Fraq’s stern mouth flattened and his brow ribbed into a scowl. He grumbled in low notes. “Our goal was to rejoin my solar system. We must find it.”

Rachel said, “First, stay alive.” She gritted her teeth, using her sensogloves to battle thrust vectors. She had been dealing with the endless surges without thinking—pilot training paid off.

They tumbled, ass over entrails. Hot gas rushed by, prickly with blue and ruby glows. A huge gas giant world hung between them and a bright, sullen star. Her ship rocked and wheeled. A vast wind was driving them outward from the gas giant. Plus, the ship suddenly smelled… scorched.

This gas is blowing us away from the wormring. It is mostly molecular hydrogen, quite hot—thus the blue gas. It comes from a planetary atmosphere, being stripped away. We are very near the star, a fraction of Mercury’s orbital distance. The star is smaller than ours.

Rachel stared hard. The slightly reddish star was boiling away the gas giant’s surging atmosphere. In its orbit the world was like a gassy comet, tail pointing outward. A hellhole. The giant churning sphere was doomed, trapped to circle its tormenter while being slowly tortured, shredded.

A vast rosy plume erupted from the gas giant and curled toward Silver Metal Lugger. In the streaming gas spun a nasty, angry-red vortex. They were at its edge.

I cannot navigate in this. My supplementary piloting also is not capable of—

“Hey, I’m the damn pilot! I’ll take the helm.”

Rachel fought to turn the ship. Their reaction engines could barely muster enough thrust to compete with the winds here. Winds in space! she thought wildly. This is worse than that coronal arch… which we barely survived.

Even making a turn was hard. It was better to think of the days she had enjoyed sailing on warm Gulf waters. Tacking with the wind, then rounding on it when the vectors and torques allowed…

She got them swiveled around to take the billowing gas on their stern, slowing the tumbling pitch and yaw.

A knot of angry violet gas shot by them. Flaming debris hit their flank. Thumps, jars, screeches in the steel. The screens showed no pressure loss, but plenty of abrasion from the roasting, eating winds.

I can compile a grav potential map of this—

“No talk,” she spat out.

It took a long while to stabilize their course. They still rocked and veered like a sailboat in a hard storm.

Fraq peered at her sympathetically. He worked the attitude controls to help her. When she got her breath back, she jutted out her chin and barked, “Damn! We’re supposed to reconnoiter, then get back home. That’s all! This stuff is incredible.” She had never had an experience of flying in gassy space. No way to estimate the damage done to the ship, no clear navigation rules. “But—where’s the wormring?”

I have lost it. We moved quickly, blown away. I tried magnetically attaching a hailer as we departed, but it did not stick.