Free The Horicon Experience by Jim Laughter

Starduster . Akir Asmed, sitting in the control chair, grabbed the controls while at the same time he disengaged the autopilot. The book he was reading on interplanetary exploration and colonization went flying across the cabin.
    “George!” Akir hollered as he sought for the kill switch on the klaxon.
    “I hear it!” George shouted back. He sprinted forward from the bunk in his cabin and dove for the auxiliary panel, taking in the readings in a glance.
    “I’m showing a rupture in the port tank!” Akir shouted when the klaxon finally shut off.
    “Confirmed,” replied George from the aux station.
    “Captain,” Akir urged, “let me turn command back over to you.”
    “No, you stay right where you are,” George ordered. “Throttle us back to the low yellow arc until I can determine our situation.”
    “Yes sir,” Akir answered. He raised his right hand and firmly grasped the throttle bar that hung from the ceiling above the control seat. With deft pressure, he throttled the small craft back. The scout ship fell out of light speed and into the low yellow arc, a virtual crawl compared to the high-light velocity they had built up to notch by notch over the last four days. Stars that had previously been only streaks of light were now distant pinpoints in the darkness of space. The small ship shuddered and moaned under the stress of the sudden rupture of the port tank.
    “Can I help?” asked Akir.
    “You stay put!”
    Akir sat in the control chair where he had been the last few hours. He had his right hand on the throttle bar and his left hand firmly on the axis ball. He was exerting every ounce of strength he could to keep the small ship from spinning off into uncharted space. The one thing he did not want to do was spin off course and become lost in space. He had heard of ships, empty ships, found after being lost – ships usually found with evidence of a Red-tail attack. He could only imagine the horrible fates of the hapless crews.
    “Suit up!” George called to Akir after checking the environmental control console. “We may loose atmospheric integrity any minute now!”
    Akir locked the axis ball with a magnetic clamp and poured himself out of the control seat in a fluid motion. Crossing the cabin to the storage locker, Akir grabbed his clear pressure suit with one hand and tossed George’s across the control room with the other.
    Both men jumped into the form-fitting suits. The helmets fit firmly over their heads, the faceplates in their upright positions. Since they still had pressure, the faceplates remained open. Any sudden pressure loss would cause them to snap shut and stay that way until the air pressure equalized and cabin integrity restored.
    “We’ve got a problem,” George said to Akir. He tapped the indicator gauges that showed the relative pressure on the port and starboard tanks.
    “We’ve lost structural integrity in the port tank, and the starboard tank is trying to compensate,” George reported. “Unless we shut down completely, we’re going to lose both tank systems, which could cause the ship to explode.”
    “You mean implode, don’t you, Captain?” Akir asked.
    “Implode?”
    “Yes sir,” answered Akir. “Our repulsion field would prevent us from exploding, but the resultant pressure of a tank rupture would cause the repulsion field to crush in on us, causing us to implode, sir, not explode.”
    “We’ll argue terminology later if we survive this,” George snapped back. “Shut us. I’ll do what I can with the other systems.”
    “Yes sir!” Akir agreed, jumping back into the control chair. He released the magnetic clamp from the axis ball and slowly pulled the throttle all the way back to the number one position. Both the speed and the threatening gyrations of the ship decreased noticeably.
    “All the way off,” George ordered.
    “But sir,” Akir protested. “If we shut off all power, we’ll lose the repulsion field. We’ll be open to being hit by space