by Dan Wells
And then he didn’t think anything, because he was fast asleep.
Chapter Six
WAKING UP
ZERO DREAMED THAT he was swimming. He’d never been very good at it in real life, but in his dream he was as quick and agile as a dolphin, zooming through the water as easily as he’d flown through the open column in the center of the starship. And then as soon as he thought of it, he was in the starship, soaring and flipping through the air, except he was still a dolphin with no arms or legs, and he was still surrounded by water. Why was he still underwater? He couldn’t breathe! He struggled, and realized he was tied down, and then he opened his eyes and his dream disappeared in a blink. He was back in the real world, but he was still underwater! No, not water: he was surrounded by gel. The clear gel in the stasis pod. He was still in the stasis pod, still wrapped tight like a mummy, and still covered in clear gel. It was in his eyes, his nose, and even his mouth, and as soon as he became aware of it he started to gag on it.
A second later the gel started to recede, slowly being sucked out of the pod, though tiny gobs of it still clung to the windows or floated in the air. He was still in zero gravity. When the gel finally flowed away from his face, he coughed and spat and blew to get it out of his mouth and nose. The straps around his body loosened, and as he pulled his arms free he realized: I’m awake. The pod woke me up. The stasis sleep is over.
It’s been 105 years.
I’m on the other side of the galaxy now, under a brand-new star.
He expected to hear the computer voice again, welcoming him to the planet Kaguya or the star Murasaki, but there was nothing. He brought his hands to his face, cramped in the narrow pod, and wiped more of the gel from his eyes and nose. The hall was dark, lit only by a faint glow from the end of the aisle. He wiped his eyes again, and stared at the other pods, and realized something else: none of the people in them were moving. Maybe they hadn’t woken up yet? His dad had said their family would be one of the first groups off the ship. Maybe they didn’t wake up the others until it was their turn?
The gel was about half gone, but it had stopped draining. Was that supposed to happen? He was about chest deep in the stuff; it was thick and gooey. He still had a bunch of it stuck in his hair. He worked on scooping the stuff out of his ears, waiting for the door to open, but it never did. He was really starting to worry now that something had gone wrong.
And why couldn’t he see anybody else? Even if his family was the first to wake up, he should at least see them in the aisle, right? But the aisle was empty. He craned his neck to the sides, pressing his face against the glass to try to see, but all the other pods looked closed, just like his, and he couldn’t see movement in any of them.
What was going on?
Zero searched the inside of his pod for a lock or a handle or something, but he couldn’t find anything. He pushed against the door, lightly at first, then harder and harder as it refused to open. He even braced his butt against the back of the tube and leaned against the door with all his strength, but it stayed closed. He was starting to worry now. He looked again for a handle, and finally found two emergency handles—one at the top of the pod and one down by his toes, deep in the gooey gel that had stopped draining away. He tried jumping for the high one, but the gel kept him stuck to the bottom of the pod; even in zero gravity, he couldn’t move enough to reach the top. He looked down at the lower handle and probed it with his foot, but couldn’t get it to open. He’d need to use his fingers. He grimaced, closed his eyes, took a huge breath, and then crouched down low in the gel, submerging himself to try to reach the handle at the bottom. He fumbled around for it, totally blind, and finally grabbed it with his fingers. He pulled hard, and the latch clicked, and the door of the pod swung open, hinged at the top. Zero had expected the gel to spill out when the door opened, but instead, it just sat there, motionless, without gravity to pull it down. He kicked at it, sending blobs of gel into the air, and finally broke loose and tumbled into the narrow tunnel.
He hung in the air, looking around, and saw that he’d been right: nobody else was moving. Both rows of stasis pods sat silent in the darkness, with person after person sitting motionless inside. He listened, but the ship was perfectly silent. Not even a rumble from the engine.
He shook off as much of the gel as he could, leaving it in sticky, ropy strands floating in the air, and then pulled himself closer to the pods to see his family. They were all there: Yen, Park, his mom, and his dad. All in a deep stasis sleep. He rapped his knuckles on his father’s plastic shell, but there was no answer. Why weren’t they awake yet?
He looked up and down the aisle again, and then shouted: “Hello!” He waited while the echoes moved through the halls. Nobody shouted back. Then he shouted again, louder: “Hey! Is anybody there?”
There was no answer.
He was the only person awake on the entire ship.
Chapter Seven
EMPTY
ZERO FLOATED DOWN the narrow aisle toward the larger hallway that marked Section C. Every stasis pod he passed was the same: silent and motionless, with its occupant asleep. When he reached the hallway he peeked into the other little tunnels full of stasis pods, but they were all still asleep as well.
“Hello?”
His word echoed through the ship, but nobody answered.
Zero floated into the open central column of the ship and launched himself out into the air. “Hello? Is anybody awake? Is anybody there?” He jumped from strut to strut, shouting as he went, headed toward the aft of the ship. He made it all the way to Ring 70 before he gave up and stopped, holding tight to the strut and thinking. The Pathfinder mission had twenty thousand people, every single one of them on this ship. Where were they? He jumped over to another cross-hall, and looked into each of the little aisles, and saw the same thing he’d seen from his own aisle: row after row of closed pods and sleeping people. Was he really the first one to wake up? Why?
He wanted to find someone—he needed to find someone, anyone, who had woken up with him. He turned down a hall, headed for the nearest aisle of stasis pods. He found it, and followed it in a circle—all the way around Ring 70 until he got back to where he started. He passed twenty hallways on the trip, each labeled with a letter and five narrow tubes that seemed to run the whole length of the ship, connecting the Rings of stasis pods. He floated through one, crawling along the handholds, but Ring after Ring it was the same. Everyone was asleep.
Maybe the pilot was awake? Jim? His job was to get them out of the solar system safely. Maybe he had to get them into the next solar system safely as well. Zero knew that Murasaki had an asteroid belt, but he couldn’t remember which side of the belt the colony was on. Maybe the ship had woken Jim up when they’d reached Murasaki, so he could take them safely through more asteroids to the planet Kaguya. And maybe it had accidentally woken Zero up at the same time.
Zero pointed himself toward the fore of the ship and started jumping. After a few more jumps he had to stop, panting at the exertion—he’d already jumped more than half the length of the ship, and he was worn out. He aimed himself carefully and jumped one more time, letting himself drift past the struts this time instead of grabbing them. It was slower, since he couldn’t add more speed as he went, but he made it all the way to Deck 292 before he grabbed another handhold and pulled himself to a stop.
Sancho’s voice spoke from a hidden speaker: “You are not supposed to be here.”
“Sancho! I’m looking for Jim,” said Zero. “Is he up here?”
“I assume he is in his office,” said Sancho. “But you are not supposed to be there, either.”
“I’m the only one awake,” said Zero. “What else am I going to do, stare at the walls? Where’s the office?”
“I phrased my statement poorly,” said Sancho. “You are not supposed to be in this part of the ship because you are supposed to be in your stasis pod.”
“It woke me up,” said Zero. “I think I’m the first one—unless there�
��s somebody else? Can you check that?”
“I can run a diagnostic of the stasis system in three point seven seconds,” said Sancho. “Done. My findings confirm that you are the only passenger who is awake. Your pod malfunctioned and woke you up early.”
Zero frowned. “How early? Are we not at the planet yet? Are we still on the edge of the Murasaki System?”
“You misunderstand,” said Sancho. “We have not yet left our home system.”
Zero’s jaw fell open. “What? I was supposed to be asleep for a hundred years!”
“A hundred and five,” said Sancho. “But in reality, you were only asleep for twenty-eight days.”
Chapter Eight
ALONE
ZERO STARED AT the wall of the ship, then looked around in shock, wishing there was someone he could see.
“Twenty-eight days?” he asked.
“That is correct,” said Sancho. “We have passed Neptune and are currently flying through the Kuiper asteroid belt.”
“Holy crap!” Zero wasn’t just alone. He was alone and stuck that way for 105 years. The full weight of it seemed to hit him like a meteor. He’d be awake the entire time. He’d age the entire time. He’d be sad and alone for 105 years—which meant he’d be 117 years old when they reached the colony and his parents woke up. He probably wouldn’t even live that long. He’d die of old age. Or he’d die of starvation first. Did this ship even have enough food for 105 years? No, he realized with another shock. He wouldn’t even have time to die of starvation, because he’d die from acceleration in just a couple of days. They were almost at the edge of the Kuiper Belt. And when they left it, Sancho would Boost the Medina StarDrive. And without a stasis pod, Zero would get squished like a pancake. That’s why the pilot had a special stasis pod in his office—so he could get inside before the Boost.
“Wait! Jim! If we haven’t left the solar system yet, then he’s still awake. Maybe he can help me.”
“Just a moment.” There was a pause, and when Sancho’s voice returned it had a strange quality to it, almost as if the AI were uncertain.
“Jim Gaynor is not aboard the Pathfinder.”
Zero’s mouth fell open. “What?”
“The locator chip in his coverall is not responding, and my scan of the life support system does not detect any body heat other than yours, outside of a stasis pod. And yet Jim’s pod has not been activated, so I know he is not in there. This is . . . not within my mission parameters.”
Zero struggled to process this information. “Wh—where did he go?”
“I do not know.”
“How can you not know that? Have you been turned off?”
“I have not,” said Sancho, “but there appears to be a hole in my memory.”
“A hole? I don’t know how to fix that. I don’t know how to fix any of this!” Zero didn’t know what to think. “Can you find Jim?”
“I am a computer program, optimized for interstellar navigation. You are the one with eyes.”
“But I mean . . . don’t you have security cameras or something?”
“Even if we had such cameras, I am not programmed to process visual data. Unless he is an asteroid, my sensors are not equipped to see him.”
“How do you know where I am, then?”
“Every passenger’s coverall has a locator chip. Unlike Jim’s, yours is working.”
Zero tried to think. Where could Jim have gone? “Can you tell me how to find his office? Maybe he’s in there, and his chip’s just busted or something.”
“Ring 300,” said Sancho. “Section F.”
“Got it,” said Zero, and kicked off from the wall to travel eight more Rings. He was so scared he could barely think—and he had to force himself to slow down and breathe slowly. He reached Ring 300—the very last one, at the front of the ship—and found Section F. Each section on this Ring looked like a control room of some kind, filled with computer equipment and other machines. When he found Section F, he crawled through the door to find a small workspace filled with a desk, a stasis pod, and some kind of weird pad on the wall. The desk had a huge bank of monitors and screens and touchpads, all of them framing a giant picture window.
Zero ignored the computers and floated straight to the window, looking out onto the most amazing field of stars he’d ever seen in his life. They seemed to fill the entire sky, a jet-black field with a billion pinpoints of light. There was no sun, no planets, no asteroids—just deep, dark space and a universe of stars. It was beautiful. But it made him feel tiny and alone. How could one life possibly mean anything in a universe that big?
“Mr. Huang,” said Sancho.
Zero barely heard him, too busy staring at the stars.
“Mr. Huang,” said Sancho again, more loudly. “Do you see Jim anywhere?”
Zero looked around, half expecting to see his father, only to realize that Sancho was talking to him. “Sorry. I’m here.” He took one last glance at the immensity of space, then hunted through the small pilot’s office, even peeking under the desk. Jim wasn’t there. “I don’t see Jim anywhere.”
“Would you please look in a few more locations for me?”
“We really need to get you some better internal sensors,” said Zero. “Where should I go?”
“My mainframe takes up most of Ring 299,” said Sancho, “and it has many tunnels and crawl spaces for maintenance work. He may be in there. After that, approximately sixty- eight percent of the Pathfinder’s internal space is filled with cargo. It might take you several days to search it all—”
“Wait,” said Zero, and looked back out the window. “Did you say we’re already in the Kuiper asteroid belt? We don’t have days to find him—we need Jim to protect the ship right now.”
“There are no asteroids in immediately dangerous range,” said Sancho.
“No kidding,” said Zero, pressing his nose against the glass. The view outside was so empty it made him uncomfortable. “I thought there were supposed to be a million giant rocks out here or whatever.”
“There are several billion rocks out here,” said Sancho, “but the Kuiper Belt is astronomically large, so there is a lot of empty space between them.”
“So it’s not urgent,” said Zero. “Unless he’s hurt somewhere and needs first aid.” He made a face, trying to decide what to do. He had an idea but felt bad asking about it. “Can you . . .” He bit his lip, and then asked the question anyway: “Can you wake up anybody else?”
“I can interface with the stasis system, but I cannot control it,” said Sancho. “I have dedicated several processors to discovering the malfunction that woke you up, and there is a possibility that I could recreate such a malfunction and wake somebody else, but I do not recommend it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am scheduled to Boost the Medina drive in two days, and anyone not in a stasis pod will be killed.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Zero. “I keep forgetting about that!” He didn’t want to ask his next question, but he had to. “Am I going to die?”
“Jim’s stasis pod is still unactivated,” said Sancho. “You could use that one.”
Zero looked at the stasis pod in the corner of the room. “I can’t use it if Jim needs it.”
“I do not believe that Jim is on the ship,” said Sancho. “While we have been talking, I have been running other diagnostic checks on every system I have access to. Stasis, life support, the Medina StarDrive, and the force cannons all seem to be in perfect working order, but there is a discrepancy in the cargo manifest. We are supposed to have twenty landing barges, but we only have nineteen.”
“Did they forget to load one?” asked Zero.
“We had twenty when we left Abassi Station,” said Sancho. “Records show that it left its cargo bay approximately two days ago.”
“And you didn’t notice?” asked Zero. He was almost too shocked to speak.
“I am only a navigational computer,” said Sancho, “not a ship management program. Also, as I said, t
here is a hole in my memory.”
“So Jim left?” asked Zero. “The pilot left? Why? Where did he go? What are we supposed to do without him?”
“Right now, I would suggest that you sit in the pilot’s chair,” said Sancho. “I have just detected an asteroid on a collision course with the Pathfinder, and you are the only one here to shoot it.”
Chapter Nine
THE ASTEROID
ZERO STARED AT the pilot’s workstation: it had a dozen monitors at least, with a huge array of controls. He shook his head. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“I can guide you through the procedure,” said Sancho. “Have you ever played something called a video game?”
“Yeah,” said Zero, floating slowly toward the desk. “All the time. Is it kind of like that?”
“Jim used to say that it was,” said Sancho. “Please sit in the chair and tap the central touchpad.”
Zero gulped, and grabbed the back of the chair, and pulled himself into the seat. It had shoulder straps to hold him in place, so he buckled himself in and looked at the desk. He had a touchpad in front of him, and one on each side, and several rows of screens surrounding him. He craned his neck to look past them at the window.
“By the time the asteroid is close enough to see with a human eye, it will be too late to do anything about it,” said Sancho. “Please focus on the screens, and tap the central touchpad.”
Zero looked back at the desk, and tapped the pad. The screens turned on in unison, brightening slowly to avoid blinding him.
“Activate the holographic interface,” said Sancho. Zero found a flashing button on the screen that said “Holo” and tapped it. The entire desk seemed to leap into life with blue and pink and green holograms glowing around him on every side: the ship, several asteroids, and a number of holographic control panels. Even Neptune was there, far behind them. “Very good,” said Sancho. “I have highlighted the asteroid that is set to collide with us. Can you see it?”
