The Black Tide

A rocket captain is haunted by an overwhelming vision of a black meteor while his brother rallies public interest in a privately funded asteroid-mining venture founded on an ancestral trust. The story shifts between ordinary routines—hotel rooms, broadcasts, and preparatory meetings—and intense personal unease, showing how mounting dread corrodes sleep, judgment, and relationships. Pressure to join the profitable enterprise forces introspection about courage, ambition, and the unknowable dangers of deep space, producing a psychological conflict between technological optimism and an almost metaphysical fear that threatens both the venture and the protagonist's grasp on himself.