They had been decelerating for twelve days when Karen was finally able to get images that were better than those available from ELT.  The disk coming through on the monitor was showing noticeable marking now, although still rather faint.  At that distance, there was very little sunlight to reflect back to the Seeker.  She spent hours carefully going over the images, constructing a map of Amunet’s surface.  At that point it was only a crude map.  More and more detail would be filled in as they approached the planet.  This was extremely important work, as it would save time when they entered orbit around Amunet and began the close-up observations.  Picking a landing spot – or two – was of paramount importance.

It had been decided that only two of the crew could go down to the surface at a time, the others staying up in the Seeker.  Since Adrian and Karen were the only ones shuttle pilot qualified, one of them would have to go.  It had been decided before the launch that the first team to descend to Amunet’s surface would be Adrian and Chen, the geologist.  The first landing would be for only a short time, just enough to gather some samples – soil and rock if nothing more interesting was not available – and return to the Seeker.  So it appeared that the honor of being the first human to set foot on Amunet would fall to Adrian, a fact he seemed very pleased with.

“You’ll go down in history as the first man on Amunet,” Karen told him.  “The rest of us will also set foot there, but who will remember us?”  She was smiling when she asked, “Do you remember who was the second person to set foot on the moon?”

“Buzz Aldrin,” he immediately replied.  “See, I do my homework!”

“Second place is fine with me,” Chen added to the conversation.  “I am more interested in seeing the rocks and soil and formations.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll get your turn,” Adrian advised Karen.  “Question is, which one of you will be the first woman to set foot on Amunet?  You will probably go down together, so who will be first?  Will there be a scramble to get out of the shuttle?”  He was grinning as he spoke.

Karen did not reply.  She had not thought about the landing that way.  It was enough to know that she would one day be setting foot on that mysterious world she had first heard about so long before.  Glancing over at Gloria, she saw the scientist blush.

Each passing hour brought improved images of Amunet, more and more surface detail coming out.  On the whole, the planet appeared much like the moon does to the naked eye.  There were darker patches that could pass for the maria, and lighter places that might be mountain ranges.  The whole planet was covered with a dimly reflecting coating, the atmosphere that had frozen and deposited itself on the surface as Amunet sped away from the warmth of Tau Ceti.

Karen sometimes wondered what it would have been like for any creatures alive on the planet.  If intelligent, and they should be based on the radio signals, they would know what was happening and that their whole civilization was doomed.  She wondered how she would feel if the Earth was dragged out of the solar system.  The temperature would drop day by day.  The days would grow dimmer as the world moved farther away from the sun.  With the solar heating changing, so would the weather patterns.  Would there be massive storms?  Snow falling on deserts that had never seen such before?  Eventually all of the planet would become like Antarctica, a barren, frozen wasteland.

And of the people?  It would become a constant struggle to fight off the freezing cold, to find food, and eventually even air as the atmosphere began to freeze and fall to the ground.

She shuddered and forced herself to stop thinking about it.

As a diversion, she asked Chen if those lighter colored patches could be the remains of oceans.

“Very possibly,” he replied.  “We have been realizing that water is more common in our solar system than we had thought.  There was a fair amount of water on Mars, mostly a few million years ago.  But the astronauts found that water could be reached in some places by digging.  Titan has an almost planet-wide lake of water beneath its surface.  A planet the size of Amunet, if at the proper distance from Tau Ceti, could very well have oceans on the scale of Earth’s.”  He paused, as if thinking.  “You could ask Gloria.  I think she’ll tell you that an ocean is pretty much a requirement for life to develop.  And since life did occur on Amunet...”

At her usual place in the telescope blister, Karen was running images of Amunet when Gloria dropped by.

“Is that the current view of Amunet?” she asked, pointing to the screen.

“Yes.  Just processing it.”

For a while they watched as the image enhancement software cleaned up the image.  “You can see where there were oceans,” Karen commented.  “Chen says that is the most likely explanation for those lighter patches.  There are impact craters pretty much distributed over the whole surface.  Traveling through space for over two hundred thousand years will pick up some scars.  Mostly probably when Amunet went through Tau Ceti’s Kuiper Belt.”

“It’s my turn to cook,” Gloria said.  “Hope you like spaghetti.  That’s Adrian’s favorite dish.”

Without thinking, Karen blurted out, “You really like him, don’t you?”

Without any sign of embarrassment, the dark hair woman replied, “And he likes me.  Quite a bit.”

Having not seen any sign of this from their Mission Commander, Karen was surprised.  Perhaps it showed on her face, for Gloria laughed.  “We’ve had some long talks during our watches.  We have a lot in common.”  She laughed again, louder.  “We both like taking hikes in the forests, skin diving in the Mediterranean, and…” she paused, “sex.”

“Sex?”  Karen was unable to keep her surprise out of the word.

“Sure, honey!  You do know about sex, don’t you?  You were married, right?”

“Well, sure, but I had no idea…”

“Adrian can keep a secret very well.  I’m more of a blabber mouth.”  She was enjoying shocking Karen.  “We’ve had a torrid affair going since shortly after launch.”

“I guess you do keep it hidden well…”

“He’s such a hunk,” Gloria went on.  “But you know what is the best part of him?  He is so very good in free fall!”

“Free fall?  You mean…”

“Honey, you haven’t enjoyed sex until you’ve done it in zero gee!”

Karen was saved from further embarrassment by her comm button.  It was Adrian calling her.

“Karen, you had better get up here,” he said.  “Something is happening.”

With a quick glance to the smiling Gloria, and sensing the worried tone of his voice, she hurried to shut down the telescope and make her way to the flight deck.  She immediately saw a flashing red warning on the nav computer monitor.  She hurried to her chair.

“The nav computer began indicating course corrections were required,” Adrian told her.  “Something is pulling the Seeker off course.  That unknown body that is also making Amunet vary, maybe?”

“Probably,” she muttered as she began typing in orders for course data display.  The next couple minutes were spent in silence, save for faint sound the keyboards being used heavily.

“I’m feeding in our course adjustments, along with the deviations of Amunet.  The computer should be able to tell us what is causing both, now that we have more data.”  A few moments later: “Got it!  There is a large body fairly close to our course.  I’ll use the estimated coordinates to determine how much we have to alter our course.”  Then, a few moments later, “Damn!  We’re going to pass close to that thing.  And it’s going to require serious adjustments to keep on our planned trajectory.”  Her fingers were busy on the keys, her features frowning as she began feeding orders into the nav computer.

“Adrian, we’re going to have to rotate the Seeker.  The engine gimbals aren’t enough.  We need to vector the main thrust.”

She was referring to the small motors that could slightly change the direction of the exhaust to change the direction of flight.

“I’ve got the corrections down.  Crap!  You’re going to have to flip the Seeker damned near ninety degrees.  Even with that, we’re going to come awfully close to that thing.”

“Orders loaded in,” Adrian said.  “Executing!”

They could feel the Seeker turning in its attempt to avoid an object the size of a small planet.

“Increasing thrust,” Adrian said.

A few moments later, Gloria stuck her head in and asked, “What the hell is happening?”

“KBO almost dead ahead,” Karen told her.  “It’s that one that has been pulling Amunet off its predicted course.”

“We’re going to miss it, right?”

“We should.”

“Should?  I don’t like the sound of that.  Are we getting heavier?”

“Increased thrust.  We’re almost up to one G,” Adrian told her.

Gloria came in and stood behind Karen’s chair.  “How soon?” she asked in a whisper.

Karen touched a couple of keys before replying.  “Closest approach will be in five minutes.”

“Will we see it?  This KBO thing?”

“We’re still heading towards Amunet at about 500,000 miles per hour.  It will be a blur at best.”

Chen’s voice came from behind them, “Something is wrong?”

Karen explained quickly.  Chen had nothing to say but stood there, his eyes fixed on the monitor with the flashing warning.

The Seeker’s path, as it hurtled through the vacuum sideways, engine spewing out super heated plasma, bent as it approached a strong gravity source.  Digits constantly changed on the monitors, telling a tale of a spacecraft trying its hardest to avoid a collision.  At the speed they were traveling, faster than the average meteor plunging to its fiery death in the Earth’s atmosphere, it would not crash.  It would explode, leaving a fresh crater to pockmark this KBO.