Milky Way March

The Belt Stories, #3

Sarah gains her license; she is a captain,responsible for Skip Away, a massive freighter fresh from an overhaul. Her happiness lasts a few days into her first voyage. A wayward crewman, a greedy and stupid fool, hatches a plot that might kill everyone aboard, including himself. Sarah and her crew are lost in space, her maiden voyage suddenly become a nightmare. The situation squeezes her, and the frigid death of the Black closes in, as her options disappear and she desperately tries to find her way back to civilization and save her ship, her crew, and herself.

Jimmy is obsessed with finding her. That obsession becomes an avocation, then a job, then a career, then a life. He lives a simple life, establishes an enterprise in search and rescue, and becomes a minor celebrity, best-known for his rescues, renowned for extracting the famous and the terrified from the clutches of the Space Fiend. He saves hundreds of people, and when a space traveler looks through a porthole or display to see a suited figure with 'FULTON' inscribed above the left breast, they can begin to think they might live to see tomorrow.

But for all that, and not for lack of effort, Jimmy does not find Sarah.

Time passes. Eventually, everyone believes that she and her crew are dead, never to be found. But Jimmy keeps looking; he cannot do otherwise.

The story continues in Milky Way Gala.