Jill sat cross-legged. She leant forward, bringing her face toward her feet; then extended one foot and wrapped her fingers round her heel, then the other one, feeling the limits of her body’s flexibility. They compared favourably to the limits of her bodysuit.

The airlock slid open again, and she kipped up. Mr Truth was even more imposing in a spacesuit than usual, the helmet adding to his height and the bodysuit hiding the faux civility of his suit. He was twenty centimetres taller than her and twice her weight, his muscles tight against his bodysuit. She was legitimately impressed that he’d found one that fit him at all; they normally were tailored, and were very unforgiving of poor fit or changes in physique.

She motioned to her antenna, and he took the hint and tapped his own.

“Good … evening?” she said, realising she had no idea what the time was.

“Good evening,” he replied. His voice was softer than she’d expected, but just as deep. “I’m looking for a girl with auburn hair. I think she went this way. She might have had a friend with her.”

“Mm-hmm. They went ahead. I don’t think they like you.”

Mr Truth reread her body language and realised that she was blocking him. “She’s in trouble,” he said. “It’ll be best if she comes with me.”

“She didn’t seem to think so.”

“She’s a kid. She doesn’t understand what’s going on.”

“Do you think you can explain it to me?” Jill asked rhetorically. “I’m pretty sharp, if I say so myself.”

He glared. “It’s confidential.”

She shrugged. “Then I won’t step aside.”

He looked her up and down. “I won’t enjoy it, but I’ll go through you if I have to.”

“Maybe you’d win inside atmosphere,” she said, “but are you sure you want to fight me here? One decent kick in the right place, and …” She indicated the Milky Way.

“You’re not heavy enough to move me.”

“I am if your balance is off. How much practice do you have moving at one-third gravity? I have lots.”

He gave her a long look. She began counting her breaths. In hindsight, she probably should have checked how much oxygen her tank had earlier: there didn’t seem to be an HUD or anything to indicate.

“You’d better stay out of my way,” he said, and turned and went back into the airlock.

A long way down, in some sense of the word, Charlotte and Sue were descending a ladder. Charlotte couldn’t help looking down; she wasn’t normally afraid of heights, but seeing a literal bottomless fall made her stomach flip. She looked up instead, but that made things worse. A rotating spacecraft has artificial gravity pointing radially outward, so she could see the tops of catwalks far above her; it inverted her sense of orientation, like she was dangling above them looking down. From their perspective, she was.

“Hey, Jill, you can still hear us, right?” Sue asked.

There was a buzz. “These are short range only. Too much radiation. I’ll go quiet soon. What is it?”

“There aren’t any tethers on this ship, are there? I’m not actually great at climbing.”

“There are probably some inside, but –” There was a long burst of static.

“You’re breaking up.”

The static continued, then cut out.

Sue sighed. “Hey, Lottie?” she said. “Can we take the next airlock we find? I’m getting dizzy again.”

“I guess,” Charlotte said. She reached the bottom of the ladder and stepped back to make room. Gravity was increasing the further down they went, back up to about half of normal. “Do you want to stay here and rest for a bit while I look ahead?”

Sue looked around. If she’d been asked how excited she’d be to be out in space at any other time, she would have said very, but now that she was out there, it was more ominous than she’d expected. The Milky Way was beautiful, but here and now, it was a stark reminder of how very alone they were. There was dead silence except the radio and the creaking of their bodysuits; even their footfalls and the friction of their gloves against the ladder were felt rather than heard. At the same time, her air was getting uncomfortably humid, and she couldn’t shake the worry that she was getting cancer.

“No. Don’t tell Michelle I said this, but this is actually starting to creep me out.”

“Okay. Let’s hurry, then.”

The ladder had led to a cattle grid catwalk parallel to the spacecraft disc. Directly in front of them, the walkway ended abruptly, looking like it had been torn off; it continued a few metres further along and led to what looked like an airlock, but there was a dead drop of at least twenty metres under the gap, landing on an outcrop of shiny black-grey rock. A second path protruded out to their right and led to an antenna with a steel toolbox sitting beside it; they could see a pile of spanners inside. On their left was a wall of exposed circuit boards, power outlets, fuses, and other electronics. There was a short extension cable dangling from an outlet.

“Do you think you can make that jump?” she asked dubiously.

Sue gave it a sceptical look. “Honestly? Probably, but I don’t want to. It’s still low gravity, but I’m not feeling that great. This feels like the setup for a Darwin Award.”

Charlotte gave her a worried look, then focused on the extension cable. It wasn’t long enough to tie across the gap and shimmy over, or to rappel down to the rock.

“Wait here,” she said.

“Are you going somewhere?”

Charlotte lowered her centre of gravity and ran at the gap. It was hard to gauge it right. A normal gait involves pushing against the ground as hard as gravity pushes you toward it, so in half gravity, it’s easy to bound rather than sprint. She didn’t build as much speed as she wanted when she reached the lip of the catwalk, but it was too late to stop. She leapt for the other end.

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She didn’t make it, but she did manage to grab the edge; her lower body continued forward and crunched into the catwalk from below. She swung in space for a few seconds before pulling herself up.

“Lottie,” Sue said, sitting down very suddenly, “I want you to promise me that you’ll never do that again.”

“I wasn’t going to.” She bent over to catch her breath and let her heart slow. Nothing is quite like literally holding on for one’s life.

“Well, you’re over, but I don’t fancy my chances. What now?”

“Like I said, you wait here. There’s got to be a tether inside the airlock.”

“I’d say good idea,” Sue said, “but after that jump, you have some bad idea karma to work off first. Splitting the party again is definitely a good start, though; it’s never so split that you can’t split it further.”

Charlotte gave her a look.

“Seriously though, please go on,” Sue said, “I don’t want to suffocate out here.”

The airlock had a simple handprint sensor to open. It was much quicker to re-pressurise and let her back in than it had been to let them out in the first place.

Inside was another locker room. Most were either locked or empty, but she managed to find one with a coiled bungee cord in the bottom. She took it and doubled back.

“Ooh, space bungee jumping,” Sue said. “I can finally cross that off my bucket list.”

Charlotte tied one end to a hole in the catwalk, looped it around her waist, and threw the other end to Sue. She caught it, tied herself to it, swung over, and crashed into the catwalk.

“There’s no air resistance,” Charlotte helpfully explained.

“Thanks,” Sue said.

They pulled her up, went back into the airlock, and collapsed onto the gym floor. They pulled off their helmets and stuffed them into a locker.

“Do you want to rest here for a bit?”

Sue thought about it, clearly tempted. “No. Just lying on the floor is not a good way to relax. Let’s find somewhere I can get a real nap.”

Charlotte had misgivings about this – they’d had enough trouble just getting a change of clothes – but she nodded, stood up, and gave Sue her hand. “Maybe we’ll luck out and find a pillow room.”

“When I’m a grown-up, I’m going to have one of those,” Sue said. “My house will have a kitchen, a bathroom, and a pillow room. I might not even bother with the kitchen, I might just keep a microwave and instant noodles in the kitchen.”

The locker room led to another long hall, curving upward in either direction like where they’d been in cold sleep, but with a very different feel. It was covered in thick red carpet and lit by overhead fluorescents that managed to feel intimate rather than just not very good. There were irregular chunks of rock jutting out of the walls and ceiling, but here it was more private than forbidding. The reduced gravity made it all more surreal. A bass track sounded from hidden speakers, loud enough to dance to but not too loud to talk over.

“This doesn’t look like engineering,” Charlotte observed. “I guess this counts as civilian? But I’ve read that you’re not supposed to spend too much time in low gravity, or your bones get weaker.”

“I think that’s only if you’re in zero gravity for weeks or months. We’ll be fine. Let’s look around. Hopefully there are no jetpack squids here.”

They walked along and found a set of double doors. Charlotte shrugged, knocked, and pushed through. Inside was a bar. There were tables for different sized groups, long counters, and booths against the walls. The far wall was covered in wine bottles. A giant TV sat in one corner, showing a scene from My Little Pony, but unfortunately it was muted.

As they entered, a hand reached up from behind the bar, and a woman pulled herself up by it. She was flushed and her balance was clearly off. She brushed dark brown hair out from her face and tried to focus on Charlotte, who’d frozen.

“Wait,” said the woman uncertainly. “Sh … Charlotte?”

“Hi, mum,” said Charlotte.

Sue looked from one to the other. The resemblance was definitely there, notwithstanding that the mother April was twenty years older. Their faces were similar; it took a moment to spot that April had higher, more pronounced cheekbones and a slightly straighter nose. Their hair had the same shape, mostly straight but with a slight curl toward the ends, even though Charlotte’s was definitely much redder. April was dressed in a black cocktail dress with a frilly white apron.

“What are you doing here?” Charlotte asked. “I thought everyone was supposed to be in cold sleep.”

“I have to work. That’s how I paid for our tickets.”

“But there’s no-one here,” Charlotte said.

“I’m paid hourly.”

“Does that mean you’ve been awake since we set off?” Sue asked. “Do you know where we’re going or what we’re going away from, uh, Mrs Abercrombie?”

“It’s Ms,” April said, slurring the sibilants, “and yeah, kind of. There was an accident at a lab back on Earth that was cloning dinosaurs or something, so we set out on these ships. We’re going to some star or other to make a new planet to live on. Charlotte, why are you out here?” she asked, only now remembering that she was supposed to still be asleep.

“The cold sleep’s malfunctioning. People are waking up when they’re not supposed to.”

“But why are you here? This floor is a grown-ups-only area, sweetie.”

“Mum, please, this isn’t the time.”

“I was thinking,” Sue said, “if we’re in space, maybe that bump from earlier was a small meteor hitting the ship? And maybe another one hit something important before I woke up? Do you know anything about it?”

April shrugged. “I don’t know what they are, but they only started a couple hours ago.”

Sue and Charlotte exchanged glances. “It fits,” Charlotte offered. “Maybe the scoops that Jill was talking about are supposed to have shock absorbers or something, and they’ve worn out?”

“You should go back to sleep,” April said.

“If the ship’s going through a meteor shower and the cold sleep or other systems are already breaking, going back in doesn’t seem like the best idea,” Charlotte said. “There must be some engineer types in cold sleep who we can wake up to fix the ship. Do you know where?”

April gave a boneless shrug. “Most of the people on this ship only speak Spanish, and barely any brought their bodies. It’s almost all just brains.”

There was a moment’s pause while the girls tried to parse this.

“Just brains,” Sue repeated. “What – you mean they had their brains removed and sent separately?”

“Yeah, it’s easier to fit them on a ship since they’re not so heavy. Then once terraforming” she stumbled over the word “is done, one of the,” she waved a hand around, less expressively than she thought, “the things makes them new bodies that they stick the brains into. We get our original bodies because we have business and working class tickets.”

The girls exchanged glances. Charlotte noticed Sue swaying on her feet.

“Priorities,” she said. “Mum, do you have a mattress or something? Sue took a bad hit earlier.”

“This is the R&R area, sweetie, I have an entire cuddle puddle in the back room.”

“Okay, great. You should know that we have a friend reviving my brother, and Mr Truth is somewhere on the ship.” April blinked, alarmed. “Roger’s got to be awake by now. I’m going to go and meet up with him and Michelle, bring them back here, and all of us together will work out a plan to deal with Mr Truth and the meteors.”

“Wait, you’re actually splitting the party again?” Sue asked. “I was joking earlier.”

Charlotte in fact didn’t want to, but Sue had been dizzy for a while now, her mother was drunk, and neither should be left by herself. “You’re both sort of out of it. I’ll be faster if I go alone, and better able to hide. Besides, I’ll be with Roger and Michelle on the way back.”

“Bet she’ll love having you back with him,” Sue undertoned.

“Beg pardon?”

“I said it’s about time we got them back. Are you sure you want to go on your own?”

“I’ll be fine. And it’s only for a little while.” She hopped up onto the counter to hug April. “Love you, Mum. Do you know the quickest way back to the cold sleep level?”

“There’s an elevator nearby. It’s a few doors along on the right. I know it when I see it, but I can’t leave or my pay will be docked. There’s an automatic checkout thing.”

“That’s okay. That sounds easy to find.” She slid off to hug Sue. “See you soon. Sleep well.”

“Good luck,” Sue said. She tried to lift herself onto the counter too, but fumbled and staggered against it. “Okay, that was a lot less cool than I’d meant to do.”

April lifted a hinged part of the bar and leant against her, leading her to the backroom. “Love you, sweetie. Stay safe!”