can't hold a candle to pressure and ships designed to handle the former could rarely handle the later, yours included.
You wait because that's all you can do (the pressure outside would surely obliterate you in an instant) and to your relief the ship strikes bottom with a hollow metallic clang before crushing like a tin can. Peering out into the depths you see uniform blue and gray in all directions except to your right. There on the otherwise untextured floor of the 'ocean' a valve opens and contracts periodically sucking in water with it. In a flash of inspiration you remember your port- thrusters are still working and your hand goes for the stick. A couple brief blasts and the tubes suction does the rest pulling you down into the unknown.
Copyright 2000 - 2024 21 x 20 Media All rights reserved. This site is property of 21 x 20 Media
All Writing.Com images are copyrighted and may not be copied / modified in any way. All other brand names & trademarks are owned by their respective companies.
Generated in 0.12 seconds at 10:12am on Nov 24, 2024 via server WEBX1.
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author