What do you love or hate about Secret Attic? Tell us what you think in our poll.

Think you have what it takes?

Want to get some practice?

Just need an excuse to put pen to paper?

Then enter the Secret Attic Short Story Competition!

Each month you can submit an entry that will be passed onto our judges who will pick the best and award a winner. During some months the subject matter will be a 'free for all', where you can write anything you like, other months will have a specific theme.

Previous Competition Winners

February 2005 David Willshaw

April 2005 Christine Sutton

May 2005 George L Darley

July 2005 Robyn O'Hara

August 2005 Richard Adamski

September 2005 Hannah Southgate

October 2005 Heather Parker

December 2005 Feathers by Bob Lakin

January 2006 RD Larson

February 2006 Debra Spiller

March 2006 Nethi Sette

April 2006 Joe Louis

May 2006 Kim Montgomery

Love of Literature by Raymond Hopkins, Kronoby, Finland

Missing by Debra Spiller, Kent, UK

Diary of a Ghost by Suzanne Ralphson, Leicester, UK

Shreds of Love by Irene Edwards, Angus, UK

Lip Service by Will Orr-Ewing, London, UK

Red by Gary Campbell, Mount Gambier, Australia

Leaving The City In Ruins. by Trevor Nicholl, Manchester, UK

One For The Watercooler by Simon Maltz, London, UK

My Own Personal Time Machine by David Darlington, Guernsey, Channel Islands, UK

Women and Me and My Mate Jamie by David Darlington, Guernsey, Channel Islands, UK

Collecting Footsteps by Annemaria Cooper, Glasgow, UK

The Burning Tree by Daniel Michael Manning, Bath, UK

As Still as Statues by Patrick Johnson, London, UK

The Bonestripper's Bait by Ben Schroeder, Melbourne, Australia

Apple Juice by Raymond Hopkins, Kronoby, Finland

A Matter of Energy by Asher Wismer, North Wayne, Maine, USA

The port coils glimmered, trace sparks rushing blindly along the woven metal until they grounded and died in the barren rock. The starboard coils had fared the explosion better, though they were butted up against the twisted remains of the skiff, and firing them would probably cause a fatal blowback into the reactor. As it was, the port coils were well and truly fused in the asteroid; they’d need to be cut out, and the Silas Englebert didn’t have that kind of heavy equipment on board.
Chief Executive Officer Robert Perry of the Earth/Space Mining Fleet brooded in his small office. The mission had been flawless; still was flawless, except for this minor inconvenience.
Well, maybe a little worse than an inconvenience, what with the potential death of everyone on board. Still, all things considered, the situation wasn’t too too bad; they were within a week’s voyage from Earth, E.S.F. Command had confirmed receipt of the distress signal (before their line-of-sight had been blocked by asteroidal rotation), and they were fairly well off for food and power.
Admittedly, burrowing into the asteroid to avoid the five-day radiation storm might not have been the best course of action; the Englebert had perfectly serviceable radiation shielding, but telemetric data had confirmed the storm to be of significantly higher rad-count than normal. Accordingly, Perry had weighed the options and decided to use the Englebert’s atomic thrusters to burn into the massive asteroid, thus putting a solid expanse of rock between their fragile DNA and the unrelenting Alpha and Beta particles.
The faint ping of the intercom roused him. “Captain? We have a situation.”
Amused, Perry replied, “You mean more of a situation?”
“ The reactor’s down.”
Several minutes later, Perry stood, spacesuit clad, and gazed with irritation at the melted hulk of the internal reactor. Next to him, Chief Engineer Robert Backus poked halfheartedly at the wreckage. “We were checking the power levels and suddenly the whole board went red. I got all my men out in time, but the reactor’s utterly destroyed. We think it was blowback, or maybe losing the port coils threw the reactor couplings out of alignment.”
“ What does that mean for power?”
“ Backup batteries. That’s it. We might be able to rig some kind of thermal leech to get power out of the reactor until it cools down. Or we could get out the treadmills and run.”
“ I take it the reactor is irreparable.”
“ You’re looking at it. Without the proper containment, we don’t have a prayer. We’re just lucky it melted down and contained itself instead of blowing.”
Perry sighed and turned to leave. “Backus, gather the senior staff and get a report together on our options.”
The senior staff of the Englebert wasn’t all that senior. Because of the rigors of space travel and the deterioration of the human body in zero-gravity, flight crews were generally composed of relatively young men and women. Backus, for example, had turned eighteen a month before liftoff; most of the support staff were similarly young.
“ Mr. Backus, report please.”
Backus stood and highlighted a screen. “Our port coils are fused in the asteroid, so we can’t push ourselves out of here. Our reactor is worthless. Our backup batteries will last for approximately four days, if we kill all non-essential functions and limit oxygen renewal to minimal levels. After our batteries are exhausted, we’ll have about twelve hours before our air becomes hypoxic, and then we have two hours of oxygen in each personal suit; the suits can renew the oxygen, but only as long as the internal batteries last, which is about one hour. Bottom line is, we’ll suffocate two days before they can rescue us.”
The navigator spoke up. “Can we use the exterior solar panels at all?”
Backus shook his head. “To properly shield ourselves from the radiation storm, we had to make two ninety-degree turns in our tunnel. Light travels in straight lines, so the solar panels are effectively useless.”
Perry thought for a moment. “How much power can we conserve if we shut off everything except the heat and oxygen renewal?”
“ About seven hours worth. Not enough.” He blanked the big screen. “Also, this asteroid has a very slow rotation speed, and we can’t transmit through the solid rock, so we can’t update our status for the rescue ships. They still think we have plenty of power and time.”
Perry stood. “Well, those are the facts. Time to do some serious thinking. Anyone has a brilliant idea, let me know immediately. Dismissed.”

Backus stood by a porthole, thinking. Outside, the exterior lights began to flicker off in preparation for full conservation. As one bank of lights died, he began thinking about the solar panels on the ship’s hull.
Energy in = energy stored. Energy converted to light = energy wasted... what about the CO2 converters? Also wasted, but necessary...

Light = energy. Energy = life. They could mount some of the solar panels out at the mouth of the tunnel... they didn't have any high-capacity power cables, though.
How can we convert available energy to stored energy?
What kind of available energy do we have?
Backus sighed and walked down a corridor. The background hum of the ship grew weaker, and the overhead lights dimmed to half their normal intensity. He stopped and looked up.
“ Available energy...” he murmured.

Captain John Baker of the rescue ship Francis McCoy stared at the asteroid glumly. It had taken them seven days to reach the crippled ship, and there had been no communication during that time. Although they knew the Englebert couldn’t move from their spot, they expected to have immediate contact upon arrival. The silence from the asteroid was worrying.
“ Still no contact?” he asked. His communications officer shook her head.
The hole in the asteroid was clearly visible, and one of the McCoy’s small tugs floated near it. Another had entered the hole several minutes earlier, but hadn’t reported back yet.
“ Tell the tug to move in and try to get a contact with the first one.”
Moments later, the tug reported back. “We can see the ship; it’s completely dark. The first tug is around the other side; we can see its lights. There are no signs of life. We’re moving in to make physical contact... wait, there’s movement. It’s an EVA pod. We’re moving to intercept.”
Silence; minutes passed, and finally the screen lit up and Backus appeared. Disheveled, unshaven, and looking more than a little peaked, he was definitely alive. Baker let out a huge breath. “All stations, prep for full rescue operations!”

Two hours later, the crew of the Silas Englebert were safely on board the McCoy. Backus sat in Baker’s small office, debriefing.
“ ...we had no way of recharging the batteries. Our major concern was wasted energy; the CO2 converter uses a lot of power. I figured that we could use the interior high radiant lights to recharge the batteries through solar panels, but the panels on the exterior were far too big to bring inside and we couldn’t cut them. I calculated that if we converted twenty percent of battery output to light, used forty percent for oxygen renewal, and stored forty percent against loss of power, we could hang lights over solar cells and get a fifteen percent return to battery charge.”
“ You’d still run out of power, though,” said Baker.
“ Yes, but we could stretch the batteries by reabsorbing power that would normally be lost. The problem then was that we didn’t have any solar cells inside. I did some quick research and found out that one photo-voltaic substance is cuprous oxide, a derivative of copper. You can coat any copper surface with cuprous oxide by exposing it to intense heat, then attach positive and negative nodes for power transfer. Problem was, we didn’t really have a good source of high grade copper.”
Backus smiled. “Chief Perry suggested that we use the plumbing fixtures and tubing. We were hesitant, but he convinced us that turning off the plumbing and water systems would save us some extra power, plus allow us to keep living.”
The office door pinged and one of the doctors entered. “Seven of the crew have mild hypoxia, but we’re reoxyganating their lungs and they’ll be fine. They’ll all need oxygen therapy for a few weeks before we can clear them.”
“ Good heavens,” said Baker. “You really cut it close.”
“ Yeah,” said Backus. “It wasn’t perpetual energy, but it was good enough.” He looked around briefly, then lowered his voice. “I think we’ll leave the Englebert here, if it’s all the same to you. A reconstruction team can get it out later.” He grinned. “Besides, it really started to stink in there when we cut power to the plumbing."