Scraps to a Story #1

The coolant for the engine was running low. Five months from their destination, if the engine was shut off, inertia would carry them only until they were caught in the gravitational pull of an unknown black dwarf sun. The crew had already staked so much on this early colony, knowing that they would be preceded by others with light speed capability but from decades ahead of them. They would at best be anachronistic but to never arrive in Solar System B85A40, home of a steady but young Class A star, was a frightening thought. Coolant must be conserved. Though a simple heavy water compound, the ship was built as a passenger carrier without a functional lab past medical emergencies. The trip had already taken more time than expected. Under a new provisional government the former North-American Alliance had disassembled the Center for Aeronautic and Astronomic Research, earlier known as the American NASA, delays had been handled poorly and the collapse of the EU had made hard money for research nearly impossible to obtain. The simple matter was that Earth was starving. They would have to make due with the coolant they had.