On a spaceship with 251 passengers, finding time to be alone was rare yet important. Getting away from the hum of group life, stealing alone time, giving the on switch a break.
Triana often chose Dome 2 of the Farms. It was farther away from the Agricultural offices, and the crops tended to be of the lower-maintenance variety, requiring fewer visits by the workers than Dome 1. On any given night, especially between midnight and four, the Council Leader was almost assured of having the Dome to herself, with only scattered encounters with crew members.
With the lights down, the stars blazed above her head. She wasn’t sure of the time, but guessed around one. A light breeze blew through the tropical section of the Dome, carrying a hint of rain that was scheduled for dawn. Triana was barefoot, the soil cool on her skin. She pointed her big toe and carved geometrical shapes in the dirt, then erased them with a swipe.
A sudden splash of light cascaded through the glass panes overhead, and Triana looked up in time to catch the fireball of a comet as it swept past. The glare from its inferno caused Triana to cast a monstrous shadow on the ground of the Dome, and the comet’s tail waved back and forth, almost like the tail of a fish as it knifed through a pond.
The sight ignited a spasm of pain in her soul. Any mention of a comet immediately brought to mind the killer Bhaktul, the astronomical wonder that had delivered a death sentence to humankind on Earth, taking her father from her. She watched it hurtle past the ship, the light eventually fading, the inky blackness of space slowly recapturing control of the sky above her.
Except that couldn’t be right. Comet tails only blazed as they approached the sun, and Galahad was too far out, already beyond the orbit of Saturn. Out here a comet would be a sinister dark ball of ice, rock, and dust. The display she had witnessed could only be kindled by the atomic furnace of the sun.
“You’re right,” came a voice beside her. “There wouldn’t be a fireball this far out.”
She turned her head slowly to see her dad, a half grin on his face—her favorite look on him, the one captured in a photograph that she treasured—and his hands tucked into his pockets. He had materialized suddenly, as if deposited on Galahad by the passing comet. He looked healthy and strong, the father she remembered from three years ago, long before Bhaktul Disease ravaged him.
“What’s wrong, Triana?” he said. “What’s bothering you?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Nothing.” She paused. “Everything.”
Her dad’s smile broadened, and he reached out and brushed his hand against her cheek. His touch was just as she remembered: gentle, caring, and always encouraging. She closed her eyes, basking in the reunion.
“Nothing and everything,” he said. “That’s my Tripper, all right.”
She hadn’t heard the nickname in so long, a name used only by her dad. A name whose origins they both had forgotten, until that no longer mattered. I should cry at this point, she thought.
“Too much on your plate again, hmm?” her dad said.
She nodded, her eyes still closed. “It’s too much,” she said. “Too much to figure out.”
“Like what?”
Opening her eyes, she found that the dome was gone. The two of them were standing in her bedroom, the one in Colorado, back on Earth. The walls, which had always been covered with posters of sports stars and favorite singers, now resembled the curved, padded walls of Galahad. But it was her old room. Her bed, her dresser, the open closet door, the curtains blown through the window by a summer breeze. The bulletin board pinned with ticket stubs, tickets to baseball and soccer games, tickets to state parks, tickets to the theater. Memories of good times the two of them had shared.
She answered his question with a pout. “Something is tracking us from Titan. It’s messing with our power, it’s taking down some of the crew. I still don’t know what to do about . . . about Bon. I know I’m somehow hurting Gap. I still have a hard time making friends, except for Lita. I’m not doing well enough with my studies anymore, I don’t participate in the ship’s soccer tournaments because there isn’t enough time . . .”
Her rambling finally rolled to a stop. Even to her own ears it sounded pitiful, and it didn’t take the look on her dad’s face to shame her. She lowered her head and grew quiet.
“I remember your fourth birthday party,” her dad said. “Your first real party, and you were so excited. We invited all eleven of the kids who were in your preschool class, and, of course, all eleven showed up. An intimidating experience for a single dad, that’s for sure, but a dream day for you.”
Triana smiled, not only from the memory, but also because of the way her dad told the story.
“You enjoyed the party games, the cake and ice cream. But I remember how big your eyes got when it came time to open your presents. You opened the first one, and it became the center of your universe for a couple of minutes. Then you opened the next one, and suddenly you were torn between the two. When I made you open the third, you started getting frustrated because you wanted to play with all three at once but couldn’t decide. By the sixth or seventh you were throwing a fit, because your mind was telling you to play with all of them at once.” Her dad laughed, highlighting the wrinkles around his face so that he looked just like the photo she kept beside her bed. “I finally had to take them all away until after the party, or you would have turned into a monster.”
Now the smile on Triana’s face had grown into a full-fledged grin. She glanced up at the man she had worshipped, only now they were standing in the backyard of her childhood home, beneath the branches of the shade tree that supported her tire swing. Several of the toys from that long-ago birthday party were scattered around their feet.
“It was always hard for you to prioritize,” he said. “My little Tripper never wanted to put one thing aside to concentrate on another. You had to try to handle everything at once. I guess you’re still the same way.” He paused before adding, “Only it’s different now, Triana. It’s no longer toys.”
He didn’t have to say anything else; she understood. Somehow he always could get his message across without pounding her over the head with it.
“I love you, Dad,” she said.
“I love you, too, Triana. Triana. Triana . . .”
Why did he keep repeating her name?
“Triana . . . Triana . . .”
His mouth was moving, it wasn’t his voice coming out anymore.
“Triana.”
It was . . . it was Roc’s voice.
“Triana.”
She sat up suddenly. She was in her bed, in her room, on Galahad. As she looked at the clock beside her bed—the dull red digital numbers glowed 2:13 A.M.—she heard Roc’s voice again.
“Triana. I’m sorry to have to wake you from an obviously comfortable sleep, but we have another interesting development.”
She pulled a stray mass of tangled hair from her face and rubbed her eyes. “What is it?”
“Somebody is stepping on the gas.”
Triana shook her head, puzzled. “What? What does that mean?”
“It means that our speed has increased by two percent. Which might not seem like a lot, until you think about how fast we’re going in the first place.”
Triana threw back the covers and climbed out of bed. She immediately began pulling on her work clothes. “What happened? Who did this?”
“Nobody. Well, nobody on the ship, anyway.”
“Can you stop the increase?”
Roc said, “Yes, I did. It lasted about a minute, and then started up again. We’ve done that little dance three times now, and each time it revs things up again on its own.”
“Is Gap in Engineering?”
“He just arrived about ten minutes ago.”
“All right,” Triana said. “Let him know I’m on the way.”
She walked over to the sink and splashed some water on her face, then took a quick glance in the mirror. “What do you know, Dad? One more thing on my plate.”
Shut that alarm off, will you?” Gap said. “It’s very annoying.”
One of his Engineering assistants reached up on the console and snapped off the repeating tone.
“Thank you.” Gap studied the vidscreen’s flashing alert. “Ramasha, try a quick reprogram of the reactor fuel feed. Save the current program, then give it a new plan with a five-percent reduction.”
She hurried over to another vidscreen and began punching in a line of instructions. Gap looked up to see Triana walk in, her expression grim. She respectfully stood to the side and watched him work, waiting for an opportunity to question him. A minute later Ramasha came back over, shaking her head.
“Nothing,” she said. “As soon as it accepted the program, it scrambled and went back to this matrix. Like someone is sitting at another workstation and playing dueling programs or something.”
Gap digested this information, his gaze shifting back and forth on the screen. Much of his training before the launch had centered on contingency plans, trying to simulate every possible mistake, preparing him for almost any disaster that could befall the ship during its long trek to Eos. But not once had they anticipated an outside presence controlling Galahad’s engines. There was no Plan B for dealing with this.
“Roc,” Gap said. “What happens if we take the program offline for a few minutes and reset all of the grids?”
“That would be a jolly waste of time,” the computer said. “It’s completely rewriting the grids, so all you would do is give it some busywork. That’s not the problem.”
Gap looked at Triana. “I don’t want to get overly dramatic here, but I am quickly running out of ideas.”
The look on his face answered her question before she asked it. “How dangerous is this?”
“We’re up two percent, which is manageable. But the problem is that the ship’s ion drive power plants are designed to do only so much. You add more pressure to them, and eventually . . .” He put his palms together, then whipped them apart, simulating a violent explosion.
Triana rubbed her forehead. “How much more can we take?”
Gap shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. If I had to guess, I’d say we could jump nine, maybe ten percent. But certainly no more than that.” He ran a nervous hand through his hair. “Our little friends on Titan might have been asking us for help, but we could use some ourselves.”
“Oh, and just to add to the cheery discussion,” Roc said, “we’ve now moved up another notch. We’re at three percent, and climbing. At this rate of speed we’re bound to get pulled over, and I don’t have my license on me.”
Triana and Gap exchanged a look. Titan’s energy beam had suddenly gone from mysterious to deadly.