Jasper Dash, frozen, stared out the window. He could move nothing. Fifteen minutes passed. He couldn’t blink. His eyes were burning. He stared at the stars. They could barely be seen past the glare of violet dust.
Back on Earth, the stars seemed friendly. It didn’t matter that they were far away. The stars seemed comfortable, and the Milky Way, spread across the sky, seemed like home. He knew facts about them. He had stood on his porch with his mother on thousands of nights, and they had spotted comets and dying suns and newborn worlds.
Now he was looking up at the same galaxy, but nothing seemed friendly. The stars, after all, were not the smiling, long-lashed pointy fellows stitched onto his baby blankets years ago. They weren’t singing anyone songs. They were just chemical reactions, something burning, energy yoked. Everything was cold. There was more emptiness in the universe than stuff. Worlds were just tiny clots of dying warmth in between those infinitely chilly spaces where there was nothing at all.
Jasper’s mother had taught him about the stars and about the dinosaurs and about everything else. That’s why Earth and all its sciences seemed comfortable, like home, even if the sun seared and the dinosaurs snapped and tore.
The words of awful Uncle Dirrillill rang in his ears: Your mother or your planet. Which do you love better, my son?
Jasper struggled. He gagged. He couldn’t move—but he had to.