My short story "Marooned in the Tarantula Nebula" was just published in The Story Shack:

Bring her in the captain We don't want any surprises.

The Saratoga was a ten-ton vessel, fast and eminently maneuverable, with a propulsion system that was top-of-the-line. It was the first ship to visit the Tarantula Nebula and the crew was well-aware of the momentousness of the event.

It had been an eight-month voyage, uneventful, launched from Earth in the year 3157. The forty-eight crew members were veterans of space exploration, having visited between them thirty-six comets, eighty-four asteroids, sixty-two planets, and twelve star systems.

But this mission was different. This was to pilot a vessel into an enormous cloud of gas and dust.

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