Star Reporter in “A Hole Lot Of Trouble”

“Asgard”, an anxious elderly male voice called out, coming through the speaker of the blue two way satellite communicator round Asgard Stellan’s wrist, “Are you there Asgard? Answer me please”.

It was the voice of Asgard’s boss, Sir Roger Markham, chief editor of the Tomorrow Times; the Galaxy's and History's largest digital Futurezine; a newspaper that printed news from the future, promising to bring you “The News of Tomorrow, Today”.

Stellan was the papers top space and time travelling investigative journalist. He had been covering a story in the thirty-first century about an intergtalactic telesmuggling ring; a gang of criminals who used teleporters to smuggle stolen goods and even people across galactic state boundaries and had managed to infiltrate the gang by posing as an illegal space immigrant using a fake ID and a forged (genetically altered) DNA sample.

Unfortunately for him two of the gang’s members, two burly, tuxedo wearing cyborg clones called Mr Sticks and Mr Stones had followed him back to the orbiting space motel where he’d been staying and had been waiting for him outside his room with a reticular disruptor or knock out ray.

So now his entire left hand and arm were molecularly bonded to the pilots seat of a civilian astrocraft; its autopilot, which would not accept his verbal commands to switch to manual, set for the heart of a massive, whirling black hole.

“Well, whether you can hear me or not”, the old man went on, his voice turning from one of worry to excitement, “I just wanted you to know that the story you uploaded about uncovering the telesmuggling  ring is brilliant; your best work to date, Asgard. In fact, it’s so good that I’ve decided to put it on the front page of this evening’s edition of the Tomorrow Times”.

 

Asgard smiled,

 

“That’s great to hear, Sir Roger”, he said, “Although you may also have to make room for my obituary. ‘Star Reporter, Asgard Stellan dies after being kidnapped by tele-smugglers and molecularly bonded to the seat of an astrocraft set on course towards the heart of a gigantic black hole. That is unless I can think of a way out…”.

 

Asgard stopped, suddenly, in mid-sentence as his glance fell upon a bright yellow switch on the ships control panel marked “Artificial Gravity” and then an idea flickered across the reporters mind.

 

Sliding forwards in the pilots chair Asgard reached out with his left foot and brought down the heel of his boot upon the switch with a hard thud.

 

Suddenly, the humming sound of the ships artificial gravity generators stopped and Stellan felt the weight of his body disappear while, all around him, he saw the objects that had been lying in the pilots cabin float upwards and start to drift slowly through the air.

 

There was one object in particular he was interested in; every shipwrecked star-pilots friend; the Laser Very pistol; the 31^st century equivalent of a flare gun; powerful enough, he knew, for a stranded star pilot to project a holographic distress beacon from the surface of a planet  into space to signal a passing rescue ship; to help him start campfires and even perform minor surgical operations  and perhaps even, Asgard hoped, with its beam held at close range, melt through the steel and plastic arm of a pilot’s chair.

 

Hooking the floating pistol with the tip of his boot, he gave it a kick; not a hard kick but just hard enough to send it flying in his direction.

 

Then, opening his mouth wide and craning his neck, he caught the metal handle of the floating laser-flare gun in his teeth before, struggling to contort his body sideways, and taking the gun in his right hand he held its barrel against the arm of the chair but as far away from his own arm as he could manage and, pushing down upon the button that activated its beam, then saw the arm begin to glow bright red as the beam quickly raised the temperature of the metal and plastic to melting point.

 

He winced in pain as part of the beam that was cutting through the arm of the chair also touched his forearm burning a shallow smoking gash into his flesh but soon the laser had finished its work and, opening his mouth; sighing with relief, he let the gun float free then, twisting the arm forth and back to weaken it, with a swift yank, he broke the melted chair arm which was still stuck molecularly to his own arm, loose from the chair.

 

“And not a moment too soon”, he said as, floating up towards the ceiling of the craft, he looked down at the ships control panel and saw a computer graphic of a large, swirling black hole appear on the navigation computer screen.

 

“Warning!”, barked the ships computer, “Ship is approaching event horizon of supermassive black hole. Please disengage auto pilot and take immediate evasive action. Repeat. Please disengage auto pilot and take immediate evasive action”.

 

Using the toe of his boot to switch the artificial gravity back on; Asgard came crashing to the floor with a thud, wincing as he knocked his elbow against the wall.

 

But he had no time to worry about that; he had to act quickly if he didn’t want to become hole-food.

 

Dragging himself up and back into the pilots chair , Asgard  now jabbed the ‘switch to manual’ button with an index finger before taking hold of the ships steering column and pushing it sharply sideways, feeling, as he did so, the entire craft swerve and rotate in the opposite direction to the hole.

 

“Danger!”, said the ships computer, its synthetic voice sounding even more alarmed, “This ship is now approaching the border of the event horizon. Failure to take immediate evasive action will result in the destruction of the ship and all crew members on board”.

 

Asgard heard the rattle and then the clang of metal as steel parts were ripped away from the hull of the astrocraft by the gravitational pull of the black hole.

 

Quickly, hammering down his left fist he hit the switch upon the control panel which said, “Space Elasticator”, activating a device which, stretching the fabric of spacetime like an elastic band, could use it to catapult an astrocraft at speeds approaching lightspeed.

 

Then, before he could see it coming, suddenly, the astrocraft lurched forward,  the view of distant stars and galaxies through the main portal becoming a streaky blur of black and white, then, just as quickly as it had leapt forward, it lurched to a halt again, now a millionth of a parsec from its original position.

 

Asgard sighed heavily with relief.

 

“Good news, Sir Roger”, he said, speaking into his communicator, “You won’t have to run that obituary after all”.

 

“I knew you could do it, Asgard”, said Sir Roger, sounding jubilant, “You always manage to pull something out of the hat”.

 

“Or in this case, a black hole”, said Asgard.