The Rocket Ship

As Wordsworth continued her filing, and the rest of the librarians continued with their end-of-the-day tasks, the rocket ship drew closer and closer to Earth.



The ship was large enough to be picked up by Earth’s Distant Early Warning System, but none of the tracking systems recorded it, because it was not coming through normal space. Instead, it was slicing through dimension after dimension, like a drill boring through the pages of a book.

The pilot of the ship was a biped, humanoid in shape. He sat in the command chair, his fingers flying over the controls on the command console in front of him, as he desperately tried to gain control of the errant craft.

Nothing was working...nothing was going to work... The pilot came to that conclusion. His fingers stopped moving over the controls. There was only one thing for it, he decided. He sat back in the command chair and flipped open the left hand arm rest. Nestled within it was a red button. Interestingly enough, red buttons meant the same thing on practically every humanoid-occupied planet in the universe...(though few of their occupants had ever journeyed beyond their own planet’s atmosphere).

The pilot brought his fist crashing down on the button.

Immediately, the rocket ship's dimensional engine’s stopped firing. That meant that the rocketship could travel through no more dimensions...whichever dimension it was in was the dimension in which it would stay.

It also meant that the next time the ship attempted to pass through an impenetrable object by side-slipping into another dimension, it wouldn’t be able to do it. Instead, it would crash into that impenetrable object.

The pilot only hoped he would survive that crash.




Vocabulary
dimension - in science fiction terms, other universes that mirror ours.
biped - a two-footed animal
errant - deviating from the regular or proper course; not to be confused with its secondary meaning, such as "journeying or traveling."
dimensional engine’s - in science fiction, it's necessary to invent equipment and terminology. The reader, especially those who aren't technologically inclined, must simply extrapolate what the item named is being used for.
extrapolate - to infer (an unknown) from something that is known; to make an educated guess.
Nestled - to lie or be located in a sheltered spot
side-slipping - to slide sideways in a downward direction, toward the center of the curve described in turning
impenetrable - not penetrable; that cannot be penetrated, pierced, entered