This is the story of our choice that we wrote for the project. We also have a map of the ship's intended course and the new course.

The New Course
By: Samantha E. Foster
Team Plomet Author

Back home nobody would’ve thought that Carver Mackay would amount to anything more than being a computer geek. Well I proved them wrong! I was on a trip to Pluto, the first trip to Pluto ever!

My computer was woven into the monitor kind of like the solar sails we’re going to use. The solar sails were the coolest things I had ever seen in my life. The thinnest material known to man was used to make them. My company, Astro Corp, developed computers that could only be seen by a microscope and wove them into the fibers used to make the sails. There was a tiny antenna at the center of each sail, which received signals from earth.

The spaceship was attached to center of the sails. Powerful winds from the sun propelled us and nearly eliminated our need for rocket fuel which is why the sails were called Solar Sails.

My job on the ship wasn’t very exiting, but it was important. I used a computer to make sure that the ship was staying on course and that none of the equipment was failing. I also had to check all the supplies such as food, oxygen, water, fuel and other things. My computer didn’t have a keyboard. All I had to do was speak to the monitor and my words would appear on the screen. But not even my advanced technology could stop what happened only two weeks into the project.

I noticed that Argos was starting to veer off track. I switched on my headset and informed the captain, "Mackay to Captain Benstoner, Mackay to Captain.”

"Captain here. Mackay what’s the problem?”

"We have Code Black on our hands here, Captain.”

"What?!”

"Um…give me a second…,” I was talking to the computer too fast for it to understand a lot of what I was saying and using all the passcodes I could think of to find out exactly what the problem was. I laughed nervously and continued, "It looks like the navigational systems are down.”

"Well can you get them up again?”

"I could though it could take months. I’d have to basically reprogram everything in the whole ship. I was the one who programmed it first, and that took 3 months. This time I have to find out exactly what part of the program isn’t working, then I have to write over it and that could take a great deal of time”

"Well, get it done ASAP.” As I spoke I began to realize the true problem. I had been working on getting to the navigational programs; the navigation system was guarded with 10 passwords. I was on the last one, and it didn’t work. I tried about twenty times before I realized what the problem was. The navigational programs were working fine, but the course wasn’t what I had programmed. Somebody had penetrated the system and changed the last password, and changed the ships course.

"Captain, the navigational program is in perfect condition. Somebody has changed the course.”

"What do you mean somebody has changed the course? I thought those passwords were only known by you and Astro Corp!” he took a deep breath, "Ok, well, have you tried changing it again?

"Umm…no. I don’t have the right password and I’ll just be doing guesswork until I have it.”

"Well, hurry Mackay, I won’t have this kind of thing on my ship.”

"Yes, sir.”

There was perspiration dripping off my nose and my glasses kept fogging up which slowed the process of guessing the password quite a bit. That night, I stayed up working until my head dropped down on the desk before me.

Sometime later I woke up and tried to guess at the password yet again. Nothing worked. I just decided to keep working on it until I found something that did.

A month passed and I was still sitting at the computer, I’d had little sleep, usually just falling over on my desk from exhaustion. I let my face go unshaven, and my eyes were bloodshot from staring at the computer screen. I was growing thin from not taking the time to eat. My voice was hoarse from constant talking to the computer. At times I wished for an old-fashioned keyboard.

I checked our coordinates about every hour to see if I could figure out where we were headed. One day I figured out the pattern and told Benstoner, ”I figured out where we’re headed Captain. If I don’t get the course reset in 3 weeks we’ll be intersecting the orbit of Chiron. It’s one of the Centaurs, discovered in the mid-70’s and 80’s. First the Centaurs were thought to be asteroids until Chiron went around the sun and a coma was discovered. A coma is a comet tail, it’s kind of like-"

"Carver! I know what a coma is! I also know what Chiron is. Six years ago Astro Corp was panning a mission to Chiron. I was part of the planning committee. We decided to drop the plan. One of the members was very mad. So mad in fact, that he left Astro Corp.”

"Captain, do you think he could be the one that hacked into the ships navigational systems?”

There was silence in the headphones as the full effect of what had happened began to hit us. There was little chance that I would find the 10th password and get back into the navigational systems.

When he finally spoke he told me that Astro Corp had wanted to go to Chiron mainly for money. There were valuable minerals there and those minerals could bring in billions of dollars. The person who left was mad because he was only in it for the money. It was likely that he had an accomplice on the ship. It was also highly likely that we would never get to Pluto.