Aphelion

An old theme set in the future. <br><br>Good story, I liked it. <br><br>I thought at first that some evil pirates were going to attack the ship, and the old guy would save them all by tapping into his experience! You know, flying by the seat of his pants! and overcoming the pirates by quick thinking and old tactics that were forgotten. <br><br>The story was easy to follow and held my interest. For me, that is always a must.<br><br>

It felt more like a vignette than a full-bodied story, but an interesting scene nontheless. <br><br>It's funny what Megawatts said. I actually had a feeling it was going to take a United 93 turn, but that's just me. Let a passenger in the cockpit? Just sounded kinda dangerous under current conditions.

An obvious scenario would be one where systems failures leave a current-generation crew at a loss as to how to navigate -- but Waters knows 'seat-of-the-pants' techniques that don't depend on current technology. Or is that a little too 'Space Cowboys'?<br><br>(Suppose an unauthorized mining operation uses a micronuke to nudge an asteroid into a more convenient orbit (or just blast away enough regolith to make mining easier) ... and the EMP, too close and concentrated for shielding designed to handle solar flare radiation, clobbers much of the ship's hardware ...)<br><br>Robert M.