“Gravity still here,” says Rocky, echoing my own observations.

I check the Nav console. Our velocity is good. We’re in a stable orbit around Adrian. Well, actually it’s ugly as heck—the apogee is 2,000 kilometers farther from the planet than perigee. But it’s an orbit, darn it. And it’s stable.

I check the Spin Drive panel again. All three drives are at zero. No thrust at all. I delve into the diagnostics screen and confirm that each of the 1,009 revolver triangles spread throughout the three drives is stationary. They are.

I let my arm fall again. It does the same strange movement. Down and to the left.

Rocky does a similar motion with one of his arms. “Adrian gravity, question?”

“No. We’re in orbit.” I scratch my head.

“Spin drive, question?”

“No. It’s offline. There’s zero thrust.”

I let my arm fall again. This time it hits the armrest of the seat.

“Ow!” I shake my hand. That really hurt.

I let it fall again as an experiment. It fell faster this time. That’s why it hurt.

Rocky pulls several tools from his jumpsuit bandolier and drops them one at a time. “Gravity increasing.”

“This doesn’t make any sense!” I say.

I check the Nav panel again. Our speed has increased considerably since I last looked. “Our velocity is increasing!”

“Engines on. Only explanation.”

“Can’t be. The spin drives are off. There’s nothing to accelerate us!”

“Force increasing,” he says.

“Yes,” I say. I’m having trouble breathing now. Whatever we’re at, it’s much higher than a g or two. Things are getting out of hand.

With all my strength, I reach to the screen and cycle through panels. Navigation, Petrovascope, External View, Life Support… each one seems completely normal. Until I reach “Structure.”

I’d never paid a lot of attention to the Structure panel. It’s just a gray outline of the ship. But now, for the first time, it has something to say.

There’s an irregular red blotch on the port fuel tank. Is that a hull breach? It could be. The fuel tanks are outside the pressure vessel. They could have a huge hole in them and we wouldn’t lose air.

“There’s a hole in the ship…” I say. I struggle to switch back to the external cameras.

Rocky watches my screen with his camera and texture pad. He’s doing fine—no problems at all from the tremendous forces.

I angle the cameras around to look at the affected hull.

And there it is. A massive hole in the port side of the ship. It must be 20 meters long and half as wide. The edges of the hole tell the tale—the hull melted.