6:00pm GMT Friday 10 January 2085
The Acceleration Room was a single-floor room containing many rows of seats. Zak entered the room at the aisle on the left side. Each row was laid along the direction of the curve. Zak couldn’t see the right-hand end of the rows, because the floor curved up so far it was obscured by the low ceiling. Even so, he estimated that he could see hundreds of seats, probably enough to sit everyone on the ship.
Close to the entrance on the left hand wall was a door clearly marked with the lifeboat symbol. Zak needed to be near it.
Almost all the seats were already taken, so the family were stuck with the back row. This suited Zak just fine. He dawdled in order to get the seat on the end, next to Skye. The seats were soft, and each had a deep scallop shell shaped back to sink into. Thin panels reaching eye level divided each row, which doubled as screens.
‘How long do we have to stay in here?’ asked Zak.
‘Acceleration to maximum speed takes three hours,’ said Dad.
‘Three hours!’ wailed Skye.
‘Well, you can’t reach 800,000 kilometres an hour in ten seconds you know. There is a limit to the acceleration we can bear. Given that this is a passenger ship, they try and keep it comfortable.’
‘So how much is it?’ asked Zak.
‘We accelerate at 2g, twice the force of Earth gravity,’ explained Dad. ‘Unfortunately, that means we can’t walk around. Everything on the ship has to be screwed in, tied down or packed away. Including us.’
Zak absorbed that information. It was his last chance to escape, and he needed to know what was going to happen.
Almost as soon as everyone had settled down and fastened themselves in, the noise started. Zak immediately thought of a jet aircraft firing up its engines, but this was altogether deeper. A vibration rumbled through the ship.
Zak found it frustrating that there were no windows. He wanted to see the ship pulling away. He accessed the ship’s computer on the screen in front of him.
