Flash

“You in control now.” He’s done his job. Now it’s my turn.

“How long until the flash?” I ask

Rocky pulls an Eridian clock off the wall. “Next flash is three minutes, seven seconds.”

“Okay.”

Rocky’s no dope. He left his ship set up to turn on its engines for a fraction of a second every twenty minutes or so, giving us a much-needed beacon. It’s easy enough to math out where the ship should be. But gravity from other planets, inaccurate measurement of last known velocities, inaccuracies in our estimate of Tau Ceti’s gravity…they all add up to make slight errors. And a slight error on the location of something orbiting a star is a pretty big distance.

So rather than hoping we can see Taulight reflect off the ship when we get to where it should be, he just set it up to flash the engines now and then. All I have to do is watch with the Petrovascope. It’ll be an extremely bright flash.

***

Chapter 24