Chapter Four: The Icy Rings of Saturn

The trip would be a long one. Saturn is about 746 million miles away from Mars – more peanut butter and banana sandwiches than Fred could count. But Fred had new friends on the space ship to keep him company and he and Beebo created a special code to talk to each other. They all liked watching Beebo’s TV too. No one had ever seen so many episodes of the Power Rangers! By the time Fred’s team approached Saturn, everyone was quite sick of eating peanut butter and banana sandwiches and Beebo used his incredible TV assembly skills to install one on the space ship.

Saturn was soooo mysterious and the rings were like no other planet in the solar system. But Fred also knew that the rings were just as dangerous as they were magnificent because they are filled with icy water pieces made of all different shapes and sizes. And don’t forget about all the moons. At least 60 have been given names and some orbit Saturn within the rings that surround the great planet. Fred had to concentrate on his driving, and Chloe paid close attention to the ships navigation, constantly barking course changes to Fred.

They were not disappointed. At every turn, another clump of ice threatened to tear their ship apart. And each time, Fred and Chloe managed to avoid one without a scratch. But they had not counted on an undiscovered small moon in their path. It was more like a huge piece of uneven rock rather than round like our moon and it was as big as a school bus. Fred thought fast, he knew they were going to hit the moon, so he concentrated on avoiding a major collision. With expert steering and navigation barks from Chloe, Fred slid the space ship to scrape alongside the moon without hitting it head on. The impact jolted everyone out of their seats, and as Fred struggled to maintain control, the ship creaked and complained about the wounds it was getting. When the sounds finally stopped, the team checked the ship for damage and found that it was still in working order, but in much need of repair. Fred breathed a great sigh of relief. He was a very good pilot indeed. His dad would have been proud.

Once they cleared the last ring, Fred landed the space ship with hardly a sound, which seemed curious to Fred. He quickly realized that they were not on solid ground at all, and the space ship began to fall helplessly down toward Saturn. Maybe their luck had finally run out.

Written by Jodi Pereira and Lucas Pereira