The time aboard the ST SAMSON was the same as it had been on Vega Prime, or so they had told him. That meant it was currently two in the morning over there. Part of the crew had finished their shifts and were asleep in the crew quarters. The boy was passing time on the observation deck. Using a glass display on the wall, he dimmed the lights in the room. It was now completely dark, with only the silver starlight streaming in through the panoramic window. He sat down on a faux leather bench, gazing out into space, listening to the silence of a star-filled night. A milky spot of red light hung in the darkness, frozen in time. When the boy stretched out his arm and squinted one eye, he could just about cover the strange red glow with his thumb. Why did it shine out there in the endless void? Who had lit it? He stared out at the cosmos without blinking even once, his thoughts dancing like shadows before his eyes. He couldn’t fully grasp that he was actually in space, or that he had truly left the prison moon behind.

How did that old saying go again? It’s too good to be true. But this time, it’s real. It’s real, and no one is going to wake me up from this dream.

For the first time, Lex believed in a good outcome for his life. He truly believed this was the turning point, and that from now on, nothing bad would ever happen to him again. After all, he had already suffered enough for a lifetime.

******

When he woke up on the couch the next morning, the metal shields had already been raised, and the lamps on the observation deck were back on. A monitor, folded down from the ceiling and hanging in front of the locked panoramic window, displayed the following message:

"Dear people of today, we’ve just reached the outer ring of the asteroid belt. That means the most dangerous part of the trip has officially begun. The windows won’t be opened again until we’ve made it safely through the asteroid field. Now that your view of the stars is blocked, you’ve finally got time to do something meaningful. There’s a chessboard and a chess computer on the observation deck, in case you didn’t notice. Haven’t seen anyone playing there. If, for some bizarre reason, you don’t like chess, maybe it’s time to read a book for a change. There’s a shelf on the wall opposite the chessboards, and it’s packed with dusty e-readers loaded with quadrillions of eBooks. If reading’s not your thing either, why not pay a visit to our AI on the flight deck? She’s way too lonely up there. LONELY, Pris. One day, we’re gonna entrust her with the whole ship, so we need to talk to her a lot and hopefully teach her some human values. The billions invested in this project should be worth it, right?

Well, that’s all I’ve got to say for now, so I’m off to find some work to do. Best regards from your Chief Engineer, E. Tardino."

Lex looked around. On the right wall stood the bookshelf with the e-readers. Across from it were chairs, styled like the bench he was sitting on, lined up at glass tables where the chessboards were set up, ready to play.

He headed down to the mess hall, where the cooks were preparing the breakfast buffet and some of the crew were already filling their plates. He grabbed a roll from a wicker basket and walked to the cargo lift at the far end of the mess. Next to him were cylindrical containers that reached about knee-height. They were open and empty. Nearby was a stacked pallet of plastic crates, labeled with all sorts of baking ingredients like flour, sugar, butter, and eggs. He leaned against the wall and took a bite of the roll as the lift began to descend.

The machine deck was freezing cold. A deep rumble vibrated through the walls, and the shadows of large ceiling fans spun lazily across the grated floor. Lex turned a corner and spotted a slanted window at the end of the corridor. From there, he looked down into the cargo hangar. On the starboard side, raw metals were stored, and two mercenaries sat casually on an iron pipe, chatting with each other. In the middle of the room, crates of ore were stacked high. He saw Tardino’s book locker and his weight bench, which was currently being used by a mercenary in an olive-green shirt, pressing an impressive amount of weight.

Then, he spotted what he had actually been looking for: The Black Orb the old man had given him was locked inside a silver aluminum box, guarded by two mercenaries in full armor. They wore integral helmets with gold-tinted visors. From the tough, teflon-like curves of one guard’s chest plate, he could tell she was a woman. A shotgun was strapped across her shoulder. The guards stood there like they didn’t even trust their own crew.

He found Tardino in the control room, seated behind a long console. He was leaning back in a chair, blowing clouds of breath into the cold air, his feet crossed on the console. He wore a thick winter jacket and a woolen hat rolled down to his ears. His eyes were closed—maybe he was asleep, or maybe just dozing. Taped near the tip of his boot was a family photo, covering some of the instruments on the control panel. It showed the technician with his wife and two kids. Behind them, a small tree decorated with baubles and candles glowed—Christmas, a tradition Lex didn’t recognize. Tardino’s wife was young and very pretty; the whole family wore red Santa hats and smiled at the camera. Lex stared at the photo for a while, watching the holographic reflections shimmering on its glossy surface.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Mornin’," he said at last.

Tardino kicked an empty coffee cup off the console, sending it clattering to the floor.

"Mornin’? What a load of crap," he muttered, eyeing the boy. "What are you doing here?"

"You said I could join you at work once the windows were fixed."

"Yeah, sometimes you say things that come back to bite you."

"So, can I tag along or not?"

"Sure. Got your first job for you: clean up the floor and then get me a fresh hot coffee from upstairs.”

When Lex was done, he wrung out the soaked rag in the sink, draped it over a heating pipe, and went back to Tardino, telling him he was eager to learn something.

"So, what’s next?"

"Well, let me think," said the technician, sipping from his steaming coffee cup. "To be honest, nothing’s next. If something was going on, one of these countless little indicator lights here would be flashing, or one of the dials on these instruments would be going haywire, or I’d get a message over the intercom, see, or the captain would show up on one of those video screens over there, or one of these holograms here, here, or there would be alerting me to some damage. But everything’s running perfectly, smooth as butter."

The boy examined the control console. On top of it were labeled papers and clipboards. Hardly any of the buttons or switches on the panels were numbered or named. Next to the touch-sensitive glass displays were endless rows of analog dials and instruments. To the boy, it looked like one big mess.

"What if we go outside and fix something on the ship? I’ve worn a cold suit before. I heard it’s kinda like a space suit."

"Why don’t you grab a jacket and a hat from one of the lockers over there instead?"

"I’m not cold."

"Your lips are blue, and you’re shivering. Now, go get a jacket and a hat."

Lex put on a padded down jacket with countless pockets and left it unzipped, then pulled on the hat before sitting down on the metal swivel chair next to the technician. He gently rocked himself back and forth in the chair, watching the holograms in silence.

One hologram displayed the spaceship in cross-section, with the main engines highlighted. A chart beside it showed the thrust power of the ion engines, fluctuating between 63 and 63.3 percent. The engines were consuming about a third of the energy produced by the main generator. On the more old-fashioned side of the console, a needle on one of the dials seemed to be acting erratically, jumping up and down, rising and falling.

He looked at Tardino, who sipped his coffee without a care. Then, the boy thought he spotted a pattern in the needle’s movements—a regular rhythm that he figured was normal.

The chair squeaked.

"Don’t you have something for me to do? I really want to learn."

Tardino clicked his tongue. "Well," he said, dragging the word out, "not exactly a task, but…"

The freezing cold in the lower deck originated from the engine rooms. In the starboard room, temperatures were well below freezing. Tardino led the boy through the deafening noise, crossing a walkway where a huge metal rod was spinning underneath. Everything he was seeing, the technician shouted, was the main generator that powered most of the ship and fueled the engines. There was another generator in the other engine room and a third one, which would only be activated if one of the other two failed or if the crew needed an unusually large amount of power—for short, it was the emergency backup generator. The boy nodded attentively from time to time, jotting down notes on a clipboard, though he couldn’t catch everything through the roar of the machinery. He heard the engine noises as a constant high-pitched whine coming from behind a metal cover. Large aluminum pipes extended from there into the walls.

"These are the pressure tanks," Tardino explained, pointing to white-painted cylinders, each about five meters tall. "This is where the xenon gas is stored—our fuel."

Lex inspected the tanks while the chief technician went into more detail about how an ion engine worked. He kept the explanation as simple as possible, the boy could tell, and that made him feel all the more ashamed that he still barely understood any of it.

"Did you really get all that so quickly?"

"Yep," he lied.

"Well, then you must be one of the gifted ones. It took me several years to understand all that. Anyway, at the STC, they’re researching all kinds of propulsion systems. The ion drive is just one of many."

"What else is there?"

"The most advanced one is probably the antimatter drive."

"How does that work?"

"The speed and the minimal fuel requirement are the biggest advantages," Tardino said, clearly misunderstanding the boy’s question—or maybe ignoring it. "We’d only need about a handful of antimatter to get back to old Earth in less than twenty years. We’ve even figured out how to store the particles during the flight. The only issue is the cost. The energy needed to produce just one particle of antimatter is enormous. Creating just a gram of it would cost billions of credits."

The boy had no clue what antimatter even was. "Is the corporation trying to get back to Earth?"

Tardino opened the door to the corridor. Now that they were outside, they could talk in normal voices. "No one wants to go back to Earth," he said. "There’s a reason humanity left it behind."

"What was the reason?"

He shook his head. "It’s pretty complicated. But basically, if we keep going the way we are, we’ll have to find a new home again in a few hundred years."

"Can’t you give me a bit more detail?"

"Ask our AI if you’re interested. You’ll find it…"

"…up on the flight deck, I know. I read your message on the video screen earlier. But I thought you were just joking. I didn’t even know tech like that existed."

"Artificial intelligence? Well, it does, but ours is still in its early stages. That’s why we’re not supposed to give it control of the ship. The TC doesn’t trust it."

"Do you trust it?"

"Completely."

Lex thought about that for a moment as he followed behind Tardino. He hurried to catch up.

"So, where are we going now?" he asked.

The Chief Engineer smiled. “I’m off to get my second breakfast and another hot coffee.”