Chapter 1530: Reverse
Ning wasn’t sure just how long had passed since they started flying. Time was so easy for him to skip through if nothing interesting happened. He could spend a year strapped to his seat and he wouldn’t know it at all.
So, when the ship began slowly experiencing some sort of sideward force, he was confused as to just why that was.
He once again left behind an illusion of himself and teleported up to the top of the ship to see what was happening.
Up above, he saw that a few Attractors were being put to work, drinking Spark from a bottle that was next to them. Most of the individuals working there had been changed it seemed. These weren’t the same people working earlier.
However, the task remained the same.
They were multiplying gravity being focused on them from some other body. It took Ning only a moment to figure out what body that was.
Krimanax.
What other body could these people really use around here? Maybe a moon or two if they were close enough, but they were in empty space and the closest celestial body capable of influencing them with its gravity was the gas giant.
However, unlike the time when they had all increased Krimanax’s gravity to assist with their launch into outer space, this time the gravity was much weaker, being worked on by very few people.
Ning looked around and saw that no more than 5 people were even using Spark at the moment. And they were using the bare minimum amount of energy to do what they were doing.
Ning observed the scenario and quickly understood what they were doing.
On the way to Urelon, the ship had its bulbous top pointed toward the moon, and its thrusters away from it. However, as they got close, this would not help them at all.
These weren’t people who could just enter the moon. Considering what tiny atmosphere Urelon had, the ship would most likely be heavily destroyed upon reentry, and they couldn’t have that happen. They needed to be very careful.
As a result, they couldn’t go in headfirst and had to turn the ship around. There were no thrusters on the sides of the ship for such maneuvers, so they had to turn the ship well before they reached Urelon.
Ning thought that they could just park the ship in orbit and then slowly handle the tilting situation before going down to the moon, but with the technology he had seen in the ship, such precise interplanetary travel was a bit beyond these people.
All they could do was turn the ship around in advance and aim for the planet.
Turning at this point would mean that they could no longer thrust their ship forward, as the thrusters would be pointing toward the moon. There would be no more speeding up the ship.
But then again, the ship was already at the speed it was required to be in. By the time they arrived in Urelon, it should have decelerated enough that they didn’t burn crash into the atmosphere. Turning around now helped begin the deceleration.
‘We must be close to Urelon then,’ Ning thought.
He teleported outside of the ship and looked far away in the distance. He could, in fact, see a small glimmering moon coming into view. In about 2 hours, the humans would see it with their naked eyes too, as something more than just a spot of light.
The ship completed its rotation and was now facing the gas giant. It wasn’t fully turned toward the moon, but they would have to get close enough to the moon to do that. At that point, they could make all the adjustments that would be required.
As Ning watched, he noticed something to the side that surprised him a little. He saw a patch open from the side of the ship, a rather large patch.
Once open, a triangular object with an unusual pattern flew out from inside of it. Ning stared in utter amazement at what he was seeing.
It was a smaller spaceship.
He flew close to the triangular spaceship and saw a few people inside from the windows. They were all wearing tight-fitting spacesuits, and sitting in small seats inside the ship.
Ning counted 10 people in total, unsure what they were doing outside of the ship.
Was this a reconnaissance mission perhaps? Maybe they were trying to chart the astral map of the local cluster of stars.
These people lived underground for most of their lives, so stars weren’t something they could view anytime they wanted to. Maybe they were out here to observe deep space.
As Ning wondered, a powerful burst of steam released from the back of the tiny ship, propelling them forward in a peculiar direction. They were surprisingly headed toward Krimanax.
‘Are they on a suicide mission or what?’ Ning wondered for a moment. But not long after moving toward Krimanax, they changed their ever so slightly so that it wasn’t directly pointed toward Krimanax.
It was instead pointed toward… what was it pointed toward?
Ning looked in the direction of where they were headed and saw nothing more than a small asteroid belt surrounding the gas giant.
The asteroid belt wasn’t large or wide enough to be considered a ring of the planet, but it was there, moving at impossible speeds around the gas giant, given how much closer they were.
‘No way,’ Ning thought as a possibility struck him.
‘Are they… are they trying to go to one of the asteroids?’ he thought.
If it was, that was pretty bold of them, considering how dangerous the entire situation was.
They were flying into a ring of asteroid, each one moving fast enough that a single hit would destroy their ship, close to the gas giant which would suck them in if they did not have enough fuel to fly out of its gravitational pull.
Ning was very much interested in seeing just what these people were doing now.
So, without hesitation, he flew behind the ship, following them.
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