1
 

It was actual paper, something that was a rarity on the ship. It measured, in inches, approximately six by nine, but had been folded twice into a compact rectangle. One word—the name Gap—was scrawled along the outside of the paper, in a distinctive style that could have come from only one person aboard Galahad. The loop on the final letter was not entirely closed, which made it more than an r but just short of a p; a casual reader would assume that the writer was in a hurry.
Gap Lee knew that it was simply the way Triana Martell wrote. It wasn’t so much impatience on her part, but a conservation of energy. Her version of the letter b suffered the same fate, giving the impression of an extended h. It took some getting used to, but eventually Gap was able to read the scribbles without stumbling too much.
And, because he had scoured this particular note at least twenty times, it was now practically memorized anyway.
He looked at it again, this time under the tight beam of the desk lamp. It was just after midnight, and the rest of the room was dark. His roommate, Daniil, lay motionless in his bed across the room, a very faint snore seeping out from beneath the pillow that covered his head. With a full crew meeting only eight hours away, and having chalked up perhaps a total of six hours of sleep over the past two days, Gap knew that he should be tucked into his own bed. Yet while his eyelids felt heavy, his brain would not shut down.
He exhaled a long, slow breath. How just like Triana to forego sending an e-mail and instead scratch out her explanation to Gap by hand. She journaled, like many of the crew members on Galahad, but was the only one who did so the old-fashioned way, in a notebook rather than on her workpad. This particular note had been ripped from the binding of a notebook, its rough edges adding a touch that Gap could only describe as personal.
He found that he appreciated the intimate feel, while he detested the message itself. The opening line alone was enough to cause him angst.
Gap, I know that my decision will likely anger you and the other Council members, but in my opinion there was no time for debate, especially one that would more than likely end in a stalemate.
Of course he was angry. Triana had made one of her “executive decisions” again, a snap judgment that might have proved fatal. The rest of the ship’s ruling body, the Council, had expressed a variety of emotions, ranging from disbelief to despair; if they were angry, it wasn’t bubbling to the surface yet.
Now, sitting in the dark and staring at the note, Gap pushed aside his personal feelings—feelings that were mostly confused anyway—and tried to focus on the upcoming meeting. More than two hundred crew members were going to be on edge, alarmed that the ship’s Council Leader had plunged into a wormhole, nervous that there was little to no information about whether she could even survive the experience. They were desperate for direction; it would be his job to calm them, assure them, and deliver answers.
It was simply a matter of coming up with those answers in the next few hours.
He stood and stretched, casting a quick glance at Daniil, who mumbled something in his sleep and turned to face the wall. Gap leaned over his desk and moved Triana’s note into the small circle of light. His eyes darted through the message one more time, then folded it back into its original shape. He snapped off the light and stumbled to his bed. Draping one arm over his eyes, he tried to block everything from his mind and settle into a relaxed state. Sleep was the most important thing at the moment, and he was sure that he was the only Council member still awake at this time of the night.
*   *   *
He wasn’t. Lita Marques had every intention of being asleep by ten, and had planned on an early morning workout in the gym before breakfast and the crew meeting. But now it was past midnight, and she found herself walking into Galahad’s clinic, usually referred to by the crew as Sick House. It was under her supervision, a role that came naturally to the daughter of a physician.
Walking in the door she was greeted with surprise by Mathias, an assistant who tonight manned the late shift.
“What are you doing here?” he said, quickly dragging his feet off his desk and sitting upright.
“No, please, put your feet back up,” Lita said with a smile. “You know we’re very informal here, especially in the dead of night.” She walked over to her own desk and plopped down. “And to answer your question … I don’t know. Couldn’t sleep, so I decided to maybe work for a bit.”
Mathias squinted at her. “You doing okay with everything? I mean … with Alexa … and Tree. I mean…”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for asking, though.” She moved a couple of things around on her desk. “It’s just … you know, we’ll get through it all just fine.”
A moment of awkward silence fell between them. Lita continued to shuffle things in front of her, then realized how foolish it looked. She chanced a quick glance towards Mathias and caught his concerned look. “Really,” she said.
And then she broke down. Seeming to come from nowhere, a sob burst from her, and she covered her face with her hands. A minute later she felt a presence, and lowered her hands to find Mathias kneeling beside her.
“I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. “What can I do?”
“There’s nothing you can do. But thank you.” Suddenly embarrassed, she funneled all of her energy into looking composed and under control. “Really, it’s probably just a lack of sleep, and … well, you know.”
Mathias shook his head. “I don’t want to speak out of place, but you don’t have to act tough in front of me. We’re talking about losing your two best friends within a matter of days. There’s no doubt that you need some sleep, but it’s more than that. And that’s okay, Lita.”
She nodded and put a worried smile on her face. “You know what? Sometimes I wish I wasn’t on the Council; I think sometimes we’re too concerned with being a good example, and we forget to be ourselves.”
“Well, you can always be yourself around me,” he said, moving from her side and dropping into the chair facing her desk. He picked up a glass cube on her desk, the one filled with sand and tiny pebbles taken from the beach near Lita’s home in Veracruz, Mexico. She found that not only did it bring her comfort, it attracted almost everyone who sat at her desk.
Mathias twisted the cube to one side, watching the sand tumble, forming multicolored layers of sediment. “So, I’ll be curious to see what Gap says at this meeting,” he said, never taking his eyes off the cube. He left the comment floating between them.
“I don’t envy Gap right now,” Lita said cautiously. “We’ve been through so much in this first year, but especially in the last two weeks.” She paused and stared at her assistant. “I know everyone’s curious about what he intends to do, but there’s not much I can say right now.”
Mathias shrugged and placed the...