“Su-Shu!” his father shouted when he saw him. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
“Sorry,” said Zero, racing down the side tunnel in Ring 181. “I was just jumping around, like I said!”
“Your brothers are already in their pods,” said Zero’s mom, much more calmly than his father had been. “Did you see anything fun?”
“I …” He hesitated, then told her the truth. “I met the pilot. And the Navigational AI.”
“You mean Sancho?” asked his father, and laughed. “I wasn’t on the team that worked with him, but I’ve talked to him a few times. Quite a helpful little AI.” He paused, then gave Zero a stern look. “But you shouldn’t run off like that by yourself. Not on the ship, and certainly not on Kaguya when we get there. It’s a brand-new planet, and we know a lot of things about it but we don’t know everything. You’re not safe on your own.”
“I know, Dad,” said Zero, “and I’m sorry.” And he was sorry—he didn’t mean to go running off and getting into trouble. But there was just so much to explore. Zero had a sudden thought, and he smiled. “What’s the gravity like on Kaguya?”
“It’s lower than Earth’s,” said his father, “You’ll be able to jump pretty high, but you won’t be able to float.”
Zero frowned. “That’s dumb.”
“It’s better this way,” said his mother. “People who actually live without gravity, like the people who mine asteroids or drive transports between planets, end up with all kinds of problems with their bones and their muscles. Our bodies need gravity—at least most of the time.”
Zero glanced at the tunnels full of stasis pods. “Is it safe for us, then? Spending a hundred years without gravity, I mean. Will that hurt us?”
“The stasis pods will protect us,” said his mother.
“I guess,” said Zero, and then remembered something the pilot had told him. “Hey, Dad: can the ship really kill us when we speed up?”
“The stasis pods will protect us from that, too,” he said. “You don’t have anything to worry about.”
“But if someone’s not in a stasis pod?”
His father thought for a moment, with that face he used that meant he was trying to decide whether he should tell Zero a scary truth.
Zero rolled his eyes. “Come on, Dad, I’m twelve years old. You don’t have to treat me like a baby.”
His father sighed. “Yes, the acceleration would kill you. Especially the second one, when we pass the Kuiper Belt and Boost the Medina StarDrive. Even the deceleration could be dangerous when we get to the Murasaki System and stop. That’s why the journey is a hundred and five years instead of ninety-eight: those last seven years are just to slow us down safely.”
Zero thought about this, trying to decide if it was scary or cool. He chose cool. “That’s golden.” He thought again about Park driving the car and the invisible hand pressing him into the chair. “Will that kind of speed create its own gravity?”
His father smiled. “You’re going to be an engineer too, someday, aren’t you?”
Zero grinned. “I hope so.”
“Acceleration simulates gravity,” his father explained, “but speed doesn’t.”
“What’s the difference?” asked Zero.
“Speed is how fast you’re going. Acceleration is when your speed changes—going faster or going slower, or even changing direction. If you and me and the ship and everything else are all moving at the same speed, you won’t even notice it. The Earth is rotating at about 460 meters per second, but you can’t feel it because you’re moving at the same speed. And the Earth itself is moving around the sun at about thirty thousand meters per second, and you don’t feel that either. Even when you jump, you stay the same speed.”
Zero’s eyes went wide. “So when I’m standing still on Earth, I’m actually moving thirty thousand meters per second?”
“Exactly,” said his father. “At least in relation to the sun. And as long as that speed doesn’t change, you’ll never even notice it at all. The StarDrive is only dangerous when we’re accelerating. Once we hit a certain speed and stay there, it will feel like we’re not even moving at all.”
“Science is awesome,” said Zero.
“Yes it is,” said Zero’s mom. “But we need to get into our sleeping pods before we turn into a science experiment.” She took Zero’s hand and guided him into the narrow aisle. Stasis pods lined the walls, many of them already full. Zero stopped in front of his brothers, strapped tightly into their pods and fast asleep.
“They’re already zonked,” said Zero.
“Yep,” said his mom. “Next time they wake up, we’ll be in orbit around Kaguya.”
“They look like action figures in a toy store,” said Zero, touching Yen’s stasis pod. “All lined up in little plastic packages.”
“Yours is right here next to them,” said his father. He swiped one of the plastic ID cards over the control panel, and it opened with a soft hiss of air.
“Welcome, Su-Shu Huang,” said a quiet, familiar voice.
“Sancho?” asked Zero.
“Please step inside,” said the voice.
“This computer uses the same voice,” said Zero’s father, “but it’s not an AI like Sancho—just a life support monitor.”
“Please step inside,” said the voice again.
Zero hugged his parents, and kissed them both on the cheek, and then stepped into the pod. They were all the same size—built for a full-grown man—so Zero felt very small inside of it. “See you at Kaguya,” he told his mom as he waved. And she waved back with a smile. The door closed with another hiss.
“Please wait a moment while I examine your body’s health,” said the voice. Almost immediately after, it spoke again. “Thank you. I have adjusted the stasis system to match your vital signs. Please relax and hold still.”
Zero stood as still as he could. He was already starting to feel sleepy. Was the pod filling with a special gas to knock him out? He yawned, and realized his eyes were closed. He opened them, and saw that a system of straps had already wrapped around him, holding him tightly in place. He hadn’t even noticed. It was like a warm blanket, and he relaxed even further. He yawned again.
“This stasis pod works quickly,” he tried to say, but he was already so sleepy it sounded more like “Thisssssssss shtashishhhhhhhh … kurkurrr.” He forced his eyes open again and saw that the pod was filling up with clear gel, but he didn’t know if that was part of the acceleration safety system or the chemical that put him into stasis. Probably both, he decided.
When I wake up, I’ll be in a brand-new solar system, he thought. With a brand-new planet. It’s going to be so amazing.
And then he didn’t think anything, because he was fast asleep.