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Awoken from cryo-sleep, Yan and his fellow astronauts are tasked with assessing the alien world of Kepler 6020e for human habitation. Yet plagued with visions of the blue-green planet’s destruction, Yan begins to wonder what’s more important: finding a new home for humanity, or protecting the life already there?
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About the author: W.A. Hamilton
W.A. Hamilton is a Canadian speculative fiction writer based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His short fiction has been published in Seize the Press and Daikaijuzine. He is currently working on a debut novel. In his spare time, he enjoys board games, bouldering, and hiking. You can follow him on Twitter or BlueSky.
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Yan dreamt of Kepler 6020e each night. In low orbit, the lush, cloud-swept surface of the exoplanet was a constant out of the viewports of HOPE-60 station. Before settling his sleep mask into place, Yan would stare at the world below from the blinking semi-darkness of his pod, fingers tracing the glass like a mariner mapping distant continents.
Similar to Earth, yet unmistakably alien.
Stepping from the lander on their first mission to the surface, Yan remembered the explosion of foreign vegetation that had greeted the three astronauts: groves of slender fungi-like trees, stretching hundreds of feet into the misty air, while trailing tendrils gathered the moisture. Beneath the fungal groves, thistle-down moss and shifting carpets of hollow reeds; their stalks reaching to almost chest height on Yan’s vacuum suit. And the colours — shades and tones that defied the imagination: iridescent purples and pastel pinks, fading to deepest blue and dusky orange.
Yan yearned for the sounds of it, the smell of it. He wanted to listen to the rustle of the wind in the alien trees, feel the texture of the leaves between his fingers. Instead, there was only the stale hiss of his own breath, echoing back through the suit’s respiratory system.
As if reading his mind, Tosh tapped on the visor of her own helmet. “Don’t be tempted to take these off. We can’t be sure if the air is safe.”
Yet Yan had been tempted. Sometimes he dreamt of removing his suit and wandering off into the jungle, the mossy tumble soft as down beneath his feet. Sometimes, in those dreams, he would find himself lying amidst a grove, staring up at the blue-green sky, and feel a sense of peace so deep all thought melted away.
The dreams were always like this, after trips to the surface of Kepler 6020e: buoying his faith in the mission. Perhaps it was the lingering effects of the cryo-sleep, but this planet felt right to Yan. Like it had been waiting for him. And with enough care and study, he was sure he’d find a way to map the delicate balance of Kepler 6020e’s ecosystems, to understand how the planet’s many forms of life fit together.
Visits to the surface were staggered a few weeks apart, giving Yan plenty of time to wrestle with such puzzles. As the days stretched between each visit, the mood aboard the station would become darker — perhaps the inherent claustrophobia of their situation, perhaps the isolation or the stress of the mission. Yan couldn’t say for sure.
And Yan’s dreams would shift to match. The blue-green sky of Kepler 6020e would rain ash, coating the surgical white of his vacuum suit. The delicate groves would go up in curtains of flame, reeds melting like wax paper while silhouettes of vast ships descended from the sooty clouds above.
Yan knew where those dreams came from; knew all too well the role he played in the world’s eventual colonization. He tried to ignore the nightmares, to not read them as somehow prescient. He and the others would labour over their tests: analysing samples of soil, water, vegetation, even small organisms they’d captured — this world’s flimsy version of insects. They hadn’t found anything more evolved than dragonflies on the surface, even after extensive drone surveys. It was a young world, still hundreds of millions of years away from sentient life.
Yet every test confirmed their burgeoning hope — a hope that had seen Yan and his two companions flung hundreds of light years across the galaxy, suspended in cryo-sleep aboard their solar cutter; a hope for the future of the human race.
Could this world be a new Earth?
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“Did you sleep well, Yan?”
The pleasantly melodic voice of HOPE-60’s eponymous AI intruded on Yan’s thoughts. Half-asleep, he’d been staring out the viewport at the surface of Kepler 6020e, spinning imperceptibly below them. Feeling a flicker of annoyance at the intrusion, Yan pulled aside the webbing that secured him to his sleeping platform and floated toward the hygiene station.
“Yes, I did. Thank you for asking Hope.”
HOPE. Habitable orbiting planetary exostation.
“The others are already awake and eating in the kitchen,” Hope informed him. “I’m glad you’re up. I’ve compiled a list of priority tasks to complete in the next orbital period, which we’ll review together when you join us.”
Hanging weightless as he fumbled for his toothbrush, Yan nodded. “Okay, sounds good.”
A brief click sounded over the nearby comm unit, Hope’s way of letting him know she wasn’t actively monitoring the conversation any longer. Yan rolled his eyes, glad the AI had limited visual sensors in the sleeping pods. There was no real privacy on the cramped station, but Hope’s perpetual presence didn’t make things any easier.
The AI’s role was ostensibly to monitor mission priorities — more of a talking checklist than anything else — but she’d begun to feel more and more overbearing during the past months. Every morning, she woke the crew and set their tasks for the day, even reminding them to exercise and sleep at the appropriate times.
Hope had no real control over the station’s onboard systems, so it was the humans who did all the actual work, but Yan was still forcefully reminded of his first lab manager, a tiny ham-fisted man who’d been unwilling to bend the rules even a fraction.
It did not take Yan long to change. When he reached the kitchen deck, the others were still eating. As always, he had to momentarily adjust as he entered the simulated low-g of the main deck. The central body of HOPE-60 was a rotating cylinder, containing the kitchen, main labs, and control deck. Gyroscopic motion provided the illusion of gravity for the crew, while various sleeping pods and lab stations split off like the branches of a many-limbed tree.
Tosh muttered a greeting, already skimming over the readouts from their last batch of tests. Ennita signed ‘good morning’ with her free hand, a half-consumed nutrient pack dangling from her lips.
Something had gone wrong with the cryo sequence for Ennita on their journey to Kepler 6020e. She’d only half-slept, drifting in and out of moments of wakefulness; sometimes dreaming, sometimes horribly aware of the blackness around her. She’d woken from the de-hibernation process in a state of ‘prolonged acute stress response’, according to Hope, unable to form sounds or even understand where she was.
Yan could remember how she’d flailed to get away from him, brown eyes filled with an animal terror. Groggy with cryo-sleep himself, it had taken Yan the better part of an hour to soothe Ennita and persuade her to use one of the writing tablets to communicate with them. Yet even after the acute panic had passed, some primitive terror continued to lurk in Ennita’s eyes; the indelible mark left by centuries with only the stars for company.
Once they’d settled into life aboard the station, Hope had begun to teach Ennita rudimentary sign language from her database, allowing her to resume basic mission functions. Nonetheless, Hope’s lack of therapeutic programming had been a limiting factor in Ennita’s recovery, one of many oversights on the part of mission control.
Despite this, Ennita was getting better. For weeks, she’d struggled with insomnia and taken sleeping pills, but the night they’d returned from their first mission to Kepler 6020e, she’d slept the whole cycle without assistance — greeting Yan at breakfast with a smile.
Time in nature was all I needed, she’d joked to him.
Now, it had been nearly two weeks since their last visit to the planet, and the cycle of sleep-insomnia was playing out as it usually did. Yan could see the dark circles under Ennita’s eyes again.
Yan got his nutrient packet from the locker, but he’d no sooner taken his seat than Hope’s cheerful voice sounded over the comm. “I have a mission update for everyone,” she said. “Our priorities will be shifting, based on the parameters assigned to me at programme launch.”
Tosh set aside her tablet. Yan and Ennita exchanged a look somewhere between dread and resignation. Hope’s updates were rarely good, throwing the humans out of whatever routine they’d established and into the next phase without warning. Like when she’d set them doing spacewalks to assess station integrity, during their second week out of cryo-sleep.
“What’s the update, Hope?” Tosh asked when the silence began to stretch.
It had taken Yan a while to figure Tosh out. The stocky aerospace engineer did not seem to really want to be here. Perpetually impatient to move onto the next phase, her focus was ahead: spend as little time on the planet as possible, complete the tests quickly, and get to whatever came after.
Yan wasn’t precisely sure what ‘after’ was. The journey to Kepler 6020e had taken their solar cutter over a century travelling at close to light speeds. He could see the little ship from the kitchen viewports, vast solar sails folded like a parasol, as it sat docked to the wharf extending from HOPE-60 station. Theirs was one of dozens of similar craft to make the journey across the galaxy, to identical stations remotely established over the preceding centuries: a grand survey of Goldilocks zone near-Earth exoplanets, generations in planning; the next leap in human exploration.
Yet the cost for the surveyors? When Yan and Ennita and Tosh returned home, they would find a world lost to time: family and friends hundreds of years dead and gone, while they’d aged only a few, preserved by cryo-sleep and the effects of relativistic travel.
For Yan, the decision had been simple — there had been nothing left for him on Earth. No siblings. Parents and relatives already long dead. A pile of debt from several postgraduate degrees in biochemistry and astrobiology. And a burning desire to do something worthwhile with his life. Easy. So what was there for Tosh?
“I’m pleased to announce we have completed the requirements for the current phase of the mission,” Hope told them, her cheerful tone giving no hint of whether this would be good or bad for the humans. “The outcome of our testing falls within acceptable parameters to move forward with alpha protocol.”
“What does that entail?” Yan asked, gripping his nutrient pack. He’d never been clear on all the phases and protocols of the mission. That was Hope’s job.
“The next phase of alpha protocol is the redeploy-and-report scenario, activated where conditions for successful human habitation fall within a high probability threshold. As I’m sure you’re aware, the statistical chances of encountering this scenario are less than one-hundredth of a percentile—”
Ennita’s hands began to move, signing something. Yan’s brain kicked into gear.
“Wait, wait,” he interjected, trying to untangle the AI’s obtuse phrasing. “Are you saying 6020e will be able to support human life? You’re saying that we’ve found it...”
“We cannot know for certain whether Kepler 6020e fully meets the requirements for human habitation without further testing,” Hope corrected him. “However, current results fall with the conditions set out by mission control for further—”
But Yan wasn’t listening anymore. He’d seized Ennita in a double-armed hug, sending their nutrient packets bouncing across the low-g deck. “I told you, all those months of testing — I knew there was something special.”
Ennita gave him a tired smile.
“What does this mean for us, Hope?” Tosh asked, pulling them back to the moment. “What does the redeploy-and-report scenario require?”
Yan noted how the other woman was gripping the tabletop. He paused, turning over the words in his head. Redeploy. Report.
No, not that. We’re not ready for that.
“The redeploy-and-report scenario involves a relaunch of the solar cutter and a fully-crewed return trip to Earth. We will transport samples from Kepler 6020e for additional testing and report on findings directly to mission control.”
“You’re sending us back?” Yan levered himself upright as if confronting the AI might help. But, of course, there was only the disembodied voice.
“That’s correct, Dr Oblow. I am sending you all back to Earth.”
“But you can’t do that,” Yan protested, gesturing. He could see the faint tremble of Ennita’s shoulders. “You told us we would have more time to study the planet. Months. Years. We need to learn more. We need to understand the planet’s ecology, figure out how humans can live here without harming the biosphere before we can even think about—”
“I am afraid the decision of how human habitation will be established on Kepler 6020e is not up to you, Dr Oblow,” Hope informed him, infuriatingly detached. “I apologize for creating the wrong expectations, but in rare cases where the compatibility match falls within a high threshold, our protocol dictates an immediate suspension of testing, so settlement efforts can begin as soon as possible.”
“Then we’ll send the samples back and stay,” Yan went on, hardly knowing what he was saying. “We’ll stay and we’ll do the testing ourselves. This is a special place, like nothing humans have seen before—”
“We’re not staying,” Tosh interrupted him.
“It will be two Earth-standard centuries before another vessel makes the journey to Kepler 6020e,” Hope informed them. “While this station is designed to be self-sustaining, your continued presence here would be counterproductive. Re-settlement protocol will be determined by mission control, based on the data provided by the initial surveys. You may have an opportunity to re-apply and contribute to settlement planning efforts, contingent on the results of your performance evaluation.”
Yan snorted, knowing how that request would land.
“We’re not staying,” Tosh pressed. “Whether it’s a new Earth or not, we can’t. Our contract stated a maximum of three years and then we had to ship home.”
“So what?” Yan threw up his hands. “Who are they to tell us what to do? We came all the way here. We get to make our own choices.”
Tosh glared across the table, eyes flitting between him and Ennita. “Look, I understand you’re doing this to protect her, but she has to go back into cryo-sleep eventually. Either that or die out here.”
“She can speak for herself,” Yan retorted.
Ennita, who’d watched the exchange, signed a simple ‘wait’ and drew a tablet towards her. She wrote in silence for a minute, before turning the message to face them:
I don’t care about cryo-sleep, I care about who this decision impacts.
When we were back home, it was easy to see this as an abstract exercise.
Now we are here, it is different. This planet is real. It’s full of life. We need to honour that.
Our decision will have consequences — for the people back home and for this planet.
So our choice is important.
Tosh crossed her arms but did not reply.
Hope’s voice interjected over the comm. “While I appreciate your concern, Dr Bhatt, the issue you’re posing is irrelevant in the context of the established mission framework — as we’ve discussed before. Rather than projecting your personal feelings onto the situation, I would suggest you take comfort in the knowledge that these ethical dilemmas have already been rigorously debated. The best thing you can do is follow protocol and play your part in ensuring the future of the human race.”
Ennita slumped back in her seat, seeming to almost fold in on herself. And Yan could feel a weighty darkness descending upon him, like the black clouds gathering over the skies of Kepler 6020e, carrying their load of ashy rain.
“How should we prepare for redeployment, Hope?” Tosh asked.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Dr. Innis. Today I will need you to complete a full backup of sample data to the servers aboard HOPE-60. Tomorrow, we’ll begin to load all original samples onto the cutter and then initiate the start-up sequence of the cutter’s reactor...”
Yan let the words wash over him, an empty babble of technical details. He stared instead at the silhouette of the folded solar sails out of the viewport, the pristine surface of Kepler 6020e spinning below.
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Yan had grown up in a grey town on the coast of a grey sea. There were no fish in that sea. The sky was always grey and Yan’s mother always had a cough, which kept her in bed. She passed away when Yan was only eight. But he remembered how she would take him down to the seashore on Sunday mornings.
“Our ancestors once sailed from here to discover new lands,” she told him, as he hunted for stones to hurl into the surf. “One day, you’ll do the same and leave all this behind.”
As a child, Yan hadn’t believed her. Why would he willingly venture into such a vast emptiness, leaving behind the familiarity of home? Now, he knew better. Sometimes the emptiness of the unknown was preferable to the emptiness of what you left behind.
When he’d gone to college, Yan had researched the disappearance of the fish, as one of his first projects. His grandfather had been a fisherman, although Yan had never known him, so he’d felt a certain connection to the question. The answer he’d discovered had been equal parts banal and depressing.
Everyone had known the acidity of the sea was killing the fish. It was caused by runoff from common chemicals, manufactured in refineries near the coast. But stopping chemical production and finding alternatives had been expensive and inconvenient, so no one had done anything — until the fish were already dead.
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Yan decided not to ask Ennita to help him. He couldn’t be sure what decision she would make. He only knew he had to do it.
He could not allow Kepler 6020e to become another grey sea, left in humanity’s wake. So when the cycle’s work was done, he lay on his sleeping pallet until the others drifted off. Then he floated down to the kitchen deck. Yet when he got there, the airlock to the wharf was already open.
“I know where you’re going, Dr Oblow.” Hope’s voice sounded quietly behind him.
“Yeah, uh, I’m going to the cutter,” Yan said, almost forgetting his prepared answer. “Just doing some pre-ignition checks. Couldn’t sleep, so thought I would get a start on it.”
“Of course.” Hope paused as if she would rather say more. “I understand that change can be difficult. Please do what you need to ease your mind. However, be aware Dr Bhatt is already conducting engine tests on the ship. I would recommend consulting with her before beginning your own checks. She should be returning shortly.”
Yan waited on the low-g bridge wharf. Some part of him was relieved; Ennita had made the same choice. He wondered if Hope knew what they were doing, but had decided not to speak up, understanding her impotence in the moment — the AI was not programmed for discipline, nor equipped to dole it out.
Yet when Ennita floated through the airlock, Yan felt his stomach churn with the spinning motion of the station. What if we’ve made a mistake? Some part of him still longed to see Earth, one last time. But he saw the blue-green silhouettes of Kepler 6020e behind her and felt the rightness of their decision, even in that moment.
Ennita did not look surprised to see him. Her lips creased into a smile and, as she drifted next to him, she took his hand, intertwining her fingers with his; an answer of its own.
It was not long before the first muffled explosion reverberated through the airlock. More blasts followed, but the fire burned itself out quickly in the cutter’s sealed interior. Together, they stood on the wharf, watching as the flames devoured the ship.
“How could you fucking do it?” Tosh’s sudden voice came from behind, filled with a rage Yan had never heard before. She must have been woken by the noises. The stocky engineer’s eyes went to Ennita. “I wondered about him, but you...”
Tosh’s eyes stared unseeing at the wreck of the solar cutter, venting atmosphere through its viewports. Although the frame of the craft remained intact, no human would fly it again.
“I would have alerted you, Dr Innis,” Hope said over the comms, “but my core program directive instructs me to prevent violence onboard the station. Given the situation, I thought it best to allow events to play out and preserve the data collected by our team.”
“Shut up, Hope,” Tosh said, eyes never leaving the husk of the cutter.
For once, the AI had no reply.
The naked grief on Tosh’s face covered Yan in a wave of guilt. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I know you wanted to go home. But we couldn’t let them come. You know what they’ll do.”
Tosh’s chin buckled. “I don’t give a shit about them,” she said, surprising Yan. “She’s waiting for me back there. Stuck in cryo-sleep. I did this for her. A forgiveness of all debts — that’s what they said, wasn’t it? A fresh start. And she was so sick.”
Ennita went to put a hand on Tosh’s shoulder, but the other woman shrugged it away.
“You could’ve let me go, at least,” Tosh spat.
“But then they would’ve known,” Yan pleaded. “We wouldn’t have had the time to study the planet: to gather the knowledge, to understand how to settle it carefully, without destroying the life that’s already there.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Tosh snorted. “They’ll come eventually. To find out what happened to us. You’re only delaying the inevitable.”
But we will have the answers ready by then. Ennita’s hands trembled as she signed the words. When they return to find us, the solution will be waiting for them.
“There’s a cryo-chamber on the station,” Yan put in. “You can wait for them if you want. Hope they send you back home.”
Tosh blinked away her tears, nodding. “You can’t control this, you know?” she said. “When they do come, you won’t have any say in what they do.”
Yan shrugged. “Maybe, but at least we’ll have done the best we can. A lifetime to find a way to protect this world. One can only hope it will be enough.”
Ennita took his hand again, squeezing their fingers together.
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Yan loaded the landing with everything he thought they would need, and then Ennita added everything he’d forgotten. There was enough fuel for several dozen return trips, but Yan wanted to save it for transferring their research back to HOPE-60.
Before they left, he and Ennita helped Tosh settle into her cryo-pod. As the lid sealed over the stocky engineer, Tosh’s expression held a curious tinge of envy, as if some part of her wished to see how their grand gambit would play out. Yet once in hibernation, a peace fell over the woman’s face that Yan had never observed before.
“I hope she makes it back,” he commented, once Tosh was down.
Whoever she left back on Earth, she must’ve been very special, Ennita observed.
They hadn’t heard from their resident AI since the night of the fire aboard the cutter, but Yan stuck his head into the kitchen deck for one last farewell.
“Goodbye, Hope,” he called through the empty corridors of the station. “Hope you don’t get lonely.” He winced at his own pun, but there was no reply.
Their final descent to Kepler 6020e went by in a daze. Dropping through the upper layers of cloud, the familiar blue-green landscape unfolded before them, the trees and the lush underbrush getting larger and larger out of their viewports. At last, the final landing gear settled into place and Yan took Ennita’s hand again, through the gloves of their vacsuits.
They stepped gingerly down the ladder, staring at the alien landscape of fungal trees and swaying reed stalks, the shades of their shared technicolour dream. Yan had run a series of tests over the last orbital period to answer his most pressing question — and determined the risks were low enough, at least for a few minutes.
“Shall we do it together?” he asked Ennita.
She nodded and, in unison, they popped the seals on their helmets.
A smell hit Yan’s nostrils like nothing he’d ever experienced before. A spicy, peppery musk mixed with a deep sweetness — his olfactory receptors grappling with compounds they’d never been exposed to before. Yet the air, the scent of fresh, moisture-rich oxygen; that was the same. Yan closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
It would not be easy living here. In his head, he went through the mental checklist of the things they’d need to survive: edible plants, sources of freshwater, and materials that could be used for building or making tools. And for each step, they would have to test every scenario; taking every precaution to protect the fragile world around them; minimizing contact until they could study its impact. For now, the tiny landing craft would be their bed, kitchen, and lab. Yet one day — if something didn’t kill them along the way — perhaps they could make a nest in these groves, string up a hammock and a tent of woven reeds to keep out the rain.
He turned to Ennita. Her face was tilted back to the blue-green sky, filled with a serenity that mirrored his own. Yan put an arm around her, pulling her close, and heard her sigh.
