“Commander, what is this …..thing?” Dark eyes pleaded for an answer. “What trouble have we found now?”

One thought seemed to echo through the small ship’s bridge; “Haven”t we had enough bad fortune?’

The Vulcan scout vessel V’rak clung precariously to an asteroid. Twelve other stray ships from the original fleet were doing likewise, each clinging to its own chunk of rock, trying to conserve fuel. The robot arms of the ships were not designed for this stress and time was becoming an enemy. Three days before, during an ion storm, they had lost all contact with the main armada. The six hours they’d spent wandering through this strange asteroid field, and all the crew’s combined space experiences, had not prepared them for the situation in which they now found themselves.

Looking at the view screen, Commander T’sar pondered the question that had haunted him for several hours. The last contact his ship had with the rest of the fleet had been garbled and abruptly cut off. What happened to the rest of the fleet? With the majority of the fleet out of visual, and scanner, range for several days the question had to be asked, were they lost?

“I’m not certain what is happening to us, S’rel, other than the fact that we’re low on fuel,” T’sar stated as he glanced at the panel by his right arm. Its screen told him nothing new, and nothing helpful. He was unsure what to say to the crew. Nothing around them matched any of their star charts, telling him they were hopelessly off course. There was no way of knowing which direction would get them back on their original course. Some instruments needed for plotting a new course, damaged by the storm, were beyond repair without certain critical parts. The prospect of finding the way towards some outpost to obtain supplies, parts, and repairs, before current resources were exhausted, looked bleak.

The view screen glowed with a bright hole in a black background. Repressed fear reflected back from crew members eyes as they gazed, fascinated. The brilliant edges didn’t disguise a gaping maw in the center. As they watched a small asteroid, set in motion by the movement of another ship’s robotic arm changing positions, drifted into the thing and disappeared. Would it do the same with them? What would this monstrous thing do to them if they were sucked into it like that asteroid?