Chapter 1.
Atom sat in the cockpit of the experimental deep space transport. So far his mission had been rather boring, the computerized robot ship had been performing perfectly. The Spindrift was the Ministry of Science's latest development, and Professor Ochanomizu was optimistic that the craft would enable the exploration of the outer regions of the solar system.
“Day eight, and I'm already beyond the orbit of Neptune,” Atom dictated into the ship's log. “My speed has already passed twenty percent of C, and is still increasing. With any luck I'll reach the edge of the Oort cloud soon, and then the Heliopause as well.”
The boy robot closed the log recorder and busied himself with scanning his instruments again. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he'd noticed one of the indicators twitching into the yellow zone, but at the moment all of the system readouts were now in the green. It must have been a glitch, but that worried him.
Atom turned on the telescopic view port and swung the field of view in a 360 degree arc around his ship. Except for the stars glowing brightly against the backdrop of space, there was nothing unusual to observe. One hundred eighty degrees behind him, the telescope picked up the dim image of a blue green dot against the inky blackness. Atom sighed as he stared at the tiny, almost invisible dot that he knew was his home, the Earth.
Suddenly, an alarm sounded. Atom quickly spotted the readout that was now glowing red, the same one that he had seen subliminally minutes ago blinking yellow. It was the gravity field indicator, and it was giving a clear warning that the ship was caught in a very strong gravitational pull. Right ahead of him, filling his view screen the very fabric of space seemed to be shimmering like the air above a hot asphalt road during the hottest part of a summer day.
“What's going on?” Atom asked himself. He debated going EVA to get a better look, but the ship lurched forward like a fishing floater bob, after the bait had been swallowed hook, line, and sinker by a whale. His computer brain had already analyzed the available information now quickly scrolling down the main computer monitor screen, and he had a good idea what had suddenly grabbed hold of the Spindrift. Atom quickly entered a course change directive into the navigational computer and activated the change. The ship bucked like a bronco as the hyper drive shifted into full power.
He made another entry into the ship's log, and transmitted his status back to the Ministry, though he knew it would be many hours before the radio transmission would be picked up. “All the instruments have suddenly gone bananas,” Atom spoke into the microphone. “It seems that the ship has entered the sphere of influence of a mini black hole that is orbiting the outer regions of the Oort cloud. I haven't been able to break free of its gravity, though I'm hoping I can sling shot the ship around it.”
The distortion in the view screen increased as the ship accelerated. Atom felt the G forces building, and he was squashed down into his seat, unable to move. Being a robot he didn't black out from the gigantic weight that his body felt pressing down on him, but he couldn't move either. The ship began to spin as its momentum flung it in a tight arc around the invisible body that had tried to suck it into the well created in the space-time by its incredible mass. It seemed like an eternity, but eventually the G forces began to ebb, and the space in front of the ship began to take on its proper appearance once again. Most of the ship's power systems were now off line, in executing the high power maneuver to escape from the black hole, he had used up almost all of the ship's fuel, and had damaged a few critical systems.
Atom, now able to move, took a look around his craft with the telescopic scanner. None of the constellations of stars looked familiar to him, it was as if the ship had been thrown many light years from its previous position into another region of the galaxy, or even another galaxy! Directly ahead of him was a blue green planet. Except for the fact that the various land masses looked nothing like the shapes of Earth's major continents, the planet could have been a twin of the one he'd left a bit over a week ago.
The Spindrift was being pulled into orbit around the world, and there was nothing that Atom could do to prevent that. He hoped that if he could somehow make a soft landing, he might be able to effect repairs, that is if he could locate a source of the rare elements that served as fuel for the hyper drive.
Elvis Costello flinched from the pain inflicted on his digit from the tip of the hot soldering iron. “OUCH!” he yelled, dropping the tool and sticking his finger into his mouth to cool the skin, which had already started to blister. “Damn it!”, he yelled, “this bot is cursed!”
Dick Murphy tried to suppress a burst of laughter, but still released a bit of a cackle. “Sorry Elvis,” he smirked, “Looks like you'll never get that stomper working. I told you that a tank bot was the way to go.”
“Ugh!”, the younger man grimaced. “Tanks have no personality. I'm going to get this humanoid walker going if it kills me. It may not have the mass of your heavy beast, but it will be much more maneuverable.”
“And defenseless,” Murphy added. “Battle bots have to inflict damage to win, they can't just keep getting out of harms way.”
“I've got some secret weapons under development that nobody knows about yet,” Costello countered. “If I could only finish the computer systems without soldering myself!”
Dick moved in closer to get a better view of the small circuit board that his friend was trying to build. “That think is too tiny, how can you see what you're doing?”
“With great difficulty,” Elvis agreed, as he removed the magnifier glasses from his face.
The hull of the Spindrift glowed a dull orange color as it fell through the upper atmosphere of the planet. Atom was now close enough to the surface to make out details on the major land masses. He could clearly identify what looked like towns and cities, this world was clearly inhabited by an intelligent civilization quite similar to the Earth. With that in mind, he tried to control the ship's re-entry flight pattern to land outside of any major city, he didn't want to be discovered by the inhabitants until he was sure they weren't hostile. As he got closer to the ground he became aware of the matter of scale, the structures on the ground were huge compared to those on the Earth, he quickly realized that the beings inhabiting this world were much larger than Earth humans.
The ship was now bouncing around violently as it hit the denser parts of the atmosphere. Without power, he would have to glide in, with no opportunity to make a second pass if he chose a bad landing site. Atom now rapidly scanned the ground below, looking for a suitable spot to attempt to safely set the Spindrift down. The controls were sluggish and heavy, he realized that he'd have to plan each maneuver long in advance, an almost impossible task. At the last possible moment, Atom spotted a clearing in the middle of what looked like a sparsely populated area. He attempted to make a final course change to reach it, but the ship responded like a giant ocean liner to his inputs, making the turn much too slowly as it rapidly lost altitude. Suddenly the roof of a large building filled his view screen, and the ship came to a violent stop as it crashed into the structure.
Elvis awoke from a troubled sleep from what sounded like a thunderclap. The entire house shook from an impact that seemed to come from directly over his bed. Elvis looked up at the ceiling and saw paddle fan above him now swinging slowly back and forth on its mounting. There was a new crack in the wall where it met the ceiling. “Something crashed into the roof,” he thought.
Costello got out of bed and grabbed a flashlight. Still wearing his pajamas, he walked into the hallway. He grabbed a chair from the dining room and placed it under the ceiling access hatchway for the attic crawlspace. The young man stood on the chair and pushed the panel open. He held the flashlight in his mouth as he pulled himself up into the ceiling, grabbing onto a joist beam next to the opening. Once inside, he scanned the torch about looking for the source of the jolt. The beam of his flashlight fell on a section of the roof which now sported a gaping hole in it. Lying below the new roof opening, on the floor of the space, sitting on a pile of fiberglass insulation, was a strange object. It looked like a model spacecraft, and it was visibly hot, still smoking, and scorched.