Zero flew through the ship quickly, trying to get to the front, see it, and zoom back before his parents missed him. Ring 181 was more than halfway, right? And he could fly really fast. He jumped from wall to wall and from strut to strut, zipping toward the front of the ship so fast that he didn’t even notice he’d left the passenger area until he was long past it. The upper Rings—anything higher than 270, it looked like—were different than the others, the struts and the side tunnels laid out in a completely different way. And there were no more crowds. There were supposed to be twenty thousand people in the Kaguya Colony, and most of them were already on the ship. And yet this part of the Pathfinder was eerily quiet. When he reached the next supporting strut he grabbed it, stopped, and wondered if he should go back. Was he not supposed to be here? He hadn’t seen any warning signs. He turned himself upside down, so the aft was up this time, and readied himself to jump, when suddenly he heard voices.
“I don’t care how many times you’ve checked them,” said a grumpy man. “Check them again.”
“I have checked them twice in the last ten seconds,” said another voice—calm and precise. “The force cannons are in perfect working order.”
Whoa, thought Zero, force cannons? I need to get closer to this. The voices were faint, and echoed in the empty ship, but it only took him a few jumps to find them.
“Two times in the last ten seconds,” said the grumpy man. He was wearing a Pathfinder coverall, like the one Zero and the others had on, but he also had a tool belt, and a small headlamp that made him look like a miner from an old cartoon. He was floating next to a panel in the wall, peering in with his light. “Oh, you think you’re so fancy, you can check the cannons twice in ten seconds. Have you checked them again in the last ten seconds?”
“I can if you would like,” said the second voice, but Zero couldn’t see anyone. Was the second man behind something? “Done,” said the voice. “The force cannons are still in perfect working order. Also, you are being observed.”
Zero froze, his eyes wide. Where was the second guy? How had he seen Zero when Zero hadn’t seen him? He turned around, ready to bolt, but the man with the tool belt called out to him: “Hey!” his voice was suddenly friendly, with all his former grumpiness gone. “Can you believe this thing? He runs two checks in ten seconds and thinks he’s sooooo smart.”
Zero paused and looked back. “Where is he? I don’t see anyone else.”
The man chuckled. “That’s because he’s not really a ‘he.’ He’s an ‘it.’ That’s Sancho, the Pathfinder’s NAI. And I’m Jim, the pilot.”
Zero frowned. “What’s an NAI?”
“Navigational Artificial Intelligence,” said Jim. “Sancho’s the computer that steers this ship while the rest of us are asleep.”
“It’s very nice to meet you,” said Sancho’s computer voice. Zero decided that Sancho’s voice was probably coming out of a speaker in the walls, though he couldn’t see any. “You are not supposed to be in this area of the vessel.”
“I’m sorry,” said Zero, “I was just … I wanted to see the bridge.”
“No bridge,” said Jim. “Just Sancho’s mainframe and some sensor banks. And my office, I guess, but that hardly counts.”
“Are you the captain?” asked Zero.
Jim laughed. “This is a ship full of sleepers; the closest thing to a captain is Governor Hatendi, I guess, but she’s not really in charge of anything till we reach the colony.”
Zero nodded. “So you’re the … engineer?”
“Sort of,” said Jim, and nodded his head. “I’m the pilot, like I said, but that’s a very old word that doesn’t really apply anymore. A couple hundred years ago, the pilot was the guy who steered a big sailing ship in and out of the harbor, which I guess is kind of what I do. I’m the one who takes the Pathfinder out of the solar system and into the next one, but I don’t actually steer anything. We’ll be going way too fast for that. I just shoot the asteroids.”
Zero perked up at that. “Is that what the force cannons are for?”
“That’s right,” said the man. “Anything too big for our shields to handle, Sancho here tells me about it, and I—” He formed his fingers into a gun and made a shooting sound with his mouth. “Blast them.”
Zero thought about this, and then shook his head. “We all have to be in our stasis pods before we start moving—if you stay awake, you’ll be awake for a hundred years. And alone for a hundred years. There’s no way.”
Jim smiled. “I have my own stasis pod up front in my office,” he said. “As soon as we clear the Kuiper Belt, I strap in and conk out, and then Sancho hits the Boost and off we go.”
“And Sancho knows how to get there?” asked Zero.
“I am a Navigational AI built specifically for this ship and this mission,” said Sancho. “Knowing how to get to Murasaki is quite literally the purpose of my existence. And diagnostic checks, of course. I will get you there safely.”
“But you should be getting back to your pod,” said Jim. “We need everyone strapped in and snoozing before we start moving, or the acceleration could kill you.”
Zero’s eyes widened. “Kill me?”
“Have you ever been in the car when your mom or your dad speeds up really fast?”
Zero remembered the first day he rode in the car while Park was driving—he’d sped up so quickly it had pressed Zero back into the seat, like a giant invisible hand. “Yeah,” he said.
Jim smirked. “Now imagine that same thing, only instead of going a hundred kilometers an hour, you’re going four million. I’ve got an acceleration couch to keep me safe, but the rest of you need to be in your pods or you’ll be squished.” He slapped his hands together, loudly. “Flat as a pancake.” Jim laughed.
Zero turned and jumped back toward the ship, racing for his pod.