AVP Prey 1

"Jesus, you are so damned close-minded-whoa!"

Scott waved his hands over the controls, trying to get a fix on the blip. Here in the middle of the Big Deep, where there was nothing but their vessel and occasional hydrogen atoms to bounce off it, something had just shot past them so fast it wasn't even a blur. And gaining speed like a bitch, too. Okay, yeah, it was a couple hundred klicks away, but out here, that was almost a sideswipe.

"Goddamned cheap fucking doppler!" Tom said, trying to get the computer to adjust its scan. "What the hell was that? A ship?"

"Not hardly. That acceleration would probably turn people into seat pancakes. Nova debris, maybe, old rock spat out by a real big planet-buster blast."

"Yeah? Maybe it's God on His way to the Final Reckoning. Better scrub your conscience clean, Scotty."

"I'm just a grunt, pal, don't blame me for the way the universe gets run."

"Fucking spectrograph missed it altogether." He slammed the heel of his hand against the console. Nobody wasted any money on these ships for such things as decent hardware.

"Like we were going to chase and catch it even if it was solid platinum, right?" Scott smiled. "It's not our job, buddy. One more rock in the dark, who cares?"-pg.2-3 chpt.1