A hellish trip to the dead planet

'Get your butt over to the bridge, Val!' The unshaven, lean man yelled into the onboard microphone without bothering to take his feet off the control panel. If the technology cooperated, the engineer would arrive in a few minutes.

The captain looked discontentedly at the screen hanging diagonally above the control panel, which showed nothing out of the ordinary. The grid displayed the ship's position in the quadrant, with purple squares indicating the surrounding orbits. Or did so when there were any. This godforsaken corner of space was the worst place Commander Rashkin could imagine.

The flight had been long, as always. It had started off boring, yet it still gnawed at his nerves. Anyone who owned a ship like the Nimue was not assigned to first-class missions. Rashkin worked alone, renting out his ship and crew to the highest bidder. Ultimately, the money was barely enough for the necessary repairs, let alone a new ship.

The Nimue had a faster-than-light drive, but its technology was ten years out of date. Flights took about three times as long as those in a modern ship, so short-term jobs were out of the question. All that remained were the 'hellish tours', as Rashkin called them.

He had been unlucky in recent years. There had been trouble with the councils, and the Nimue was not always welcome at certain spaceports. Then he came across the ACS Corporation, or rather the 'All Clear Space Technology Labs'. Behind this impressive-sounding name was a company that disposed of hot scrap metal – and did so almost legally. Rashkin had a feeling that the legality of dumping hazardous waste on uninhabited planets would not be questioned for a long time. However, he knew that stupid questions would get stupid answers. So he wasn't unhappy about the jobs, even if it meant spending eight weeks on the road per trip. The last five times, he had flown to the same destination: a dead planet in a small system.

The buzzing of the door snapped him out of his thoughts. He looked up and saw the chief engineer enter the bridge. Val Sorenson was a talented improviser when it came to technology and something of a confidant. In Commander Rashkin's case, that meant Val knew about the dangerous nature of the cargo attached to the ship by a gigantic dragnet and that his share of the payment was almost as high as his own. In fact, the Nimue depended on Sorenson. He could move mountains when it mattered, and his large share was still more bearable than the cost of long-overdue repairs.

Sighing, Rashkin lifted himself up and addressed the engineer. 'How's it looking, Val? It won't be long before we reach those damn fields of ancient scrap. How are the shields holding up?'

Sorenson shrugged and grinned. 'They'll probably last that long, Captain. Just don't rev up too early.' The people on the Nimue weren't very formal – there were more important things at stake. Rashkin sighed. When Val grinned, it meant it would be enough, and that was enough for Rashkin, too. 'OK, Val. Let's see if we can get through this in one piece.' With another grin, the sturdy blonde man turned and left the bridge.

Rashkin really hoped that this would be the last flight to this location, as the huge rings surrounding the pile of rocks were made up of nothing but space debris. Rashkin often thought that quite a few archaeologists would have got their money's worth here, because there were practically pieces of everything, from tiny fragments to entire ancient space stations. He had even managed to make out what he thought were inscriptions, but of course he couldn't read them. They were archaic, but he was sure that if he ever met a collector, he could sell the coordinates for a lot of money.

The difficulty lay in getting through these fields without punching huge holes in the Nimue's shell. The shields were supposed to take care of that, but they weren't built for this kind of thing. Sorenson had a few tricks up his sleeve, but it was still better to get out of there as quickly as possible. You had to be extremely skilful to steer close enough to the planet. The dragnet was equipped with propellants that would shoot it through the atmosphere and out of sight. However, that was a matter for the ACS. Rashkin simply transported the equipment and ignited the propellants.

A beep sounded, prompting the captain to look at the screen. Sure enough, a small object was flashing past the Nimue. And then another. Rashkin knew from experience that the beeping would soon turn into a single, long tone. It was time to send the crew to their positions. Besides himself and Sorenson, there was a radioman and a navigator – good people who had their own reasons for signing on to the Nimue. He had never asked them, as it had become clear that they could be relied upon – and that was enough for him. Rashkin filled all the other vacant positions on the ship himself. He was an excellent ship's gunner, among other things. He looked around to make sure the entire crew was present on the bridge, except for Val, of course. Then the tricky part began.

The next two days were hellish. Concentration could not be allowed to slip for a moment, and nobody could leave their post. Everyone did their best, if only out of sheer willpower. The crew were used to this, working hand in hand to do their jobs precisely. It was impossible to doze off for more than an hour at a time. This mission demanded everything from the ship and its crew.

After four days, when the alarms became less frequent and then stopped altogether, the entire crew were exhausted but in high spirits. Rashkin threw a party, which in his case meant pouring each crew member a generous measure of his precious Antarani wine brandy, while grinning and swearing at this 'contaminated wasteland'. After taking the first sip, the navigator said: 'I can live with not having to fly to this final disposal point anymore, Captain. It seems like everyone has been dumping their trash here for centuries.'

Rashkin was in an unusually chatty mood. 'This world was once inhabited', he said. Val Sorenson raised his eyebrows. 'That must have been a very, very long time ago. This is nothing but a gigantic garbage dump. It's hard to imagine that there was ever life here. What's this planet called, anyway?' Captain Rashkin glanced briefly at his log and replied casually: 'Earth.'

© 'A hellish trip to the dead planet': A short story by Pressenet (translated by Izabel Comati), 12/2025. Image credit: Spaceship on a dead planet, CC0 (Public Domain Licence).