Ben Franklin's Spaceship

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Silence on a spacecraft is a heart-stopping sound, for it means the air scrubbers have ceased working. Captain Jakeson snapped his eyes open and in the dim emergency lighting saw his clothes floating in a free-fall in the center of his cabin.

“Damn! The engines are dead!” Holding onto the edge of his bunk, he stabbed at the intercom button to call: “Bridge!”

The speaker remained silent.

He glanced out his window and saw that the giant saucer-shaped antenna was still intact. She looked like an umbrella towing a beer can. Franklin was the first electric powered spaceship, driven by microwave energy beamed across space. She converted the radiant energy into electricity, powering the ion engine complex. He had felt proud to be her master, setting new records of speed and endurance. The Franklin was the only ship that could travel funder constant acceleration, a fact that was driving the other aerospace transportation and supply companies out of their collective minds. It also changed the economics of Earth-Mars travel, substituting high-value goods for their usual passenger load. Indeed, a good chunk of the company’s net worth was tied up in this single cargo. Because of the sheer value of the mission, Jakeson had resigned himself months earlier to the possibility that his brand new ship just had to be the target of corporate and political intrigue.

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