Athena Pallas, the brainchild of humanity, oh, whatever would the crew say, when they saw it drifting aimlessly, with no protection whatsoever? However, there was no crew awake to see it. Instead, there was a neurologist.
Dr H Pavel was surprised to wake up, and find out that he was the only person awake in the medic room. Like all others, he had stowed away his belongings in a locker, and went into Cryosleep, assuming that he will wake up to a new earth, and a new life. The first thought that came into his mind was the need to empty his bladder. A century in ice (was his rough approximate of cryosleep time) was too long to hold. After using the nearby stall, he began to clear his mind, and think. He started with trying to recollect old memories, as that is what he always asked his patients to do. Slowly, bits and pieces came back to him. He remembered his name, Henry Pavel, his profession – neurologist, even the name of his childhood dog: Jax! But, one memory failed to return. He didn’t remember if he was supposed to wake up sometime in the middle of the journey. The ship AI had told everyone that there is a possibility that three from a quadrant might be woken up, for some requirements within the ship. He never recalled his name being on the list of people who might wake up in the medical section.

Further intrigued, Pavel began exploring the rest of his quadrant, to find a reason for his coming out of cryo-sleep. He started small, and observed the room he was in. The room comprised of 10 Cryo-genesis machines, each with a body inside. The room he was in was for those specializing in brain therapy. This included himself, and several other neurosurgeons and a few exceptional therapists. However, none showed signs of awakening from their sleep. Apart from that, nothing seemed wrong in the neuro section of the ship.

With an itching desire to find out why he awakened, he decided to explore the rest of the medical section. As he packed essential supplies of torches, and a flip phone to contact SHOW in emergencies, Pavel began to recollect the design of the ship. It was comprised of multiple floors, each capable of holding 5 million people. Some of the key floors were medical, residential, control, and ship support. Each floor was divided into sub sections, so that identification of people would become easier when the exodus was over. He was part of the neuro section of the medical floor. On his left and right, were the cardio and muscle sections respectively. He was one room out of 103 in the medical floor. The whole floor also comprised of several restrooms, and a few operating rooms, which were present on all floors in case of emergencies. Overall, the ship was massive.

Not finding any definitive proof or evidence in his quadrant of research medics, he decided to take a break. He collected his food tickets, and headed up to floor 2, the cafeteria. He used the skywalk elevator, which could be viewed from all floors. He hit the number two, and took a seat. Given the size of the ship, it was estimated to take at least 5 minutes to go up or down by a floor. And Pavel, had to travel 6 floors!

It wasn’t the wait that annoyed him, it was the loop of elevator music. From then on, he decided that his least favourite song would be “Stairway to Heaven”. He observed the passing floors, and saw no signs of movement, except a few robots on each deck. These robots were the SHOWBOTs, who were linked to the ship, and could aid people in most situations. Right now, the SHOWBOTs were cleaning up the biosphere floor. The biosphere floor contained all the remaining key plants that humans could salvage. It was the full-time duty of some SHOWBOTs to tend to the trees and plants, and clean up any dust or microbes that could prove harmful to the plants.  He managed to catch a nap too (though how someone can do that after sleeping for 100 years, science can’t explain).

Pavel finally reached his destination. The cafeteria was by far, the most massive part of the ship. Rightfully so, it was designed to hold all the members of the ship. It was the size of roughly 10 soccer fields, with around 20 sub floors within.             He made his way to the nearest chef dock, which were of 20 per floor. The dock was manned by SHOW, but could also be done manually. He inserted his green food card into the slot, and walked over to the selection machine. It resembled an ATM, which would only be activated when the card was inserted into the slot. Now the machine was active, and showed a bright LED screen. It held 3 options for food. On top was a red button that said “Non vegetarian”, and yellow on below that which said “Vegetarian” and the last one was a green, and it said “Vegan”. Pavel looked at the green button with distaste. He always despised those who said that they didn’t want to harm animals, or nature. But after all that, they decide to kill and eat an apple or lettuce. He moved on quickly, and pushed the yellow button. Though he ate meat, he didn’t want to start big, and run the risk of exposing the digestive system to eating food that required lots of digestion, and go hugging the toilet for days. As soon as he hit the button, his card exited from the slot. He collected it, and went to the next counter.

Here, he found a conveyor belt. As soon as he reached it, it began moving, and out came a warm tray of food. He collected his meal, and went over to the nearest table. He looked around, and saw no other signs of life other than himself. He then began to dig in. His meal consisted of some plain rice, a lentil stew, a salad, water, some juice, and a cup of ice cream. Judging by the contents of his meal, he figured it was around noon, and this was his lunch. He dug in, and began eating with relish. He loved the salad. With a content stomach, he leaned back, and began paying more attention to his surroundings. He began to scan each floor. As far as he could see, he was still the only person alive. Then, in a flurry of movement, he saw another figure on the 3rd floor. He only glimpsed the person for a second, but it gave him the confirmation he needed.
He was not alone.

He bounded up to the third floor, and found it empty. Of course, the figure was gone, he would have done the same. He went over to the food counter, and walked to a fourth section, the help section. This gave him direct access to the records. He accessed the system of SHOW with ease, and used his medical premium clearance to access the records of the nearest food machine. It said that whoever had last used it had ordered a civilian pass vegetarian meal. The civilian pass was a type of card hierarchy, which decided the portions and quality of the food. Though all food was safe to consume across all levels, passes like premium or gold received high quality food in large quantities. This helped him narrow down the second figure to the civilian floor. This left him with a possible 2 million civilians. He took the nearest skywalk elevator and went up to the civilian floor. He began to head towards the floor control room, which also had records of Cytogenesis updates. His plan was to access these, and locate where and who had woken up. He was a good 200 metres from the control room, when he heard someone. He rushed into the nearest room, and began to peep outside through the window. He was sure he heard someone rushing or packing. He was willing to bet it was the same stalker in the cafeteria. He was about to turn back, and look at the room, when he saw the figure. The mysterious man (or so Pavel had assumed, given his figure) was exiting one of the rooms parallel to Pavel’s. The man wore a hooded jacket, faded jeans, and a backpack. Pavel was about to pursue, when another thought struck him. What if he went to the control room and accessed the cameras? That way, he would know when and where to strike when the stranger was cornered. But then again, the stranger looked weak enough for Pavel to tackle. He was conflicted, as both were viable options. He was running out of time; the stranger would soon be out of view. Pavel made a split-second decision and pursued the stranger.

In a few minutes, Pavel realised that option 1 was probably a better one. He was hopelessly lost, and the only hopes guiding him through this labyrinth were quick glimpses of the stranger when he disappeared around the corner. As he was running, Pavel realised that the stranger was heading towards the bathing stalls. He thought to himself “Finally, something goes my way! There’s only one exit and entry to the bathing stalls, my stalker has cornered himself.” So, saying, Pavel used the last of his energy to sprint to the stalls. Just before he entered through the massive arching entrance, another thought occurred to him. “One entry and one exit, it’s also the perfect place for an ambush!” Too late, Pavel had too much momentum and ran through the doorway, only to be greeted by a wooden plank to the face.

After many an hour, Pavel had woken up. He was still in the bathing stalls, but he was gagged and tied to a chair. He felt something warm trickle down his cheeks, he hoped it was not blood. Unfortunately, the small red puddle below him said otherwise. Resisting the urge to gag, he looked up. Opposite him, comfortably seated in the other chair, was his captor. He (Pavel was right, after all) was a dark skinned, lean man of his mid -20s. The man had dark brown hair, unlike the shining blonde hair of Pavel’s. Pavel tried to get up, but found that he could not lift himself, nor his light chair. He later found out that there was an entire sink holding the chair down. Pavel was not going to be escaping any time soon. Meanwhile, he was wondering how a lean figure such as his captor could lift a heavy sink. The cuts on the captor’s hands told him that he too had faced issues doing the same.

Pavel realised that he was getting side-tracked. His captor had now risen, and pulled something from his bag pack. As the captor got closer, Pavel identified the “weapon” as a fork. Though tiny, a fork can seem menacing when one is gagged and bound to a chair. Pavel made frantic efforts to speak, but the man kept advancing toward him. Finally, the man stopped, inches from Pavel. Pavel closed his eyes, preparing for the end. He felt the captor’s hand on his head, and cringed his eyes, waiting for the blow. However, there wasn’t one. Instead, the captor had removed his gag. Pavel opened his eyes, and began to calm his breathing. Now that he could speak, he had a chance of getting through to his captor. His captor was no longer ahead of him, so Pavel assumed he was behind.

Pavel said “Look, I don’t know why you are doing this to me. I meant no harm to you, I chased you because I was curious, and I wanted to know.” The man spoke, his voice was deep, but not too deep. This confirmed Pavel’s thought of the captor’s age. The captor said “Curious of what? What did you want to know?” Pavel explained how he had woken up, and thought that he was the only one awake on the Pallas Athena. “Strange…” the captor mused. “I too thought the same. When I woke up, I seemed to be the only one awake in my floor, as far as I could tell, that is”. His voice became less threatening. Pavel hoped he had succeeded. “Could you, perhaps let me out now? I promise I won’t do anything.” The stranger seemed to have changed in the explanation. He seemed more innocent and understanding now. “I’m sorry, I too rushed in without trying to comprehend the situation. You should wake up one of the doctors you know? That scar on your head doesn’t look good.” He said, while undoing the knots that bound the doctor.

“I appreciate your concern, but I am a doctor, so I should be fine. Although, it intrigues me as to why the two of us have been woken up, and why we have not been informed yet. Anyway, we should tend to other matters now. Let’s start over, shall we? My name, is Henry Pavel, what’s yours?”

The stranger introduced himself as Clive Anderson. By profession, he used to be a software engineer, until he boarded the Pallas Athena. Pavel was right, the young chap was just of age 27! His story was not quite different from that of Pavel’s. He too had spent time exploring the floor searching for others. He abandoned that, and came to the cafeteria. Just as he was finishing, he had spotted Pavel, and had assumed that the doctor was out to find him when he saw him access records. It was true, he had planned an ambush, but seemed apologetic after he learnt the true backstory. Clive, apparently, had heard rustling movements behind him ever since he had woken up. He felt that he was being watched. However, he was open in expressing his relief when I found out that he had a friend to support him. Pavel was not sure how to react to Clive’s outward trust and openness. He too introduced himself, and the two sat down in the cafeteria, plotting a plan.

“We have to find a way to get back into Cryosleep, but it seems that the AI of the ship can’t do that. We have to wake someone from the control crew.” Pavel was saying. “But let’s first try and figure out why and how we are awake” countered Clive. The two decided that they would rest for the day (or their approximate of a day), and get to work on the next. They were heading back to the lounge, when Clive calmly said, “don’t look now, but I think someone is watching us from the third floor”.

And sure enough, when Pavel snuck a glance, there was another figure, blending into the shadows.

They decided to confront all matters the next day, but also decided to take turns keeping watch. After all, nobody knew the intentions of the third party.

Mary Claythorne was an engineer before the construction of the Pallas Athena. She was delighted to receive word from the UN, asking her to help lead the construction of an intergalactic exodus vessel. She reviewed all the parts of the ship, down to the tiniest nut and bolt. She was proud of herself for being part of this mission, but it also demanded discipline. She was, a woman of punctuality. Her predictions for the construction of the Pallas Athena were only off by a few hours. In the end, she was allotted to crew control, another prestigious position. She saw to it that the ship provided anything that the passengers would require when they are awake. She even personally oversaw everyone going into Cryosleep! A lot was expected of her, and that was how she would like to keep it. Everything in the ship had to go according to plan. Mary saw to it. However, tonight, for the first time in her life, something had gone wrong!

She had woken up from Cryosleep, and found that there were 2 others from the ship who were awake. One was a doctor, and the other was from the civilian section. “Bah! Reckless youngsters, think they can hack the system, and wake up without any aid. Not only have they woken themselves up, but me too! They seem to be consuming too much food, and depleting our limited resources. At this rate, we are all doomed. Unless…”

Pavel and Clive decided to set up camp at the lounge. The journey to the lounge took 20 minutes. Once they reached, they were amazed by the size of the lounge. The lounge occupied half of a floor, and the other half was occupied by the lockers. The lounge was basically a luxury suite for 3 billion people. It comprised of different rooms for residents to pass time. It had a portable cinema, and even a casino! Pavel picked up a guide of the lounge, and was amazed to discover that all items were 3-D printed! They went to the counter, and booked a room for the night. Now, nobody else could go into that room, as only they held the key. When they entered their room, the sheer size of it made their jaws drop. Inside the lounge, were multiple rooms, each with a specific feature. The room had everything! Washroom, bed, books, everything! They decided to ditch the idea of keeping watch, seeing they were the only ones with access to the room. They unpacked, double checked if there wasn’t anyone else, and decided to call it quits.

They went straight to bed after that. Clive began to snore immediately. Pavel lay awake, trying to imagine the stars and planets outside. He then switched off the light, and went to sleep. That left two men in the room, both blissfully unaware that members of the control crew could access all doorways in the ship…

Later that night, Clive woke up with a start. He never slept too well, and usually woke up at absurd hours. He got up, and scanned the room. He didn’t see anything out of place…. Yet. He saw that everything was how they had left it, and then it struck him. They switched off the lights before they hit the bed, and yet, everything was visible! His eyes fell upon the entrance door, which now lay ajar.

Clive jumped with a start, and rushed to the other room to wake up Pavel. He was too late. When he arrived, Pavel was gag bound to a char (again), but there wasn’t anyone else in the room. The minute Pavel saw him, he began to shake and scream franticly. Clive said “Calm down, it’s okay, I will get you out of there”. He started with the gag, and undid the knot, enabling Pavel to speak. Clive expected to doctor to be grateful and relieved, but there was pure terror in his eyes. “You’re okay, everything is fine.” Clive said, trying to pacify him. The doctor opened his mouth to say something, but immediately stopped, with the terror returning in his eyes. Clive had a moment to realise that the doctor’s eyes were fixated behind him. Before Clive could understand and react, a soft cloth was pressed on his face. “Chloroform?” Clive thought, before he passed out.

Clive awoke, to find himself bound to a chair. He wasn’t gagged though. “Now you know how it feels” said Pavel, who was bound next to him. “We need a plan to get out of here. The only door is behind us” Clive said. “We could start talking now, I am pretty sure our captor is gone” Pavel said. “Well, you thought wrong” said a voice behind them. It sounded like a woman. Pavel wasn’t expecting that. He tried diplomacy again.  “Ma’am, we mean no harm. We were trying to find out why we woke up, and how we can go back to cryosleep.” “Then why were one of you chasing the other and accessing records?” Pavel had no choice but to explain the whole event. In the end, the woman said “So you are a doctor, and the other is a civilian? And neither of you sabotaged anything?” Both men vigorously nodded.  “Maybe I was wrong to assume then. I guess we forget the curtsies when we spend 100 years in containers with freezing nitrogen. Let me help you out…”  The woman said. “Thank you, and if I may ask, you seem to know a lot about the technology. Are you from the control crew?” Pavel enquired. “Yes, I am from the control crew. My name is Mary” “Wait, Mary? The Mary Claythorne? My name is Clive, big fan” Though she enjoyed the compliment and fame, Mary had other pressing matters to attend to. “Though I appreciate the kind words, I believe they can wait. We must first find out why we are awake without SHOW letting us know.” “SHOW? That’s the ship AI, right?” Pavel racked his memory. “Yes, I designed it. It was supposed to function at maximum capacity at all times, and wake members of the crew if there is an issue. It’s weird, he hasn’t contacted us, or me, yet…”

After recovering, Pavel found himself walking with Clive and Mary, heading towards the control room. “The best way to diagnose this is within the control room itself. SHOW is supposed to be linked to all pods, so in case of the most severe emergencies, evacuation won’t be too hard. But he doesn’t seem to be functioning on my control screen here…” Mary was explaining. “Wait, you said “he”, SHOW is a robot, how can he have gender?” Pavel asked. “Well, you see, it’s annoying calling SHOW “it” all the time. I spent years perfecting him, and gave him a male voice and personality. So, it’s a matter of convenience.” Mary went on explaining. Pavel had many thoughts in his mind. Why would someone give an artificial object gender? Next, they will say a chair is male, and give them names! “Might as well call a potato Phil then” he grumbled. Just then, another question struck him. He ran up to Mary and asked, “You said you gave err… ‘him’ a male personality. What exactly would that personality be?” “You’re inquisitive, aren’t you?” a smile formed on the edge of her lips. “Its best I leave that part out… You can figure it out.” She walked on, leaving Pavel to wonder what she meant by that.

As they were heading towards the control room, they heard movement on the sub floor above them. Pavel put his finger to his lips, signalling for silence. Assuming there was another person, Pavel wanted at least one friendly encounter that had nothing to do with gagging and binding to a chair. They decided to take different entries to the floor above, so that there are two contingencies assuming one fails.

Pavel headed up the stairs, careful not to make a noise. He reached the end of the corridor, and peeped into the next. The corridor had only 2 exits. He was covering one, and he could make out the vague figure of Mary in the other exit. He also caught one of the doors to a storage room closing. It was evident the stranger had used it. He decided to let Mary handle this one, he had already been gagged twice. She motioned for silence, and slowly opened the door. However, she didn’t enter. She seemed frozen in that spot. Pavel advanced, to see what the matter was all about. Clive too approached from the other end. Both of them walked towards the doorway, only to find a hostage situation.

On the other end, stood a man of Pavel’s age, holding a gun aimed at Mary. He fumbled to switch off the safety when he saw Pavel and Clive. “S... Stand back. Or I will shoot” he stuttered. There was a sense of reluctance in the way the man held the gun, but also a sense of experience, as if he could shoot, but didn’t want to. Pavel advanced slowly; his hands raised. “Calm down, we mean no harm”. “Then why did you bring him?” the man motioned to Clive. “What?” Pavel asked, clearly baffled. He looked to Mary and Clive for an answer, but they too were as confused as he was. “That guy, he was security, wasn’t he?” Before Pavel could ask, Clive responded. “Yeah, I volunteered to guard the ship while it was being built. But I never did much on the post.” “But you did do something. Remember to bombing incident??”. “Oh yeah. But why would you…” Clive’s face was white with shock. “You” he managed to say. “Yes, you remember after all. Thought I was back on Earth, eh?” Pavel was baffled by the ongoing conversation. “Clive, explanation please?” he asked. Clive took a deep breath. “While I was on duty, my partner might have attempted to leave this man stranded on Earth.”

“It was around the time the construction of the ship was to be completed” Clive began. “One day, while I was on duty, this guy managed to get through security without being seen. He ran towards the ship, with some package in his hands. The man unravelled the package to reveal 6 red sticks with fuses on top- dynamite! He threw the sticks towards the ship’s engine, which was still undergoing construction. I ran to the engine area, and managed to stomp out the fumes before they went off. The man was sent to prison. When I returned to my post, my partner was dragging another man, this man” he motioned to the stranger “towards the city. When he returned, he told me that this man ran to aid the bomber, and that he had arranged a special punishment for him” I figured that he probably send him to jail too, but I never saw that man when the prisoners boarded the ship. It was too late to send a search expedition, but I knew. We left one man stranded on a dying planet.”

“Yes” the stranger said. “What you say is true, except, I wasn’t aiding the bomber. I too saw the bomber taking dynamite towards the ship, and ran to intercept him. But your damnable partner stopped me. He assumed I was aiding the bomber, even when I protested against it! He took me to an abandoned building, and locked me in there. But fortunately for me, I managed to smuggle myself inside with one of the supply deliveries. I managed to find myself a cryosleep pod, and stayed in there. That was, until I was woken up today. You thought you could stop me for once and for all? I’m the one with a gun. So, think again.”

“Wait. Stop you?” Pavel enquired. “We didn’t come to stop you. We didn’t even know who you were, except for Clive. We too were woken up, and were exploring the ship, when we found you.” For a minute, the man was confused. “You guys aren’t here to arrest me?” “No, so you can put the gun away now.” Clive said. The man lowered his gun, and said “Well well, I apologise for the confusion. I’m sorry if I scared you. My name is Jack. Jack McLean. And you are?”

After some quick introductions, the four of them headed towards the control room, where they could access the cryosleep logs to see if anyone else was awake. “For some reason, SHOW is not responding. So, it might take me a while to get into the system” Mary said. The three of them made themselves comfortable while Mary began to access the records. Pavel even managed to catch a nap. While Pavel slept, Clive spoke to Jack. He apologised for the incident on earth. Jack took it well. He believed the Clive really had no malicious intentions. However, Clive found something fishy about Jack, as if he had dark background. But he decided not to press. “Well, if it’s alright with you, I would like to catch a nap too. These last few hours have been…. Interesting.” Jack said. As he made his way to the couch, his left sleeve lifted up, revealing a tattoo of a skull with crossed out eyes and crossbones on his wrist. Clive had seen this symbol before. It was a while ago, when Clive was a boy of age 15”

Clive’s parents had passed away early. His only other family was his uncle. One day, his uncle collapsed while walking towards the store. Clive had rushed him to a hospital. The doctors informed him that his uncle had a heart attack. They said that they could perform a surgery on the following day, and that Clive should take his uncle home. The hospitals resources was already strained, so Clive could not keep his uncle in for the night. He borrowed a wheelchair and took his uncle back home.
The next day, while he was about to enter the hospital, the doors flew open. A man ran out, his hand full of medicine and medical equipment. He shoved past Clive, and ran out. Security followed, but the thief had already blended into the crowd. But, as he fell, Clive caught a symbol on the man’s left wrist - A skull with crossbones                                     

Later on, his uncle had passed away on the table. The doctors informed Clive that certain crucial equipment had been stolen, and those could have saved his uncle. From that day on, Clive had never forgotten that symbol. He had hoped to see that man again, so that he could take him to court where justice could be served. And now, that man was snoring right opposite him.

Clive approached Mary, meaning to ask her to look up Jack’s records. Just before he could ask her, she gasped. “Something has gone terribly wrong! Wake Pavel and Jack!” In a minute, everyone had gathered around the screen, which showed a complicated code. “What is this?” Pavel asked, still feeling groggy. “That’s SHOW. Someone has sabotaged that code!” Mary said. Pavel didn’t see anything immediately dangerous about this. “So? Big deal. We can always wake someone from the control crew and have them fix it. Or, even you could fix it. You created it after all..” “No! You don’t understand. This brings a set of bad news along with it. Firstly, no member of the crew can be woken up without the proper functioning of SHOW. Secondly, the sabotage is too severe for me to fix. Third, SHOW controlled the ships movements in space. And now, we cant correct that either! Lets hope we are on track.” She began to type frantically into one of the keyboards. A result came up, and her face was white with shock. “What is it?” “We.. We are heading directly towards… towards EXT-753.” “EXT-753? What’s that?” Clive asked. Mary suddenly felt weak in her bones. “EXT-753 is the largest black hole ever recorded by mankind”. That was the last thing she remembered saying before passing out.

Mary awoke to find Pavel leaning over her, holding a flashlight. “H.. how long was I out?” she managed to say. “A few minutes. How are you feeling?” Pavel said. “Im fine. It was just the initial shock.” “It is a bit frightening. But you still need rest. Lets head to the cafeteria, we can discuss a plan of action there.” “Yeah ok. Ill just get my laptop, to see if I can somehow activate SHOW”.

An hour later, the four had finished eating, and assessed their situation. “Has the black hole already started pulling us in?” Clive enquired. Mary did some quick calculations and replied. “Not yet, but I wouldn’t rejoice if I were you. Though it is the largest ever recorded, EXT-753 is also a dying one, and will soon implode. While we are out of range, we still find ourselves in a bit of a spot. We cannot turn back, that would consume too much fuel reserved for the future. We cant change course either, the asteroid belts can prove fatal, even if we had SHOW online. If we continue on this course, dying or not, the blackhole will engulf us. I’d say we have a few months, maybe 3, to evacuate the ship.” “Hold up” Clive said. “Evacuate? Where to?” “There are 5 planets nearby. They may be habitable, and are out of the blackholes range. We could use some of the research pods to explore the planets, and then shift the population of the earth there. Shifting everyone and everything from here to the planet will take a month and a half. So that leaves us with another month and a half to do our research and explore the planets. Its going to be tight, but its possible. By today I will have worked out a schedule for each of us, so that we have the best chance possible to make it to a hospitable planet alive.”
Pavel stood back, amazed at how Mary had assumed the role of a leader. Her schedule made sense, and gave the team a sense of hope.

The next 3 weeks went by in a flash. Pavel was assigned to studying the satellite images of the planets to look for any pathogens that could reduce the planets habitability statistics. He spent countless hours in the lab, over one of its several microscopes. Many times, he had forgotten his meals, and had to be reminded by either Clive or Mary. He was determined to do his best.

Clive on the other hand, had to take stock of everything required for the exodus and the research missions. He checked the fuel, software systems, basic life amenities and of course, the pods. He was constantly moving around the ship, heading from one quadrant to another, doing his best to help everywhere. Although his schedule was more hectic than the rest, he always kept an eye on Jack.

Jack tended to the plants on the Pallas Athena. He had recently told his teammates what he used to do on Earth before the exodus. As a mechanic, he would often have to fix certain technology on the ship, including the SHOWBOTS, whose functioning was more unpredictable due to the hacking of SHOW. But, within a week, he reprogrammed them to work at optimal condition yet again. However, he felt that Clive was acting strangely. Whenever he tried to initiate conversation with Clive, he had shied away.    

Mary spent majority of her time trying to get SHOW back online. If the AI system was online, the research mission and the exodus would be easier and more organised. She worked a lot with Clive, who, being a software engineer, helped in trying to get SHOW back online. She noticed that he would tense every time Jack entered the room, but decided not to ask.

One day, while Mary was working on reprogramming SHOW, someone knocked at the door. “Come in” she said. Clive entered the room, his expression grim. “Is everything alright?” she asked. “Well yeah, but I was hoping you could do me a favour.” “Yeah sure” “Look..” he began. “I know this sounds weird, but I’ve met Jack before the bombing incident. Well, I didn’t exactly meet him..” He told her about his uncle and how he saw Jack. Mary was intrigued. Jack had always struck her as a calm, easy going man, not a sly and cunning thief. “Are you sure? I mean, he doesn’t seem like a thief here” she asked. “Absolutely sure of it. Please check his name in the criminal records” Clive said. “Ok, I’ll do that. But just so you know, it will take a while. While SHOW was deactivated, the criminal database system was deleted. So now I will have to cross reference Jack’s name and tattoo with every other person on this ship.” Mary said. “How long?” Clive asked. Mary looked at her screen and replied. “5, maybe 10 hours. Ill try and make it faster, but we definitely wont get the result too soon.” “I guess it will have to do. Thanks anyway” He exited the room.

Meanwhile, back in the lab, Pavel assessed the entire situation once more. “Cant miss anything..” he muttered. He dedicated an entire wall to hanging notes and pictures that would aid him in his research. He had spent hours together just staring at the wall and readings, studying everything a dozen times over. Feeling satisfied with his results, he decided to inform the team about his findings. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one bearing news.

Pavel took the elevator to the control unit, which had now become a makeshift camp for the team. Not wanting to hear endless repeats of monotonous songs, he decided to catch a few winks during the journey. Luckily for him, the engineers of the Pallas Athena took into consideration the time taken for an elevator journey, and equipped the elevator with reclinable seats. He closed his eyes, and dreamt of the starry sky on earth. In no time, he was asleep.

The elevator stopped halfway through. The doors opened, and in walked Jack. He too, was heading to the control unit, to report an unfortunate event that had taken place in the biosphere unit. He saw Pavel, fast asleep, and decided it would be prudent not to disturb him. He propped up another chair, and watched through the glass panel, as they rose.

Back at base, Mary made headway with Clive’s request. She managed to streamline the process and accessed the passenger records. She managed to get the software scanning all passengers for the tattoo.  The screen went white, indicating that the software was processing a lot of data. She decided to work on rebooting SHOW, knowing the main screen would turn red if it was a match in the criminal database, or green if it wasn’t. As she sorted through the source code, her walkie talkie chirped.Pavel’s voice crackled on the speaker “Mary, Jack and I are coming up towards base now, to share our research and whatnot. We should be there in a few minutes.” “Got it, see you”.

Clive made his way to the control room. He personally didn’t have anything to share, but he heard Pavel’s message on the radio, and figured he’d want to hear what they have to say. He opened the door, and walked into a control room flooded in red light.

Clive rushed to the main screen, anticipating the worst, which wasn’t hard given they were in space with a wrecked ship. For a minute, he thought something went wrong when Mary was hunched over her workspace. But to his surprise, she calmly got up, and walked over to the main panel. With a few keys, the lights went back to normal. Clive didn’t like the look on Mary’s face. “The database?” he asked. Mary nodded.

A few minutes later, Jack and Pavel walked into the control room, anxious to hear what others have to say, and to share their own findings. They assembled around the main panel. When Pavel entered, he had noticed Mary and Clive in a hushed and tense discussion. Clive glanced at Pavel, or maybe Jack, and walked away. Clive was the last to be seated. Was it the grogginess, or did It seem like Clive was tensed up a bit too much to Pavel? He didn’t seem to be at ease. The four of them sat there, in awkward silence. The tension was so thick, one could cut it with a knife.

“So…” Mary broke the silence. “Uhh… what do you guys have to share?”. Jack was the first to go. “Right, from the botanical perspective, I’m disappointed to report that we’ve lost 4 species. During the period of malfunctioning of the SHOWBOTS, these species failed to receive the nutrition they needed. And as you may be aware, all the plants don’t share the same soil, and the area is split into quadrants reserved exclusively for certain species. I’m afraid there’s no way to remedy this. However, I have fixed the BOTS to whatever extent I could, and now there exists no other threat to the remaining species.” Pavel thought about this, how 4 species seems crucial when you know you have a limited supply. He remembered the days before their departure, how humans brought their own undoing by showing negligence towards the environment. Ironically now, mankind has lost 4 species, and it isn’t as minor as it may seem. “Pavel? Pavel?” Jack was calling out to him. Pavel snapped back into reality. “Ah, yes, sorry. I got side-tracked. I presume its my turn to go now?”

“Right.” He began. “My findings are quite extensive. However, every detail here is crucial. I’ve made use of our marvellous telescopes, to analyse all the planets that could be our future homes. In the two weeks of study, of the 5 planets that escape the range of the black hole, only 3 are capable of supporting life.” The mood of the group instantly sank, and with good reason. Every opportunity was to be seized if the human species was to survive. Pavel mustered the courage to resume once more. “The first two planets, which I have not taken the liberty of naming due to their lack of utility in such urgent times, have extremely harsh conditions. The first is perennially in a state of icy storms, with temperatures ranging from -10 to -50 degrees. And these stats don’t improve during the “summer” or hotter periods, so to speak. The second has a high concentration of oxygen in the air, too high in fact.” “Wait, that’s a good thing isn’t it? The oxygen, I mean. “ Jack enquired. 

Pavel had anticipated this question, counted on it in fact. “Well, oxygen helps our body in the combustion of nutrients to release energy. In essence, it is a fuel, one that our body can work with. However, in excess, this fuel can also be used against us. Being highly combustive, it will prove fatal for the human body to respire in an atmosphere with such high oxygen concentrations. Think of it like this, oxygen is like petroleum fuel. It helped our everyday vehicles by adding petrol only upto certain limits specified by the fuel tank. Breathing in excess oxygen is equivalent to not only overflowing the tank, but dousing the entire vehicle in fuel, and bringing a lit match next to it.” Jack nodded in understanding.

Pavel continued. “So that’s that, those two planets are off the board. This leaves us with the three possible planets that we could possibly inhibit in the future. So based on the readings of the atmospheres, all three of them show possibilities of supporting life. Of course, none of them are exactly like earths, some minor gases like neon vary in small quantities, but this does not affect the life support statistics in major ways. Of course, there will still be the problem of acclimatising to the dust particles and other things in the air that we have not inhaled since we left earth. I used the telescope to scan the surface of the planets. Nothing seemed completely off, I saw many familiar figures such as mountains, valleys, lakes, coastlines and so on.” Jack enquired yet again “So that’s that then? Its just a matter of which of the three planets we choose? Wow, that seemed relatively simple.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t get my hopes up there Mr Mclean. Theres still lots more that can affect the life stats. We would need to send the recon drones to collect land samples. There exists a whole wide world beneath our eyes, just too small for us to see. The bacteria and other microbes will have to be analysed. There’s also the matter of flora and fauna. We don’t know what kinds there will be, friendly or hostile. There also is the threat of frequent seismic instability, possible future global warming scenarios again, meteor strikes and so on. Therefore the next step is to send the recon drones as soon as possible, and this should give me sufficient time to analyse all the details, and then we can arrive at a final planet to inhabit. And this, winds up my analysis too..” He bowed dramatically. Pavel was quite proud of his findings, and now seemed optimistic about their survivals. Surely of the three planets, one should be perfect of settling?

“Ah, doctor. That was indeed, marvellous. Although I apologise for the questions, when you answered, the answers seemed quite elementary.” Jack said. Pavel was about to tell Jack that it was okay to ask questions so long as one keeps note of the answers, but Clive interrupted quite rudely- “Yes, I presume they don’t give you science books to read in prison do they Jack?”.  Jack looked puzzled and concerned at the same time. “Clive, is this about the bombing incident? I thought we cleared that, I thought we moved on.” “Oh I moved on alright.” Clive growled. “Clive, calm down. Do you mind explaining what happened?” Pavel asked. “Sure doc. Its plain and clear, I’m not going to sugar-coat anything. This man right here, is a criminal.” He pointed at Jack accusingly. Pavel was about to protest, when he caught Mary’s eye. She nodded solemnly, and pulled up an image on the main screen.

It was the criminal database. It said it found a match, for Jack. It categorised Jack Mclean as a tier two criminal. Pavel wasn’t familiar with the categorisation in the crime unit. Before he asked, Mary seemed to read his mind. “Tier one is the worst kind. Tier one criminals have murder of more than one person, arson, bombing and threatening under their crimes. Tier three is the lowest, with minor theft and fraud. Tier two isn’t as bad as Tier one, but not as mild as Tier three either. It includes major theft, scams, and single murders.” Pavel had to know now. “Jack, did you… kill someone?” Before Jack could answer, Clive lashed out. “Jack here has quite the reputation. Lots of thefts from big shops. Then he decided to move on to robbing pharmaceuticals in desperate times. Oh, and to top it all, one murder. This ruthless man killed a father of two, and ran away from the scene.”

The group sat in silence, processing what they had just heard. Pavel was disgusted, hearing about the murder part. Jack began to protest. “Guys no, that’s wrong. I didn’t murder that man. I would never do such a thing! Never!” Clive was determined to pin him down, and do so ruthlessly. “Oh yeah? And we’re supposed to trust the word of a tier two criminal? Mary, Pavel, im appealing to your logic when im telling you this man should be locked up right now. He doesn’t seem to show any remorse at all, even after a killing a man. He just walked away after beating up some poor bloke.” Jack got up. Clive was about to continue, when Jack spoke. “David Peterson. Aged 42, lived in Ottawa, down on Albert Street. His two boys, Mike and Leo, go to the school nearby. Mike, the elder one, had won the science fair with a wind turbine model that actually generated electricity. No, I did show remorse. Not because I killed him, but because I saw him die. Yes, the police framed it on me. Yes, my prints were found on the scene. But not because I killed the man!”

“It was May of 2089. Specifically on the 14th of May. By then, I was already on the criminal database for theft. I was walking down the street, when I noticed something in an alley. I witnessed a man being mugged. There were three thugs, each armed with a gun. One of them were talking to the victim about something regarding all the money in his account. The poor man pleaded vehemently, telling them he had two kids and a wife waiting back at home. Those damned goons shot him dead right there. Two bullets to the abdomen. The goons then walked away, and disappeared into one of the other alleys. I sprinted towards the sprawled body of the man. It was clear he wasn’t going to make it. I held him in my hands, trying to apply pressure on the wound. I was too late. He passed away right in front of me. Just then, I heard the siren of a police vehicle. One of the residents must have phoned them when they heard the gunshots. I knew I couldn’t stay, I would be arrested on account of murder, given my history in theft. So I ran for it. So yes, I didn’t kill the man, but I routinely and subtly checked on his family for a while after that. The last I saw them, they seemed to have recovered from the incident and had moved on.”

The narration of the evet wasn’t easy on the mind. Pavel believed in Jacks tale, and trusted Jack to not be the kind who would kill and lie to get away with it. However, he couldn’t be entirely sure, given the criminal history. Despite his opinion, it was clear. Jacks tale had moved the trio. Clive was almost in tears. “Well as much as I’d love to believe that Jack, you didn’t only kill one man. Frank Anderson. My uncle. “Jack looked taken aback. “Clive, I’m sure you are mistaken, I’ve never killed anyone.” “Yeah? Well, remember looting a short- staffed hospital in your days? Well maybe you didn’t kill anyone while doing that. But did it ever occur to your criminal mind that those resources were important?” Jack looked angry. “Well that I remember doing. Of course I knew the resources were important. Why else would I take them?” Clive hit the table. “Damnit Mclean! Those resources were life saving ones! By stealing them, you managed to steal someone’s life! My uncle died soon after that. Those resources you stole, they could have saved him. You-You murdered my uncle.” Jack was fuming at this point. “You aren’t the only person with loved ones! Did it ever occur to you that I was taking the meds for someone who really needed them?!? Despite my best efforts and the meds, I lost my sister a few days after that event. I-“ He welled up.

At this point, Mary thought it would be prudent to intervene, as they had heard both sides of the story. She approached Clive first. “Clive, calm down. Its alright.” “No its not Mary. Nothing is alright at this point.” Clive got up, and walked away. He exited the room and took the elevator down. He didn’t care where he went, just so long as it was away from Jack.

Pavel could help but ask Jack. “Jack, I can understand your actions, and I trust you. However, if you could answer one question, it might clear things up better. Why did you have to resort to stealing the medicines when you could have admitted you sister to a hospital?” Jack looked up “I’m not surprised you guys have this question. After all, you come from your independent houses, wealth and power. You guys were born with privilege. Well, guess that doesn’t happen to everyone. Unlike you, I was born into a poor family in the suburbs. The facilities are terrible there. The only way some of us had survived was to steal. Heck, that’s how I survived. We didn’t get respect, not even acknowledgement from the authorities. And then, one fine day, my sister collapses all of a sudden. I had my priorities sorted by then, and knew that I would approach a hospital and do stuff proper and legal when it came to health issues.

So that’s what I did. I went to a decent hospital nearby, and got Lisa admitted there. We managed to secure one of the last rooms for patients. The doctors told us that Lisa had to undergo a surgery, some problem with her heart. And so that’s what they did. After the surgery, they made it clear that she would have to stay in the hospital for some time, for her own safety. By now, almost all my money was gone, but I agreed. A week into rehab, and things started going wrong. Some big shot nearby had to get admitted into the hospital. But, there were no beds left. So the hospital did the most expected thing. They asked us to move out. They knew Lisa needed more time, but our background supposedly placed us lower than some rich fool.

That’s when it started going downhill. Back home, Lisa’s condition deteriorated. This also coincided with the period of scarcity of resources when they decided to build this hunk of junk” He gestured to the ship. “So I had to resort to theft once more. That was the only way. No other hospital or doctor would even consider our case, and completely ignored us. Despite the meds I stole, it merely bought Lisa a few minutes. Man, you don’t understand. I had to do it. I had to. She didn’t even get to say goodbye.” Jack broke down. Pavel now understood it from Jacks perspective. Back on earth, he used to ponder about such things, the matter of privilege. He knew it was a matter of luck, where and to whom you were born. He patted Jack on the back, and consoled him. “Listen. I understand. I understand what you did, and why you did it. I also understand that our society is messed up, and how you were treated is completely wrong. But what is done, is done. The most we can do now is to prevent this from happening. Hey, we’re getting a second shot at life with this planet situation. We can make it better”. Jack wiped his tears, and nodded. “Yeah, I guess that’s the most we can do. But for the record, I didn’t intend to do anything to Clive’s Uncle. I know what happened was wrong, but I also know I had to do what I did. I feel terrible for Clive, I can imagine what he went through. I just- I just want to be able to explain it to him.”

Clive had stepped off at a random floor. It happened to be the cafeteria. He ran out, into a random corner, and broke down into a puddle of tears. He could understand what Jack went through, and maybe even why he did what he did, but there was this rage. This enormous amount of rage within him. He knew he could be better, but the emotions were overwhelming. He heard footsteps. Mary stepped into view. He was about to tell her he wasn’t in the mood for talking, when she said “I don’t expect you to say anything. Just know that we’re all here for you.” Clive began sobbing even more. Mary sat down next to him, and cradled him in her arms.

Later, upstairs, the four of them regrouped. Clive refused to make eye contact with Jack. Pavel and Mary had discussed the situation, and had mitigated it decently. They knew what Clive was going to say, being the hot-headed youngster that he is. They agreed that they had done the best they could, and the situation was as good as it could get given the circumstances. Then, Clive spoke up “Listen, Mary told me about your perspective. I don’t disagree with your actions and stuff, but I cant forgive you that easily. You were responsible for the death of the only living relative I had left. So I’ve decided that I’m not going to act like everything is hunky dory, but I’m not going to lash out anymore. I will act indifferent to you Jack, but upon the slightest mishap, you are going to be my first suspect. That’s all I have to say. Now there’s work to be done, I’ll be off.” Clive then exited the room. Jack nodded to himself. He was expecting this. He knew Clive was just a kid, and that he sometimes let the emotions get the best of him. However, he also knew that this was the best it could get. He regretted stuff he’d done in his past, but this was the only way of dealing with it. He had to deal with the crew the way it was. Pavel and Mary seemed to let bygones be bygones, but Clive was the only one he had to be cautious around.

The next few days went in a blur. The entire team worked in unison, despite the tension amongst its members. The recon drones were prepped. All of its functions were tested. Initially, the drones were linked to the entire ship, the intranet, SHOW. Essentially, they would work under the mainframe, live transmitting everything back to base for further study. However, since SHOW was down, they had to recalibrate the drones to report to a different “base” instead. Majority of this fell upon Clive, owing to his skill in computer programming. He managed to reroute the drone data feed into one of the many independently running computers. Now, all the data recorded would to transmitted back to the control unit. However, the drone would still have to physically bring back samples such as soil, water etc.

The planets had also been named, courtesy Pavel. He often joked that scientists name species by allowing a cat to walk over the keyboard. This time, he decided not to include numbers in a name (for clearly obvious reasons) and keep the nomenclature quite simple. The planets were named Alpha, Beta and Theta. Alpha was the closest to the Pallas Athena, and would be the first planet to be studied by the drones. It was slightly larger than Earth, and showed distinct variations in jungle and desert/arid biomes. In approximately one earth day, they would be in range to send the recon drones into the planet.

Beta and Theta were equally far from Alpha, and their distances conveniently made it possible to send recon drones to both the planets from the same location. Beta was smaller than Earth, but still large enough to accommodate the population of the Pallas Athena. The greenery and flora on Beta seemed much denser and of higher variety. Theta was a mix of Beta and Alpha, with a size similar to earth, and varying biomes. One day, when the mood was lighter than usual, Pavel jokes that theta could be a planet of various sorts, in fact, he specifically said “the mystery of the planet is a variable.” The math joke flew over the crew’s heads, but Mary seemed to get it. She smiled, and then told him he’d jinx their chances with such comments. The joke wasn’t used again.

Throughout the entire procedure of prepping the equipment, Clive paid no attention to Jack, almost as if he was oblivious to Jack’s presence. The entire incident left Pavel’s mind in a split state, with equal sympathy for both Clive and Jack. Though he understood the events, he couldn’t make up his mind as to who’s point it was. Clive was justified in blaming Jack, but Jack’s argument about privilege had opened Pavel’s eyes to a whole new perspective. Though he couldn’t bring himself to pick a side, he was subconsciously glad he couldn’t. Having an opinion and therefore taking a side leads to division and chaos, which is the last thing they needed in this place, at this time. Mary seemed to share a similar opinion. Lately Mary and Pavel had been talking a lot, trying their best to be a peacekeeping force between Clive and Jack.

Pavel enjoyed talking to Mary. She was smart and empathetic, and they managed to connect and relate to each other. Back when they were on the Earth, Mary was majorly into travelling, since she was a child. Pavel admitted that his life hadn’t been as adventurous in comparison, but that didn’t mean his life was bland either. He had taken to sports as a child. His favourite sport was football. “Soccer” Mary would amend. Pavel had told her countless times that being from England, he knew it as football. In fact, America was practically the only country that called it soccer. Mary would laugh and say “I’m aware Dr Pavel, but I find it extremely hard and boring to leash the pedantic personality within me.” Pavel said “Please, we’re beyond the whole Dr Pavel nonsense. Call me Henry.” “Hmm.. Henry. You don’t look like a Henry” Mary mused. “What do you mean I don’t LOOK like one? I was given a name, I like it, and now it represents me… also do elaborate, what DO I look like?”. Mary thought for a while. “Well, I suppose Doug wouldn’t be too far off would it?”. Pavel stared blankly. He couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.

Mary stopped mid meal, “Oh wait! I’ve got the perfect name for you. Typical British thing. Alastair… Alastair Pavel. Yeah..”. Pavel just stared at Mary. She burst out laughing, laughing at Pavel’s expense. “Har har Miss Claythorne, hilarious. You deserve an award for humour.” He said blandly. Mary wiped the tears from her eyes. “I needed that, given whats going on right now and all that. But yeah, the name has stuck. Im afraid Henry Pavel exists no more, only Alaistair.” She burst into a fit of giggles once again. Pavel truly didn’t know how to react. Fortunately, Jack came to the rescue. He propped up a chair and joined them in the cafeteria.

“Alright you two, I heard hysterical laughter, what did I miss?” Jack said, as he opened his burrito. He let the wrappings fall into the red tray. Pavel noticed he was the only one who had taken a non-vegetarian meal, since the start.  Despite Mary being the only vegetarian, Clive and Pavel had taken it easy lately. Meanwhile, Mary interrupted his thoughts. “Oh nothing Jack, I was just having a little chat with “Sir” Alastair here..” she began laughing once more. Jack was confused. He was about to say something, when a voice interrupted “That sounds interesting, you have got to tell us what happened”. Clive propped up a seat opposite Jack. “Ah yes, Clive. That makes four. Now you all can laugh at my expense” Pavel remarked.

Mary took pleasure in saying every word of her explanation of how Henry Pavel ceased to exist as a name. By the end of the story, everyone was laughing. Clive did his best English impression “Ello Sir Alastair, mornin guv’. Cup o’ tea m’lord?”. This time even Pavel couldn’t hold back. Throughout the floor, all that could be heard was the echoing laughter. Jack and Clive seemed to be… a bit more relaxed now. More willing to let bygones be bygones. The group “session” seemed to help elevate the mood of the gang. Though it was silly, it seemed that’s what they needed after all the toiling. After all, the big day was arriving. As per earth time, they were eating their dinners right now, and they would deploy the drones for Alpha the next morning.

Pavel woke up, and scanned his surroundings gradually. After being in Cryo-sleep for ages, waking up on a routine basis took some adjusting to get used to. He rubbed his eyes, and remembered where he was, why he was here and more importantly, what was supposed to happen today. Today was the day, Alpha would either be a tick or a cross on his wall of notes. With butterflies in his stomach, Pavel rose and headed towards the lavatories. After brushing and freshening up, he made his way to the cafeteria. He had borrowed a staff watch a while back, and calibrated it to show the Earth equivalent time. He checked it as he sat in the elevator heading up. It showed 4:30 AM. Pavel wasn’t surprised. He was, by habit, an early riser. However, on eventful days, the anxiety made him get up earlier than usual. He sighed, and watched the Pallas Athena from the plexiglass walls of the elevator. He had himself in a routine now. Wake, freshen up, eat, work, sleep. He was so used to the environment within the gargantuan ship, that he even mastered the art of becoming oblivious to the elevator music. However, no amount of planning and routine could prep him for a day like today.

The elevator stopped at the cafeteria floor with a soft ding. Pavel stepped out, and found that he wasn’t alone in the cafeteria. It would seem Mary Claythorne was an early riser too, one to rival Henry Pavel. It was obvious that the cup beneath her contained coffee. Such an American thing, Pavel thought. He was more of a “tea” man himself. However, today wasn’t a day for such judgements. He walked over to the counter, and filled himself a cup of coffee.

He propped up a seat opposite Mary, and took a sip from his cup. As he laid his cup on the table, the smell of coffee filled the area. Mary glanced at him, and raised an eyebrow. Before she could ask, Pavel responded “Well, normally I wouldn’t. But can you blame me for doing it today?”. Mary shrugged and went back to studying her empty cup. It was evident she was nervous too. “So” she began. “Todays the day.” Pavel nodded solemnly. “Indeed it is. Lets hope the results are promising”. “Yes, although there are a lot of hurdles. There are more than 10 things that can go wrong before the probe even enters atmosphere. From that point onwards, the chance of something going wrong increases exponentially” Mary pointed out. “Well, the best we can do is hope it all goes well”.

“No, we can do one better than hope” a voice interjected. Pavel sighed. “Always with an entrance”. Mary smiled. Clive pulled up his seat, and laid his cup of… was that Cola? Clive saw Pavel staring at his cup. “The caffeine overdose helps”. Pavel was about to cross question, when Mary asked. “What did you mean we could do one better?”. Clive smiled with satisfaction. “Well, it may surprise you two to know I’m an early riser too. I got up, and did systems check and all that on the probe. She’s as ready as it gets. I focused on the software part of it, and the linking to this ship. All systems are go, its capable of avoiding anything and performing self-repair in space. The plating is sturdy, it will hold. More importantly, it should also survive the entry into the atmosphere. Well technically the statistics and simulations show a 3% chance of failure in integrity during entry, I’ll take those chances.” Mary was impressed. “Well, can’t say I anticipated that one. Well, I supposed we have done all we could. Clive’s software seems up and running, and efficient enough. Hopefully all goes well”.

A few moments later, Jack came with his cup of tea. Pavel had immense respect for that guy. “Well, I suppose not all of us are early risers” Mary remarked. “Ah, I’m afraid you’re wrong there Mary. I’ve been up for the past few hours. I heard Clive say he checked the software and stuff, that’s good. I’m no software exert, but I do know basic mechanics. So, I decided to check up on the probe itself. Tightened a few screws, cleaned some interiors, oiled the interiors, she’s good to go. There’s no chance of any malfunction within the prove itself.” He sipped his tea with satisfaction. “Well, with Jack and Clive’s work on the probe, I guess we’re ready for launch” Pavel said. “Yeah, but give me a minute to eat something first, I’m famished” Jack remarked. This surprised everyone. Everyone was too anxious to eat anything. Well, not everyone it would seem.

After eating, they went to the control room, where they would deploy the probe. Mary sat at the de facto “captains chair” of the room. It was just another chair, only this one was in front of all the panels and keyboards. Clive and Jack took seats on either side. Clive was ready to monitor the probe’s link to the ship, while Jack would examine radar and other surrounding factors. Pavel stood back, accepting that this was out of his expertise. However, the roles would be flipped if the results came back. No, WHEN the results came back, Pavel reassured himself.

Meanwhile, there was the sound of rapid typing from Clive’s and Marys workspaces. Jack took a deep breath and activated the imaging system. “Ok, here goes.” Mary said. “Deploying in 10, 9…” she began. It wasn’t really necessary, the countdown. But it gave everyone a timeline to follow, to stay calm and in control. “3, 2, 1, deployed”. Jacks screen lit up, showing the imaging from the four different cameras places safely on board the probe. Clive’s monitor showed a lot of code, most of it was Greek to Pavel. Mary managed to pull up the video feed onto the main screen. The screen split into four quadrants, each showing a view from every direction of the probe. The sight was mesmerising. The probe floated seamlessly across the vast void of emptiness. The video feed was almost calming to watch. And then, they saw it.

Everyone was relaxed after the launch, all systems seemed good. Things were looking good after all. The probe would enter atmosphere in 20 minutes. In the 10 minutes that had passed, it looked like the trip would be seamless. And then, the lights dimmed, a faint siren sounded across the room. Jack’s screen showed activity. “Uh oh. Guys, we may have a problem here” Jack said, studying his screen. “Why? What happened?” Pavel asked. Mary pulled up the radar imaging. The green dot in the middle of the black screen was the probe. But there was something else on the screen. A red dot, smaller in size, but heading towards the probe. Pavel didn’t need technical know how to figure out what that meant. “Asteroid?” he asked. “Asteroid” Jack confirmed. “So? What do we do now?” Pavel said, astonished nobody was panicking. “What do we do? Absolutely nothing doc.” Jack said. Pavel stood there for a second, processing what he just heard. He was about to walk over to Jack and shake him to make sure he was awake. Mary saved him the embarrassment. “Well, the probe has a detection system that was designed solely for these scenarios. If the system works as it should, the probe should have detected the asteroid now, and will be changing its course to avoid collision.” “What do you mean if it works?” Pavel said. “Well, it is a piece of machinery, and it has been lying aboard all this while without using it.” “It will work” Jack and Clive said in unison. They were confident in their abilities and checks they had done a few hours ago. Pavel decided to have some faith.

At first, the radar screen didn’t change. The asteroids path was traced out, along with that of the probe. Currently, the lines overlapped and the point of intersection was marked with a flashing yellow dot. The asteroid and the probe continued to move, at the same velocities, in the same path. For a minute, Pavel thought the navigation system was down, and the probe would crash. Judging by the furious clacking of keys on Clive’s side, Pavel could tell he was nervous too. And then, through one of the cameras, Pavel saw one of the boosters on the side of the probe light up. The probe changed its course, and headed inward, towards the direction of the asteroid. With this amendment, the asteroid would cross the probes initial path, but the probe had cut inward, to pass the asteroid before it reached the collision point. Everyone’s eyes were on the rear camera. Pavel saw the radar screen, the probe had crossed the asteroid’s path, and not a moment too soon. Barely one second later, they saw a furious blur of brown in the camera. The asteroid had passed them from the back. A collective sigh went about. Now, all that was left was entry into atmosphere.

Through the front camera, they had a clear view of Alpha. The planet was huge, even more so than it appeared given that the crew had no clear memory of Earth. The striking hues of blue and green were mesmerising. The planet grew closer and closer with every second. For a minute, the cameras would be useless, as the probe passed through the thick cloud layer. Based on the trajectory, the probe would land on a coast, where land met sea. From here, it would test the air, collect soil samples, and constantly upload the video feed from its surroundings. The probe would stay on the planet for approximately one earth day, before returning to the Pallas Athena.

The probe had passed the cloud layer. The moist droplets on the lens were reassuring, rain and water shouldn’t be a problem now. The camera on the base gave a birds eye view of the landing zone. The landing zone was surprisingly bare, with no sign of vegetation of life. At sea level, this area seemed to be bare. Pavel was stumped. In this area, with this humidity, the area should have shown signs of vegetation. However, it was empty and bare. As the probe approached a certain altitude, the base thrusters fired, slowing the descent significantly. The probe descended at an easy rate, unnaturally so, but nobody noticed. Alpha, like earth, had a satellite. Alpha’s equivalent of the moon had a similar effect, and caused tides.

The landing was smooth. The probe incurred no damage, and all systems were optimal according to Clive’s readings. A few minutes after landing, the recon gear was deployed. A small rover similar to remote controlled car was deployed to scan the surroundings. From the main probe, a robotic arm extended towards he ground. The shovel-like hand of the arm scooped up a sample of the sandy white soil, and disappeared inside the probe. Meanwhile, the probe itself was scanning the atmosphere. All this data would have to be evaluated by Pavel once the probe returned. As the probe continued its scanning, the crew focused on the camera on the rover, which had begun to move around the beach. It moved with surprising speed and control, far better than any human could have controlled. A small elevation of sand appeared in its path. Ideally this should have posed no threat to the rover, and the rover should have ascended and descended easily. However, as the rover went up, on a surface resembling a ramp, the front camera faced the sky. This indicated that the rover was facing upward. However, the view soon corrected itself, and the rover was on its path once again.

Mary seemed concerned. Something wasn’t right about the rover and its path. She pulled up the probe’s rear camera, which captured the path of the rover. She rewound the feed to see what happened to the rover. The rover was heading up the ramp, and was airborne for a second. Nobody was surprised, given the speed the rover was travelling at. However, the rover kept travelling through the air, before making a slow descent. Pavel gasped. “So that’s why I thought the probes landing was too easy.” Mary gave him a puzzled look. “How do you mean?” Pavel examined the feed once more, and said “Isn’t it obvious? The gravitational attraction of this planet is far lesser than that of earths. That explains why the rover was airborne for as long as it was, and why our descent was so controlled. This can pose a threat, but lets wait for the results.” Everyone turned their attention towards the rovers camera yet again. Now, they had a clear view of the beach. The entire area was flat, with some minor elevations and depressions. However, there was no sign of vegetation or life. Mary was confused yet again. “Wait, this entire area is barren. Then where is the greenery that we saw from space? This entire plane of elevation shows no signs of life according to the scans.” Nobody had an answer, everyone was stumped.

The rovers camera focused into the distance. There was some sort of elevated structure, resembling a mountain, but not conical in nature. This rock formation seemed more elliptical and erect. The rover camera did a 360, and focused on multiple of these rock formations. It was hard to tell what was at the top, due to a large amount of fog surrounding these structures. “That’s interesting” Mary mused. “Sea level seems to show zero signs of life. The scans also show zero signs of marine life. Maybe we’ll find something on those mountains?”. The crew decided these structures were worth exploring. Clive punched in a few keys. The rover began making its way back to the probe, which was preparing to launch toward the hills. Once the rover entered the hatch, the probe fired its thrusters. Pavel’s theory on the gravity was correct. With minimal fuel, they managed to make their way toward the mountain. The probe slowly ascended. As it broke through the fog layer, the crew caught their breath. The surface of the mountain was flat, and was at an elevation above the fog yet below the clouds. However, what made the sight marvellous was the dense vegetation growing on the mountain. It was a sight to rival the Amazon rainforest back on Earth. The gargantuan trees extended their canopies across the mountain, fostering growth for smaller plants. Pavel remembered seeing something similar in a movie. “This entire place, almost a replica of something I saw in a movie…” He was about to continue when Mary said “Avatar, right? The huge tree in the middle. This is, far better than that. Its mesmerising.” Pavel nodded.

For a minute, the probe hovered there, allowing the crew to absorb the view. Then, it made its way to a small clearing on the mountain, and landed there. It began to repeat its actions. The robotic arm scooped up another handful of soil. This soil was darker in colour, indicating the rich moisture. The probe took another reading of the atmosphere. However, it was unable to deploy the rover. The vegetation was too thick to approach from the ground. Instead, it deployed smaller drones, the size of dragonflies. These drones hovered for a second, and flew into the dense thicket. From the camera, Jack began recognising several species from Earth. “Kapok tree, Carapa procera, Brazil nut...” he went on. Time flew by in the next few hours. The crew completely forgot about their meals, and were glued to the control panel.

Before they realised it, it was well past midnight on their watches. Reluctantly, they made their way towards the residential quarters. According to schedule, the probe would return with all its samples in a few hours. The crew agreed they needed to be well rested before examining the results. Pavel didn’t realise how exhausted he was until he lay down. In a few minutes, he was fast asleep. So was the rest of the crew.

As usual, the crew woke early. They managed to catch 4 hours of sleep. They rushed around, freshening up, and made their way into the cafeteria. They grabbed one bagel each and made their way toward the elevator. They ate as the elevator made its way down to the launchpad. Everyone was anxious. They didn’t know if the lading and return was successful. They didn’t know if the probe incurred any damage, and lost all its samples. They kept reassuring each other saying the probe was fine, but it was more of a self-consolation.

The elevator finally landed at the launchpad. The launchpad was at the very bottom of the Pallas Athena. They crew briskly walked towards the bay doors. And then, they saw the probe. Pavel was tempted to sprint towards it. This probe contained the data that would determine whether Alpha would be the new Earth or not. The probe and its surroundings smelt distinctly of disinfectant. The ships systems were designed to disinfect anything that entered from space, such that it didn’t run the risk of letting harmful microorganisms on board. The crew gave a collective sigh of relief, when they examined the probe and found no signs of damage. Clive and Pavel sprinted towards a locker nearby, where they took out a pair of gloves for each of them. After wearing the gloves, Clive took a screwdriver of sorts, and opened up the probe. In the mainframe, he pressed a button. The probe opened up, revealing two airtight, sealed plastic bags. These were the soil samples. Pavel took these carefully, handling them the way one would with a baby. The nodded at the gang, and made his way toward the laboratory. It was decided that Pavel would examine the soil samples, Mary and Jack would examine the atmospheric readings from the probe, and Clive would start prepping the probe for its next journey.

Pavel entered the laboratory, with his gloves still on. He made his way to an empty table, and gingerly lay the packets there. The got a microscope and the lab laptop and put them on the table. He then walked over to another section of the laboratory. He removed the gloves, and threw them down a chute, for incineration. He took a new pair of gloves, and a hazmat suit. He could take no chances, without knowing about the soil composition first. He made his way to table. He opened a drawer below, and took out a scissor, with which he opened the packet, and emptied its contents into another airtight box, and sealed the lid shut. He took a small sample of the beach soil, and put it on a tray, and placed it under the microscope. He knew he had hours of observations to go. However, he was determined to do it as fast as he could, so that they had time to examine the other planets too. He set his deadline exactly 30 hours from now. By this time, he should have analysed everything and come up with a conclusion as to whether this planet was habitable or not.

The crew wasn’t experienced in this procedure, and had to pay attention to everything. They had a doctor, an engineer, a genius and a botanist. They had everything they needed, except an analyst. There was an entire section devoted to the analysts on the ship. Their job was to do exactly what the crew was doing, but far more efficiently. However, due to SHOW being offline, they couldn’t wake anybody else.

 Mary and Jack ejected a storage drive from the probe. This drive contained the atmospheric readings required. They would have to plug this into one of the computers, and analyse the readings, compare them with that of Earth, and then tabulate the data. Only after all of this, would they know if the atmosphere was healthy enough for human habitation. They plugged it in, and waited for the data transfer.

Clive stayed back at the launchpad. He had to work on the probe. Assuming the worst, this probe would have to make a second journey, towards Beta this time. He had to ensure all systems were working and no internal damage was incurred while the probe was on Alpha. The fact that there were only two probes on the entire ship made Clive even more determined to get everything done right. Such reconnaissance probes were large and resource consuming. The Pallas Athena could only afford to keep two of them aboard, as they were kept only for emergencies. Describing the current situation as an emergency would have been an understatement. Meanwhile, Clive disassembled the entire probe, piece by piece, so that he could get into the interiors and wiring. Those were the most crucial parts. If the wiring was faulty, then the robotic arm could malfunction, or the atmospheric readings data wouldn’t be uploaded into the drive. It was imperative that every single part of the probe was checked.

Pavel had taken inventory of the items he needed. Courtesy the robotic arm, he had 100 grams of both types of soil. He kept 50g of each back inside for storage, and distributed the remaining evenly onto glass slides and containers which he would use for the various experiments he had to carry out. Though he was a neurologist, Pavel preferred to describe himself as a “jack of all trades, master of few”. His colleagues would smirk at the ego, but wouldn’t dispute the statement itself. Despite being a neurologist, Pavel had pursued many other activities, including geology and forensic studies. He pursued various topics to kill time and satisfy his curiosity. He never learnt anything for the sole purpose of the application. However, he was glad he did. Some of those skills would come in handy now.

He began typing in all the experiments he would have to carry out, and confirming that he had the apparatus required. First, he would have to analyse the soil and figure out its composition. He guessed that the allocation and distribution of minerals would be similar to that of Earth, judging by the way the flora was growing. Then, he would have to dissolve the soil in an organic solvent, put it in a centrifuge, and run a few tests. With these, he would have a basic idea about the nature and properties of the soil. Had he not taken a crash course in botany, he would have stupidly checked the soil and root imaging to calculate the gravitational pull exerted by the planet. However, he had recently learnt that gravity is not a determining factor for plant growth. Popular belief suggested that gravity helped in root growth, however the roots are merely anchors. So long as there is soil, the roots will grow away from the light. Instead, Pavel allowed Clive to determine the gravitational pull. Clive said he could use the video feed and calculate everything. Pavel didn’t bother asking how. Of all the subjects, he never clicked when it came to physics or math. Sure, given a life or death situation he wouldn’t fare badly, but given a choice, he would leave it to others.

As he thought about all this, his hands began moving, sorting through everything and prepping the apparatus. Some of these were second nature to him, and he didn’t even have to think about them. He diverted his focus to the microscope. In a sealed tray nearby, were two circular disks, with the samples of soil. He took the soil from the beach first. He began observing it, and running the program that showed the composition of the soil. His first observation was that the soil strength was low. He wasn’t surprised, given the assumption that the gravity on the planet was considerably low. His second observation, however, answered one of his questions. He noticed that the soil showed no signs of microbial growth or bacterial habitation. The low   and soil strength had created an environment that was unfit for growth. This in turn explained the absence of life at the sea level, since the plants couldn’t grow without microbes. Although this didn’t explain why the seas were empty. He decided to move on.

A notification sounded on the computer. The program had ended, and the results were ready. He pulled up the data, and put it in the form of a pie chart. He then pulled up the pie chart for the composition on earth. Since this was beach sand, the pie chart for that of earth was mainly comprised of silica and oxygen, in the form of quartz crystals. On Earth, 85% of the sand was quartz, and it took up a huge orange slice in the pie. The yellow slice represented other substances and impurities. He then switched to the image of the chart from Alpha. Already, there was a striking difference. The chart of Alpha sand was categorised into three sections, unlike the two sections of Earth. The minor yellow slice was similar to that of the Earths. However, the silica and oxygen that formed quartz took up a mere 40% of the sand. The remaining 45% was taken up by a glaring bright red slice. Intrigued and concerned, Pavel clicked on the red slice. The computer switched to a new screen that elaborated on the red part’s contents in depth. However, the two words on top were enough to answer Pavel’s second question. The page was titled:

NaCl (45%)

Evidently, common salt took up a large portion of the sand. This implied that the seas probably had an even higher concentration of salt, definitely higher than the 3.5% concentration from Earth. Since the concentration of the salt was higher, marine life similar to that of Earth would not have survived. Even if it existed at some point, all marine life would have died, as their cells swelled and ruptured due to osmosis. Their carcasses would sink to the floor, but not decompose, as all marine bacteria would have died too. So if Pavel needed to do a further study on this, he could have sent the probe to scour the seabed. However, what he saw ahead of him was enough to confirm that Alpha was not habitable at sea level. Though his research on the moist soil was promising and similar to that of earths, Pavel knew Alpha wouldn’t be habitable. By the looks of it, surviving at sea level would be extremely difficult. Surviving on the rock structures would also be hard, both in an environmental and engineering aspect. He decided to leave the samples for academic purposes whenever he had the time. However, he was clear that his research was over. He looked down at his watch, and was shocked to see he was literally burning the midnight oil. He decided to catch some sleep, and inform the crew the next day.

Clive looked at his watch. It was 5:50 in the evening. He had burned through most of the morning working on the probe. Now, he was satisfied that she was ready if she had to make a second journey. He had to replace a few wires here and there, as the insulation coating had worn off due to the friction against the other parts while the probe was landing. He did one better by giving the insides a makeover, such that no part would scrape against another unnecessarily due to friction. All parts had a place and a path. He also updated his software and the link to the probe. Now, he had real time access to the condition of the interiors of the probe, and would be alerted if anything happened. Satisfied with his work, Clive decided he would move on to his second task. He had told Pavel that he would figure out how strong or weak the gravitational force was on this planet.

He had a broad idea on how he could do that. Quite opposite to Pavel, Clive loved mathematics. Physics was nothing but maths with a few special terms here and there. To him, everything was a fun puzzle demanding an answer. Originally, he thought he would use a control unit program designed to calculate these things. According to him, the whole matter would have been solved within an hour. However, when he pulled up the code, its aid it needed a security clearance for the user to operate. Clive wondered about who’s genius idea that was. He radioed Mary and asked if she could clear the device, but since SHOW was down, even someone with a clearance like Mary’s couldn’t have activated the program. Clive sighed. He had to do it the long way now. Despite loving the subject, he had a time limit here. So he had to push to do it as fast as he could.

He decided to find the gravity using Newtons Law of Gravity. A small derivation from the original formula gave the formula for “g” or gravitational acceleration. This value was what Clive was looking for. The formula for “g” involved “G”, a constant, and the mass and radius of the planet. So, in order to find the gravitational attraction, he needed the mass and radius of Alpha. He began with the radius. He pulled up the holographic imaging of Alpha to its star. This unique piece of code gave him imaging of Alpha, its star, and its orbit. More importantly, this piece of code didn’t need any clearance. This gave him values such as orbital radius, orbital velocity, and, luckily enough, the radius of the planet. He quickly noted down the radius, density, velocity, and was about to click the button to find mass, when the screen froze. A dialogue box popped up, asking for clearance. Clive was tempted to throw the computer down the incineration chute. With an exasperated sigh, he took a notebook and a pen.

The hard part was over. He had the radius. Finding the mass given the radius was easy. Even easier since he had the density too, thanks to the program. Clive knew density was mass over volume. This meant that mass was the product of density and volume. He had the density, and he had the radius. He also knew that the volume of the planet was 4/3πR2 All that was left was mindless workout. As he worked, Clive thought about what the others must be doing. He could clearly envision Pavel hunched over his table for hours at a stretch. Mary and Jack were probably analysing the data. Jack… He still didn’t completely trust him, but Clive had come to the conclusion that Jacks actions weren’t completely wrong. Maybe, after all this, Clive would talk to Jack, and end the awkwardness and tension between them.

Meanwhile, he had found the mass, and was applying the mass into Newtons Law of Gravitation. Though long dead, Newtons equations continue to live. Clive smirked at the thought. He had arrived at a value for “g”. He was surprised. He went over his calculations checking for errors. He even worked it out again. The value remained. He didn’t know exactly what the value implied, but he knew it wasn’t good. He had to inform Mary.

Mary and Jack waited while the data loaded and was being tabulated. In between, Mary got a message from Clive. A request to authorise some program. Mary wondered why some of her colleagues may have enforced authorisations like this. Though she tried to be involved in as many things as possible related to the Pallas Athena, there were some things that slipped away from her grasp without her knowledge. She glanced at Jack. Ever since the incident between Clive and Jack took place, both of the seemed a bit more lost. Their conversations towards each other were forced and tense. She thought it would get better with time, but the situation had barely changed. She also understood that the subject was a touchy one with both of them. They said what they had to say, and didn’t want to pursue the conversation.

They went to the cafeteria for a coffee, and returned to the control room. The data had been tabulated. They compared it too that of Earth’s. The readings from near the plants were similar to that of Earth’s. Of course, the results weren’t exactly identical. Some minor gases varied in small quantities. However, the overall readings were more or less similar. However, then they reviewed the readings from the beach, they came across something extremely peculiar. The readings from the probe at the beach were different from those of the same probe in the jungle. “Its almost like there’s very little air at the sea level. I don’t understand how that could be.” Jack said. Mary was equally stumped. They spent some time reviewing everything once more, to check if they had missed anything. In the end, all their data seemed to suggest that the beach had lesser.

Mary checked the time. 9:00 PM, how does time fly so quick? To her, the entire day was a blur. Despite spending the time they spent, they still had questions unanswered. Mary and Jack decided to call it a day. She radioed Clive and Jack, telling them that they should meet tomorrow, and discuss their findings. Clive replied in the affirmative. He said he had to share something important too. There was no response on Pavel’s side. Mary’s best guess was that Pavel was absorbed in his work and had left the walkie in another room. Honestly, how does he spend so much time absorbed in work? She decided not to think about it, and made her way into the residential quarters. She sat on her bed. She hated those moments. She had spent an entire day with adrenaline, but felt all the fatigue collapse on her only when she sat on the bad. She was asleep in a matter of seconds.

Clive entered an hour later. He found Mary fast asleep. He saw Jack sitting in a corner, seemingly in deep thought. Jack looked at Clive. Clive nodded at him, he nodded back. Clive didn’t give it too much thought. He knew there was a better time for such conversations. He made his way to his bed. As he slept, he thought about how he should present his findings the next day.

Mary woke up the next morning, and checked the time, 7:00. “Late..” she muttered as she freshened up. As she made her way to the elevator, Clive accompanied her. They both entered the elevator and headed toward the cafeteria. The lift stopped in between, and Jack entered. He does a routine check on the plants daily. Pavel was still nowhere to be seen. The elevator stopped at the cafeteria. They all entered, inserted their respective cards and picked what they wanted to eat. Mary wasn’t feeling too hungry today, and she settled with a croissant. Jack and Clive however, were starving. They took a whole breakfast platter with bread, butter, marmalade and some cut fruits. They made their way to the nearest table when Clive said “What’s that?” He pointed at the next table.

On the table lay a “sticky note”, with the words “Meet me in the lab. Got some stuff to show. – Pavel”. “Well, I suppose we have a destination for our meeting” Mary said. They finished their meals, and took the elevator to the laboratory. The first part of the lab was a mess. Notes and paperwork were scattered everywhere. However, there was certain order in the scattering of notes. Organisation in disorganisation. They entered the next room, which was the sanitary room with gloves, masks and suits. Jack walked towards the sealed white door, through which he saw Pavel. He was about to press the green button that opened the door, when Mary said “Wait. We might have to put on these suits and gloves. We don’t know if Pavel has found anything dangerous and contagious in the soil samples.” They made their way toward the gloves, when Pavel’s voice sounded over the intercom. “That wont be necessary guys. There’s nothing dangerous nor contagious here”.

Jack pressed the green button, and the doors hissed open. There, they found a makeshift conference room Pavel had organised, with a lab desk and a few chairs. Pavel was sorting through some boxes, which probably contained the soil samples. He looked up “Good Morning, I took the liberty of holding our scheduled meeting here, given the things I need to share.” “Sure, lets get started” Clive said. “Alright, I’ll go first” Pavel began. “I analysed both the samples and ran all the required tests. The soil sample from the forest resembled that of the earth. It has healthy amounts of microbes and its composition is more or less similar to that of our planet. However, the problems arose when I moved on to the sand from the beach. Sand on Earth is composed mainly of quartz from silica and oxygen. Here, however, less than half of the sad is composed of quartz. An unnervingly large quantity is taken up by common salt. This explains one of the questions we had. Clearly, microbes don’t exist in the sand, which explains why the land at sea level was barren. But the sea itself, had a dangerously high concentration of salt, far higher than anything you could imagine. Therefore, the water was too salty for life to survive, even if there was life at some point. Hence, I don’t think we will find anything in the sea. That sums it up. I know, its not much, but it’s the best I could do with the samples I had and the equipment that was available.”

“No, that was great. It answered a few questions that we had, and every small detail will help build a bigger picture of our understanding of Alpha” Mary said. “Well, I suppose its our turn next. Jack and I compared the atmospheric readings that the probe took. The probe surveyed Alpha at two altitudes: sea level and the forest elevation. Like Pavel’s research, everything was normal at the elevation of the vegetation. The readings of the air composition there could practically be a clone of that of Earth’s. However, the peculiar thing that we noticed was at the sea level. Forget the composition of the air, there wasn’t much air at all! It seemed as if the atmosphere was suspended at the height of the trees, which isn’t useful for us. We can all agree the engineering to build habitable structures at that altitude is far beyond our capabilities at this point. However, I am still perplexed as to why the air concentration is lower at sea level.”

Clive stood. “Well I have an answer for that, and I suppose it also determines whether Alpha is habitable for us or not. So I calculated the gravitational force exerted by Alpha and compared it to that of Earths. I think we were all expecting it to be lower, given the footage of the rover. Well, its lower than you think. It is almost less than half of the Earths gravitational force! And this, Mary, also answers your question. The lower force of gravity isn’t strong enough to hold the atmosphere down completely, and has only the strength to suspend it at that height, to which the endemic life has adapted too. Now, I didn’t know the consequences of low gravity, but I did some reading. I’m no qualified doctor, but I’ve learnt that low gravity actually weakens and shrinks our feet, especially our calves. And there is no way we can survive on a planet like this.” Clive glanced at Pavel for confirmation on his facts. Pavel nodded. With a sigh, Mary walked up to a softboard, took a marker, and crossed out an image of Alpha.

“Well, I suppose we all know what’s coming next. Alpha is off the board. Clive, its a good thing you prepped the probe for another journey. Next stop, Beta”

The crew worked twice as hard, knowing that the fate of humanity was at stake. Jack and Clive and Jack even put aside their rivalry (if you could call it that) and worked together on various activities. They hardly interacted much, except for matters about the next launch. Many took night-outs to get work done on several instances. Looking at their schedule and routine, even a machine may have been surprised.

Clive and Jack spent most of their time in the launchpad, prepping the probe or doing other checks on the ship. Mary and Pavel kept moving across various parts of the ship, taking inventory, conducting studies and analysing their trajectory from space. Their deadline had grown ever too close. Months of time were down to weeks. A few weeks to study two planets, or humanity is sucked into a dying blackhole.

Things were even harder now, given that they had to launch and study two probes at a time. Beta and Theta would be equally close to the Pallas Athena when it reached a certain point. The ship would reach that point in 4 days. At certain times, members of the crew were seen jogging or briskly walking towards their respective tasks, in an urgent yet thorough effort to pull through. Things were going brilliantly until 2 days before the ship would reach the point from which the probes would be deployed.

It was 8:00 in the morning, and the crew had decided to meet up for breakfast. They agreed that they were doing their best, but they also needed time to rewind and relax. Mary and Pavel were the first to reach, and took their morning drinks. Clive arrived a while later, saying that he and Jack were working on the probe, and then Jack had remembered to visit the plants for the day. “You know, despite what happened, Jack is a good guy. Honest and hardworking. I mean, sure. It will take time before everything returns to a state that resembles normalcy, but I think it will be possible between us.” Clive said, as he at his breakfast of cereal in tinned milk. Pavel smiled “That’s good to hear. After all, we need to work like a well oiled machine to pull of this herculean feat that awaits us”. Mary nodded “Indeed we do. However, it has been a while since I’ve seen Jack. He doesn’t usually take this much time on his routine check on the plants. Do you think something went wrong?”

“Hey, calm down. If something was wrong, he would have told us.” Pavel nudged the walkie talkie he had placed on the table. Mary didn’t look so reassured. She was about to get up and walk to the elevator, when she heard the distinct ‘ding’ sound from the elevator doors. She sighed in relief and said “I haven’t had enough coffee for the day yet. I worried over nothing, here comes Jack.”

Jack entered the cafeteria. Pavel smiled, and then realised something was off. Jack didn’t look the same. His hair was a bit more ruffled and there was a slightly weird look in his eyes. However, Pavel brushed it off. “Walked past the blowing air vents did you?” he asked casually. Jack took a minute to understand what he was talking about. “Oh this?” he gestured to his hair, and combed it with his hand. “Yeah that must have happened, I err… didn’t realise, probably” Pavel shrugged. “You’re not eating anything?” Mary asked. Jack said “No, I’m not feeling hungry today”. “That’s odd. Usually, you’re the one who eats a lot here" “Hilarious Mary, its only because you three only drink coffee. It seems like the food I eat is a lot. Speaking of food, I think I’ll actually eat now” Jack seemed to be returning back to normalcy. “I thought you weren’t hungry?” Pavel asked. “Did I say that doc?” Jack smirked. Pavel shrugged, and continued sipping his coffee.

Clive raised an eyebrow as he watched Jack walk over to the food vending machine. “Well, that was weird. Am I the only one with that impression?” Jack and Mary glanced at each other “No, I felt like something was off in the beginning too.” Mary said. They decided to abandon the thought. Once they had finished eating, Clive suggested that they all move as a group and help out with everyone’s work. Nobody refused the offer.

They decided to visit the lab first. Pavel said he needed a lot of equipment sorted and ready, and an inventory of the place for all the research he would have to make. Alone, he might have taken a few days to finish the work. With everyone working under his guidance, the work was done in an hour and a half. Mary was next. She needed to run a complete system check and a hardware check for all the computers and machines that were running in the control room. They couldn’t afford to have any of their own devices malfunctioning on an event like this. Clive was a major contributor to this, and cracked it just in time for lunch. They ate hurriedly at the cafeteria, and decided Jack was next. He said that some of the SHOWBOTs were down, and that he could use some help getting them up and running. That would reduce his workload significantly.

Lastly, the accompanied Clive to the launchpad, for a final system check and check on the probe. All systems on Clive’s program were as ready as they could be. Then arrived the time to check all the systems on the probe. Clive would have to press a few buttons, and all the systems would be displayed on his monitor. However, his screen went blank. He was confused. “Why is it not transmitting?”. “Maybe it’s a problem with your computer? Charge maybe?” Pavel suggested meekly. Clive checked “No, all other programs are running fine on this device. Only data from the probe is not transmitting. I can’t tell if all the systems are go.” Jack walked over to the drawer. “Well, only one thing to do. Check the insides of the probe.” He opened the drawer. “Wait, where’s the screwdriver? Clive, didn’t we keep it here before leaving?” Clive looked up, his face white with concern and shock. “Yes. Its not there?” “No. Guys help me search” Jack said. As they searched, Pavel asked Clive “What could be the issue?” “Doc, the insides of that thing are as complicated as the human body. There is a core, with a fragile yet secure control panel cylinder. All parts are connected there. Maybe a wire is loose, maybe a circuit shorted. I have no idea. It could be literally anything.” His voice was tainted with irritation. Obviously he wasn’t handling the situation well, and was tensed.

“Found it!” Mary said. “It was under this desk here, must have rolled there.” Jack raised an eyebrow. “But how could it have reached there?” Clive got up, jogged to Mary, took the screwdriver, and hurriedly began opening up the probe, anxious to see what had happened. They huddled around him, curious to see the insides. Clive opened the panel. Inside, was a complicated set of wiring around a central cylinder. Instantly, Pavel knew what was wrong. The cylinder was crushed, almost flattened. Clive stood with a start, nearly pushing the rest. “NO. NO! This cant be happening! IT CANT!” He glared at the rest. “Don’t you see?!? This sort of damage is not natural. The way this canister has been flattened is screaming sabotage. SOMEONE DID THIS ON PURPOSE!” He yelled. Pavel was stunned. He had never even considered something like sabotage. Clive stared at everyone, with a vicious look in his eyes. “Alright” he growled. “Who did it?” “Clive, calm down. Are you sure it was sabotage?” Clive stared at him with a made rage in his eyes “What do you mean am I sure? Mary, explain it to him.” Mary said “Pavel, Clive is right. That kind of damage has to be sabotage. However, I still don’t know who or why something like this could have happened. Lets just check the security footage, there’s a camera facing the probe right here.” She pointed at a camera right above Pavel. Clive said “Fine, but whoever it is in a whole load of trouble”.

They took the elevator up. The mood was as tense as it could get. Everyone kept glancing at each other. Pavel and Mary were more concerned than scared. Damage like this could ruin their entire plans. Clive was one minute away from yelling and resorting to violence. To him, damage like this was personal. His whole journey aboard the Pallas Athena, he spent most of his time focusing on the probe, which had now been deliberately destroyed by someone.

They reached the control room. They walked briskly towards the main computers. Mary sat, and pulled up the security feed. She pulled up the launchpad camera view on the big screen. She pressed and held the “<” button, which re-winded the feed. The feed re-winded to the second it showed Clive and Jack working on the probe. Jack took the screwdriver and put it in the drawer. “There! You see? I put the screwdriver in the drawer. How did it get under the desk?” Jack said. “I don’t know, lets see” Mary said. She resumed the video. It showed an empty launchpad. She was about to switch to another angle, when they saw the door open. A figure walked in, they weren’t able to identify who, due to the light from the back. As the figure got closer, they recognised him. It was Jack.

Jack looked like he was going to faint, watching the footage. “No. It can’t be. I- I was going to check the plants. Guys I didn’t do that” he was barely whispering. They watched in shock, as Jack walked over to the probe, opened the interior, took something from the desk, and delivered a strong blow to something on the inside. He then took the screwdriver and sealed the probe. Mary noticed Jack dropping the screwdriver, which rolled under the desk, and stayed there.

Jack took a few steps back, and sank into a chair. He was shivering out of fear. “Guys, I don’t remember doing that. That- It- It wasn’t me, alright? I didn’t do that. I would never-“ Clive got up. “You would never what? Never do something like this?! Really?! And you expect US to believe the word of a goddamn criminal?” he yelled. Pavel looked at Jack. All this while, he trusted Jack. But now, he was caught on the tape. As much as Pavel hated to, he had to take a stance, one against his friend. “Jack, you saw the footage, we all did. It was you. Don’t deny it. Atleast tell us why you did it.” He said, controlling his anger. “Doc, I don’t know. I really don’t. Please. You have to believe me. I don’t remember doing any of this, I really don’t” Jack begged, his eyes full of sorrow. “STOP. Stop making excuses Jack. We know you did it, and I was right. I was right, we could never trust a criminal like you. NEVER. And now look where that’s got us, we need to formulate a new plan for everything. Do you not realise what you’ve done!?” Clive made his way towards Jack, fuming with anger. Pavel and Mary held him back. Mary stepped in. “Clive, calm down. We agree it was Jack. We don’t know why he did it. But such questions can’t be answered with violence. Please, take a seat”

“How can I take a seat knowing that this man, this- this- criminal, has killed us?! HOW??” Clive yelled. He walked back, sank into a chair of his own, and buried his face into his palms. After a minute, he looked up. He wasn’t going to lash out, but the rage was still there. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Now, we need to find a way to contain this man. Some way to keep him locked up. We cant risk him destroying anything else. We just cant.” He pointed at Jack accusingly. Pavel walked over to Jack. “On that I agree. Jack, we trusted you. And now you’ve given us every reason not to. Mary? Which part of the ship can serve as his prison?” Pavel looked away from Jack. Mary thought for a minute. “There is a small section devoted to containment, in case we found or had stuff to store temporarily. Its got password locked doors, so it can only be opened from the outside. It is also probably the most secure place.”

Clive walked toward Jack and pulled him up by his collars. He shoved Jack toward the door, and said “Mary, do lead us to this mans new home- prison” Mary didn’t appreciate how harsh Clive was being, but she also sided with him on the fact that Jack needed to be contained. If anything else like this happened, the effects would be catastrophic. They took the elevator down, to a floor just above the launchpad. They walked through a narrow corridor, up to a red door with no handles. Mary placed her palm on the fingerprint scanner on the left corner, and the doors opened. The walked inside, to a corner, where huge plexiglass containers with air holes were stacked. Mary had Jack face the other way, and entered the 4 digit code. The hinge doors opened. Clive shoved Jack inside. “Have fun, criminal. Must feel like home to you” Clive spat. Jack looked defeated. Pavel couldn’t help but notice that he truly looked wounded and confused, but couldn’t sympathise with Jack anymore, considering the damage he had inflicted.

As they took the elevator up, Pavel decide to confront the elephant in the room. “Guys. Now that this damage is done, what do we do? We need to have a plan of action.” He looked at Mary for answers. She looked devastated. “Well, judging by the looks, this damage is inoperable. We are only left with one probe, and two planets. It doesn’t help that we have exactly 17 days before the black hole has us. So in these 17 days, we need to find a way to reach both the planets and review the data from both. The probe was scheduled to launch 2 days from now. Clive, can we launch tomorrow? Assuming the probe returns the day after, and data is analysed three days hence, how much time before its ready to visit Theta?” Clive thought. “Well, I suppose while you guys study the data, I can prep the probe for its next journey. So about 4 or 6 days hence, it should be ready to visit Theta.” Mary nodded. “That’s great. That leaves us with about a week at least, to change trajectory toward either Beta or Theta. Good. Let’s get to work.”

The team worked harder than before. It was harder, given that they only had three instead of four, but they were willing to put in the hours required to get the work done. Clive took upon the task for prepping the last probe for its journey. Mary was determined to get SHOW online once more, as it would make their jobs easier. Pavel assorted the lab and went about the ship, helping wherever he could. Now that Jack was contained, Pavel had to check on the plants everyday. He couldn’t claim to be skilled at it, but he took it as a success when no plants died on his first attempt.

Jack spent all this time in confinement. He was give a walkie talkie, for emergencies only. It was decided he would be given meals twice a day. Though this seemed less, it was about the same amount he and the rest of the crew ate anyway. All this time, he hadn’t uttered a single word. Pavel was concerned, but learnt to brush it off by focusing on more pressing matters at hand. Clive, on the other hand was not just indifferent to Jack but almost intentionally negligent. Mary shared Pavel’s concern about Jacks reaction to all this, but found herself too occupied to talk. She spend day and night in the control room, manually trying to get past the firewalls and into the mainframe, so that she could reboot SHOW. The day flew by.

The crew didn’t spend too much time resting, and only got as much sleep as necessary. Today was the day, where the probe would launch toward Beta. They assembled in the control room. This time, Pavel would analyse the radar and other readings, while Clive and Mary would focus on everything else related to the probe, including the feed. They couldn’t afford to make the slightest error, and lose their only probe. Mary didn’t bother with the countdown, everyone was too anxious. She nodded at Pavel and Clive, and pressed the button.

They had hoped for a smooth launch, but problems started arising seconds from the launch. Pavel’s radar alarm began blaring. Mary looked at the screen, her eyes wide with shock. “What is it?” Clive asked, as he was in the opposite corner, working on the feed. “Meteor shower toward Beta. Not harmful for the planet, but can destroy the probe. We cant go towards Beta at all” Mary said. Pavel couldn’t afford to accept defeat, not after everything they had already done. They had to figure out something else. He took a deep breath and cleared his mind. Beta wasn’t accessible due to meteors. What could they do? “I’ve got it!” he yelled. “Beta isn’t accessible right now, but Theta is as close to the ship as Beta. Is there some way to change the trajectory to Theta?” Mary sighed with relief. “That can work. Since we’ve already pre-loaded all the trajectory data, its just a matter of switching from one route to another. We can do that.” She began typing furiously, and slammed the enter key.

The probe began changing course, heading the other way instead. It started heading toward Theta, which seemed more habitable than Alpha currently. This time, it was scheduled to land on a flat plain, abetting a river. No problems arose throughout the journey. The landing was smooth. Once the probe had landed, the crew wasted no time admiring the view, which was vibrant and beautiful. One could have mistook Theta for Earth. Wasting no time, the rover was deployed. This time they paid attention to the footage. Gravity seemed normal, more or less similar to that of earth. The trees and vegetation had more species common to Earth than alpha.

Until now, they were still unsure. Just because a forest could grow didn’t mean everything was hunky dory. Many other factors still existed. However, one sight changed their perspective. Amongst the bushes, the wind blew. The trees rustled, but so did the bushes. One bush in particular was rustling unnaturally. Suddenly, a blur or red and white burst from the midst of the jungle, pursuing another white blur. It took the crew sometime to realise what they were seeing. Clive stood, with a smile on his face. “That’s- That’s” Pavel was too excited, and even interrupted him. “Yeah, a fox chasing a hare.” Everyone laughed in relief. This showed that Theta could support animal life. Theta could be the one after all.

The probe made its journey back the next day. Everyone wasted no time analysing the results. The crew was excited, and were determined that Theta would be the planet they needed.

This time, the crew did run toward the probe. They quickly donned their gloves, and took what they needed. Clive stayed behind, cleaning the probe. Despite their high hopes, they had to be prepared for everything. If the probe had to make another journey, it had to be ready and capable.

Time flew, work got done. While atmospheric data was loading, Mary spent her time rebooting SHOW. The process was long, but she made significant traction. Pavel was glued to his microscope. In his excitement, he almost forgot to wear his hazmat suit, almost. He studied the soil samples and was delighted to see microbial growth. The crew stayed in touch via radio, as it made communication easier. Pavel held his, and spoke. “Guys, you wont believe it. The soil shows signs of microbial growth. This is as similar to Earth as you could imagine. This may be the one after all!!” He received equally excited responses from Clive and Mary. This news came as a relief to them all.

They had spent a few hours working, when Mary’s voice sounded over the radio. Her voice was strained. “Guys..” Pavel took his walkie talkie. “Yeah what’s up? Anything significant on the atmospheric readings? Anything good?” he felt upbeat and happy. For the first time in this entire voyage, he felt like things were going their way. Mary spoke again. “Well that’s the thing. I found something significant. But not good. The ozone layer from Theta.. Its ruptured and is on the verge of collapse. Even if we did try our best and stay here, this planet will be gone in less than a decade.” Pavel felt disappointed. “Is there no way to fix this?” Clive tried too. “Yeah, there must be some way, some tech, something, right?”. “Guys, I know its hard to hear, but Theta is not a viable option. We have to try for Beta.” A frustrated yell sounded over the intercom, followed by something crashing. Pavel was loosing it in the lab. All this hardwork, all this effort, all this toiling, for absolutely nothing. He brought out fear, disappointment and desperateness in the form of anger.

The rest of the crew couldn’t do much. Inside, they felt the same way. But Mary pulled it together, and decided they had to move on. “Clive, get that probe ready to launch by tomorrow. Meteor strike or no, nothing will stop us from getting that probe to Beta.” Back in the launchpad, Clive nodded at the walkie. “Yes Ma’am. The strike is gone, so we wont have to worry about meteors. Pavel, I could use a little help here big man.” A few minutes later, Pavel finally spoke. “On my way, we’re going to do this, we’re going to get through. We have to.”

The anger fuelled them into working harder and faster than ever. The probe was ready in no time, and they were anxious for launch. The axiety overcame everyone to an extent that they even forgot their meals. Jack was informed about the situation, as it was only correct. He too, despite doing nothing, was too tensed to eat. For the first time in days, he spoke. “Guys, let me out. Things are desperate, I can help. Please.” The crew had come to a unanimous decision. They couldn’t afford any mistakes, and given Jacks history, trust wouldn’t come easy. Mary broke it to Jack. “Sorry Jack, I hope you understand, we just cant, even if we want to.” Back in the storage area, Jack nodded, and went back to staring at the wall.

Finally, the anticipated day was here. It was time to launch. The crew had woken up earlier than ever and preponed the launch. Again, time flew, as the probe made its way towards Beta. Landing was once again smooth. Visually, everything seemed normal. However, what would seal it was the data collected by the probe. The crew decided to rest as the probe returned. They had been working non-stop for hours, and needed sleep.

The next morning, they woke, feeling refreshed and ready. They barely spoke or ate, and spent all their time working on their respective tasks. This time, Clive aided Mary with SHOW and the atmospheric data. There was no point in prepping the probe. Even if Beta wasn’t an option, there was nowhere else to go. This was all the more reason why Beta had to be the one. It had to.

At last, the dreaded hour had arrived. One day after the probe had landed. This had given Pavel more than enough time to run all the tests he needed. His workspace was a mess, with notes and trays everywhere. Despite removing the flask, he had left his centrifuge running, and only turned it off as he was about to leave. He entered the elevator, feeling nervous. His hands shivered with stress. Everyone would meet at the control room and report their findings. If even one factor was off, the planet would be sealed away. One small change is all it took for the fate of humanity to be decided.

Mary and Clive had also finished their research on atmospheric data and gravity. They were anxiously awaiting Pavel. In the time that passed, they kept going over the data once more, making sure that they didn’t miss anything. And then, the elevator landed on the control room floor. Mary and Clive heard the ‘ding’ sound, and sat straight. Mary took a deep breath. This was it. Do or die. Life or death. Pavel walked in. He nodded at Mary and Clive, and took a seat. Mary took another deep breath, and began.

“So, I guess today is the day. Our findings now will determine whether humanity has a home or not. Pavel, I trust you’ve finished your studies on the soil samples?” Pavel nodded grimly. “Well that’s good, because Clive and I have finished our research too. Lets begin. Ill go first. I had to study the atmospheric readings. I have gone over the data countless times. My final report is thus: The atmosphere of Beta, is safe to live in. It matches that of Earths and has nothing that proves to be a threat to humanity or other forms of organic life.”

She sighed. Well, that was over. One of the three criteria had been met. If even one criteria hasn’t been met, she didn’t know how she would react. All she could do is hope. Despite saying what she had to, she still felt like a lot of pressure was on her chest.

Clive stood. “That’s good to hear, Mary. I studied the gravity while aiding Mary with the atmospheric readings. Earths gravity causes a acceleration of 9.8 metres per second. The gravity of Beta, which I have triple checked, causes an acceleration of 9.76 metres per second” He couldn’t help but smile. Saying this relieved him of the pressure. It was reassuring to know that another criteria had been met. This gave them a better chance at survival.

Pavel sighed. It was his turn now. What he had to say, would seal the fate of humanity. If he had no issues with his readings, then they could change course to Beta instantly. If there was even one small issue with his readings that posed a threat for humanity, they could do nothing but watch as the Pallas Athena and all its passengers get sucked into the blackhole. He stood. Though what he would begin with was redundant, he had to say it, too ease the pressure. “So, Mary and Clive. What a journey it has been. It is relieving to hear that atmosphere and gravity are not problems for us. However, despite those two being perfect, it still relies on whether the soil samples readings approve accordingly or not. As you know, that’s my responsibility. I have run all the tests multiple times and have confirmed all the results. I am certain the results are factually correct. However, that’s the issue. I am sorry to inform…”

Clive slammed the table. He knew what was coming next. Deep down, Mary knew it too. There were no alternatives, no backup plans, nothing. They could do nothing now, but watch as the ship made its way into a collapsing black hole. There was no chance the ship would survive that journey. It was clear, this was humanities last stand, and they had been defeated. Pavel took another breath to conclude his sentence. Mary didn’t see reason in finishing the sentence, they all knew deep down anyway. Pavel continued.

“Like I said, which is why I am sorry to inform the black hole, that this ship will NOT be part of the menu” he grinned. Mary and Clive sat in shock for a minute. They couldn’t process what they had just heard. Mary looked at Pavel. He smiled. “You’re not kidding? You really mean that?” Pavel laughed. “Why would I joke about this. Don’t you get it? We’re going to live. YEAAHHHH!!!!” He couldn’t help but let out all of his feelings. In a minute, he was  joined by Clive and Mary too. Clive stood on top of the table, and yelled. “YESSSSSSSSSS We can do it!! WE did it!! LESGOOOOOOO”. Mary laughed with relief, and hugged Pavel. They stayed in each others embrace for a while. They were soon joined by Clive for a group hug. This was the moment of relief they had all been waiting for. Now, all that was left was to reboot SHOW and be on their way towards Beta.

Pavel decided to break the good news to Jack. Jack couldn’t help but laugh in relief as well. Though everyone remembered Jack’s actions, they momentarily decided to forget it and enjoy the moment. However, they agreed that Jack still couldn’t be let out, as there was still a significant amount of work to be done. Jack nodded solemnly. He understood.

The entire day, Mary and Clive worked with renewed vigour. They were determined to get SHOW up and running. Even Pavel had decided to help out in the process, with the bare minimum of computer knowledge he had. This time however, the mood was better, they took more breaks, laughed more and generally interacted more than usual.

The next day, just after lunch, Clive got up from his chair, and walked over to Mary and Pavel. Mary raised an eyebrow. “What happened?”. Clive grinned. “What happened? Oh nothing, just little old me managed to get into the mainframe and can now reboot SHOW. That’s all.” He bowed dramatically. The crew burst into another round of cheering and applause. More and more things seemed to be going their way. Mary got up, patted Clive on the back, and walked over to his station. “What are you doing now?” Pavel asked. “Well, first I’m going to reboot SHOW. And while that’s happening I also need to figure out why SHOW went down in the first place.” She pressed a key. “And, Done! The AI is being rebooted, and we should have a fully functional Pallas Athena by tomorrow. Clive, do help me figure out what happened will you?” Clive walked over, pulled up another chair, and cracked his knuckles. “I pride myself on computer know-how. Speaking of, I know how to figure out the cause for the crash too. It’s a simple procedure and we should have the answer in less than a minute.” Mary raised her eyebrows. “Well, that’s quite the feat. Even though I designed this ship, even I didn’t know one could do that so fast” Clive grinned. “Well, you didn’t have my genius did you?” Pavel smiled, he was happy that things were returning to a state of normalcy. He barely had time to reminisce over the events of the past, when Clive said “Aaaanndd. DONE. Ive done it again, no need to thank me” he said sarcastically. Mary walked over, good naturedly punched him in the arm and said “Hilarious, Mr Security Guard. Now what’s the reason?” Clive chose to ignore the security guard comment. He focused on the issue at hand. “Well, it says here that the cause for reboot was authorised by a program called “Operation Sundown”. Whatever that is” Mary looked stumped.

“Clive, say that again. Are you sure its Operation Sundown?” She asked, with a tinge of concern in her voice. “100% sure. I’m pretty sure I know how to read”. Mary sat down. Pavel put his hand on her shoulder. “Mary, what is it? What’s so special about this Operation Sundown?” Mary took a deep breath. “It is a program I designed personally. It was only for emergencies. In case SHOW was hacked or something was wrong with him, I needed a failsafe to temporarily shut him down. Operation Sundown was designed to do that.”

Clive was surprised too. “Well, I didn’t know about that. Doctor here clearly didn’t either. Jack doesn’t seem like he would either. So are you saying there’s someone else who’s responsible for all of this?” Mary shook her head. “No, that’s the thing. I designed this Operation covertly. Nobody except me knows about it. And what’s worse, is that its activated by a four digit code. And this code… Nobody knows it except me.”

“Whoa whoa whoa. Hold up” Clive began. “You mean to say that this Operation that is responsible for all this could have only been activated by you? That means you did this?” Mary shook her head once more. “I would never. Moreover, I would remember if I did something like this. I would know. I know that I clearly didn’t do this, I didn’t.”  She broke down. Pavel patted Mary on the back. “Hey, calm down. We know you didn’t. Its alright. Its okay”. Mary sniffled. “But that’s the only explanation Henry. The only way for all of this to  have happened involves me activating this program. But I didn’t.” Pavel looked at Clive, who shrugged helplessly. “Okay, Mary. How about you get something to eat, and then sleep for a while? Its probably just the tension and all that.” Mary wiped her tears, and stood. Pavel stepped forward. “Do you want me to accompany you?” She shook her head. “No. I need some time to myself, I need to clear my head. I’ll see you guys tomorrow”. She exited the room.

Clive looked at Pavel, his eyes full of concern. Pavell shrugged. “I don’t know how that’s possible.” Pavel said. Clive sat down and thought. “It cant be…” he murmured. Pavel was curious. “What? What is it?”. Clive sighed. “As much as I’d like to deny it, I cant. Don’t you see a pattern? She didn’t remember doing it, but she was the only one who could. And the vehement denial was too good to be fake. Its genuine.” Pavel nodded. “Of course it was genuine. I know Mary. None of that was faked. But whats the point?” Clive continued. “The point is, we’ve seen someone else react like that haven’t we? Someone we recently incarcerated.”

Pavel’s mind clicked. He was able to see the pattern now. He looked at Clive. “Jack” They said in unison.

Pavel was momentarily stunned. He was aware of mental conditions like amnesia which could either be induced by trauma or could develop from a genetic error or mutation. However, the possibility of two of four having amnesia at the same time period was infinitesimally low. There had to be another explanation for it. There was only one way to figure it out. He looked at Clive. “I’m going to have to extract blood samples for all three of you”. Clive nodded. “I understand. What can I do?”

Pavel extracted a sample from Clive first. He decided he would wait at the control room, and work on the reboot. Pavel then took the elevator towards the residential quarters. He found Mary asleep. She looked calmer, and relaxed. Careful not to wake here, Pavel managed to extract a sample. He took the elevator lower, into the cargo bay. He opened up Jacks “prison” door. Jack woke up due to the noise. Pavel noticed. “I apologise, I had to enter”. Jack sat up. “Why? Whats wrong doc?” Pavel explained the situation to him. Jack nodded in assent, seemingly relating to what had happened to Mary. “So you believe me when I say I didn’t intentionally sabotage the probe?” Pavel nodded. “It is my personal belief that youre a good guy, but until I analyse the blood samples and take some scans, I wont be sure.” Jack nodded and rolled up his sleeve. The process was quick, and Pavel made his way out. He nodded at Jack. “I believed you from the start by the way. Good Night”. Jack looked reassured, and went back to sleep.

Over the radio, Clive asked Pavel a question. “Why are you taking the blood first? Don’t you have to like, take some MRI scan or something? Or atleast even talk to us like a therapist to see if we have amnesia?” Pavel appreciated the question, it was a good one, and helped him confirm his own theory. He replied. “well, if someone among us was born with amnesia, we would have known by now. Mary and Jack? That’s too good for coincidence. My best guess is something contagious we have been exposed to lately. That’s why I took the blood first”. “Smart. All the best doc” Clive replied.

Pavel entered the lab, and carried out the same procedure he had been carrying out since the start. Get the microscope, take a stopper, apply blood sample on the tray, and observe for hours at end. He realised it was a bit dark, so he flicked a switch, and the room was bathed in yellow light. Pavel disliked the light from tube-lights and white light in general. He understood that they were more harming and harsh to the eye. He preferred orange light instead, quite similar to that of the evening sun on Earth. He then began his observations. He burned through the night, and was done by the morning. He radioed the crew to meet up at the cargo bay, so that they could all talk in person. His findings had left him stunned. He didn’t expect an answer as complicated and unbelievable as this.

In the morning, the crew met up at the cargo bay. Jack was awake, and had waited for his morning coffee, which Pavel had supplied him with. Though he trusted Jack, Pavel couldn’t afford to let him out of his confinement. Soon, Mary and Clive joined them. Mary looked better now, more rested and relaxed. It was obvious she was still thinking about the previous nights incidents, but seemed calmer about it. She broke the silence. “So, what happened? Clive told me you extracted blood samples from everyone last night? Why?”

Pavel explained the situation to everyone once again. “Now that you know what I did ,lets get to what I found. I spent the whole night researching and observing the blood samples. You guys wont believe what I’ve found. I can now say for a fact that Jack didn’t intentionally sabotage the probe, nor did Mary intentionally sabotage the AI. Its true, it may seem like you did it, but I believe it wasn’t a conscious act.” Clive raised an eyebrow. “How do you mean? We all saw the footage of Jack doing it”. Pavel interrupted before Jack could defend himself. “That wasn’t Jack, not exactly. That’s what I wanted to tell you. My theory was this amnesia effect has been caused by something contagious we have been exposed to recently, and I was right.” Mary stared at Pavel. “You mean… like a virus of sorts?” Pavel nodded. “Exactly that. A virus. I took the liberty of naming Terravirus, Terra as in Earth. I believe we have been exposed to it since the glorious days of old, on Earth.” Clive raised his hand. “Wait. You said exposed on Earth. How come we only see signs of it now? Why now specifically? Also how does this Virus work? Why is there only for Mary and Jack?” Pavel replied. “All valid questions, which I will answer. So basically, I believe something in our surroundings on the Earth kept this virus dormant. So much that we didn’t even know if its existence. However, that factor, whatever it is, is gone now, allowing the virus to become active and dominant. I believe it does something with the brain. Specifically, I believe we are dealing with complicated and sophisticated life. Life similar to ours, with decisions and choices. I believe, when it does whatever It does to our brain, it takes over for a short while, and uses the human body as a tool to do whatever it wants to. I still don’t know why it has only become dominant for just Mary and Jack. However, I do know this. Every human has a dormant Terravirus in them. In our cases, they’ve become active. I find this thought alarming. Its frightening.” Clive sighed, and sat down on the floor. “Hold up doc. You mean to say… we’re dealing with… Aliens?” Pavel shook his head. “Not exactly. The Terravirus is of Earth origin. It originated before us, but on the same planet as us. However, it is smart, extremely. It is perfectly capable of “hacking” the human body and doing whatever it wants.” Mary sat down too. “Brilliant. Just brilliant. The one second everything goes our way, this pops up. We finally have a new planet to live on. We finally have another shot at life, a new home. I’m not going to lie, the thought of having a sentient life form in my head isn’t entirely reassuring. I don’t know if I can be trusted anymore. I don’t know if ANYONE can be trusted anymore”

This brought down the mood of the crew. Obviously, hearing news like this is bad for morale. Only Jack retained his wits. “Okay yeah, this sucks. Bad news, I get it. But we need to do something about it. Anything. We cant just sit here. Oh wait, doc, you said there was some condition on Earth that kept this thing dormant. If we can figure out what that is, we can keep it dormant right?” Pavel paced around the area. “Jack’s right. That’s actually a great idea. We should start figuring out what it is, stat. I’ll be in the lab, figuring it all out. Clive, Mary, work on getting SHOW online.” Pavel began heading toward the elevator, when he stopped as if he remembered something. He walked back towards the trio, and entered the security code to open Jack’s “prison”. He looked at Clive. “I understand youre not completely okay with this, but its only right. We can all agree that despite his criminal history, Jack did not sabotage the probe. It was the Terravirus.” Clive nodded reluctantly. He got up, and walked over to Jack. He patted him on the shoulder. “Listen man, im sorry. I took it personally, and I found it hard to let go. But now I realise that my reasoning is wrong. I’ve been too harsh on you, but I wont do that anymore. We good?” Jack grinned. “Listen, its okay, I cant blame you for doing what you did. I understand your reasoning and its fine. Let bygones be bygones. We’re good.”

Pavel spent hours in his lab, drowning in the orange light. The rest of the crew found this weird, but didn’t object. Right now, everything depended on the doctor. Jack would keep popping up in the lab, helping out, and then heading back to the control room to help there. Despite all this moving, Jack still managed to pull off his daily visit to the plant section and ensure everything was fine.

17 days until they were sucked in, had reduced to 10. Pavel was still nowhere close to figuring it out. He was happy, however. In the time that had passed, the Terravirus hadn’t made a resurgence, and there had been no incidents. He was relieved. However, the mere thought of this seemed to jinx it for the crew.

Back at the control room, Mary and Clive were hunched over their desks, typing furiously trying to get the AI back faster. Clive got up, and headed toward the water bottles they had got. He took a sip. This was normal, and they used water as an excuse to stretch their legs. Clive began pacing the room. Mary didn’t seem to notice. She was absorbed in her work. As she was typing, she heard something clatter behind. “Everything okay?” she murmured. No response. In the corner of her eye, she saw Clive moving toward his workstation. He walked passed it. Mary paid no notice. Then she realised Clive was typing again. She decided to get up for a bit. She walked over to Clive, and put her hand on his shoulder. “All good? I heard some clattering” Clive looked up. “I- Yeah. E-Everything is okay” Was it just her imagination or did he seem a lot more tense? She decided to ignore it, and focused on what Clive was typing. It took her a minute to realise what he was doing. She pulled his hands away from the keyboard. “Clive! What are you doing?!” As he got up, Clive tripped. He got up and started running. Mary grabbed her walkie talkie and yelled “Guys! Its Clive! I think it’s the virus. He partially managed to delay the activation of SHOW. I stopped him, but he ran. I don’t know where he’s going, he took the elevator.”

Back at the lab, Pavel heard this. He didn’t know how to react. He knew that Clive was merely a tool right now, unable to exercise free will. He packed up all the items he was using, so that there was no risk of damage, and was about to head out, when he heard the elevator stop at his level. Through the glass, he saw Clive exit. There was a different look in his eyes, as if he was channelling all the rage from the journey. To Pavel’s surprise, Clive began walking towards the lab. Pavel didn’t know how to react, he was scared. Fumbling with the handles, he tried to lock the door. Clive was already outside. With a firm grip, Clive pushed open the door, knocking over Pavel, who crawled into a corner. “Clive! Please, its me, Henry. Calm down” Pavel managed to say. Clive stepped into the room, and scanned his surroundings. His eyes locked on to Pavel, and he began walking slowly towards him.

And then, suddenly, he blinked. In that one blink, Clive changed. The mad look in his eyes vanished. He looked at his surroundings again. “Wait, how did I get here? I went to drink water in the control room-“ Clive saw Pavel. Clive was shocked. “Im assuming… the virus?” Pavel nodded. Clive sighed. “What did I do?”. Pavel explained. After the explanation, Clive was devastated. “I did all that, and I had no control whatsoever. I literally blanked out..” Pavel consoled him, “Hey, there was nothing you could have done. However, I believe something good came out of this event.” Clive raised an eyebrow. “How do you mean? What good could have possibly arrived out of this?”

Pavel smiled. “Didn’t you notice? You regained your senses here, this specific room.” Clive didn’t understand. “So? Whats special about this room?” Pavel took a breath, he was beginning to understand everything now. He asked Clive “Clive, what is different about my lab, and the control room? Apart from the equipment that is?” Clive scanned his surroundings a third time. “What? Theres barely an difference except-“ his eyes widened. “Except the light” Pavel finished. Clive nodded. “Yeah, the control room has white light. Your lab has your yellow light. Could it be…?” Pavel shrugged. It was the best explanation.

Pavel radioed the group. “Guys, I found Clive. He’s fine. However, we answered another major question. I think the virus is stimulated by light. I’ve spent most of my time in the lab, in this yellow light, which seems to make the virus go dormant. This light here is similar to the light from a star, unlike the white light everywhere else in the ship. That’s why the virus was dormant on earth, and that’s why it hasn’t affected me yet. We figured it out” Pavel was relieved, they could now easily rectify this by changing the lights. Still, something was off. Clive realised it first. “Mary and Jack, they haven’t responded yet. Something’s wrong”

Pavel ran to his laptop, and pulled up the camera view. Ever since he knew nobody could be entirely trusted, he linked his laptop to the surveillance system of the ship. “If we’re lucky, we should see them” He switched between multiple views. “There!” Clive pointed. “They’re waiting for the elevator at the control room.” They watched as Mary stepped into the elevator, but Jack stayed behind, right outside the entrance. It was obvious that the virus was active in them. Clive was frantic and afraid “So, how do we fix this? Is there a cure? Can you make one? How do we spread it?” he began rambling. “Clive, calm down. There is no cure, not one that I can think of. The only cure is the lighting. If we can switch the lighting aboard the entire ship into yellow, the virus wont resurface. And then, when we go to Beta, it will have the natural lighting of a star, so it will be dormant there too. So the only solution we have now is to change the lighting. Although, I don’t know how.” Clive took a deep breath. “Well I do doc. There’s uhh.. one of those controls in the control room. It can change the lighting. But… I think you were right about this virus being smart. It has Jack guarding the control room, and face it, you cant get into a physical fight with Jack. He’s too strong. We need another entrance, I don’t know how though.”

“Air vents. This ship has humongous air vents that circulate around all the floors. If I can get to the vent nearest to the service elevator, I can go all the way up, and enter another vent into the room.” Pavel said. Clive stared at him, “What do you mean “I”? What do I do?” “Well, Mary is heading here, so assuming the worst, which is that the virus is really smart, then we’re going to have to distract her. That’s where you come in. Do your best to lure her into this room, in this light, and keep her. Moreover, im going because im more saturated under this light, compared to you.” Pavel explained. Clive nodded. “You got it boss. Lets do this

Clive waited by the entrance, nervously anticipating the elevator descending with Mary in it. Though not physically strong, Mary could be scary when she wanted to. Pavel sprinted further into the laboratory, and opened up the nearest mesh. It could comfortably take him. This didn’t reassure him. Pavel was midly claustrophobic, a secret he had kept throughout his life. He took a deep breath, and crawled inside. It was a relatively shorter route to the service elevator, compared to the route to the main elevator. The main elevator would put him right in front of Jack, the one place he didn’t want to be.

He crawled on all fours as fast as he could, whilst also making the least amount of sound. The journey to the service elevator took him 5 minutes. In the end, he was panting, and had scraped his knee on a jagged edge. He opened the doors to the service elevator and pressed the top most floor, which was the control room. The service elevator was designed to run faster than the main elevator, and he was zooming up. While travelling, he bandaged his wound, and wondered how Clive was faring.

Clive was not faring well. Mary had exited the elevator, and was walking toward the laboratory. “M-Mary, I know youre in there. Come inside- and we can talk” Clive fumbled. Instead, she stayed outside. It would seem that the virus was strong enough to access her knowledge. Now, the virus knew to stay out of yellow light.

Upstairs, the service elevator had reached. Pavel stepped out, and hopped into the nearest vent. With all the adrenaline pumping through his veins, crazy thoughts came to mind. As he closed the vent, he imagined himself playing his favourite game, Among Us. He brushed away the thought. He was on a mission. Focus!

He crawled quietly inside the vents. He came across an opening, and peeped through. He had a clear view of the elevator. But Jack was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, a pair of feet walked past him. Pavel moved back in fear, almost so hard that he hit his head against the wall. The Terravirus had Jack pacing up and down the corridor. As long as Pavel moved quietly, he would get through.

Making no noise, he crawled further to the next vent opening. This one was right next to the elevator. Pavel shook his head and moved on. He needed a vent inside the control room. He was about to give up, when he saw light in the corner. This light was coming from the control room. He made his way as fast as he could, and opened the vent. He stepped out, and found himself in familiar surroundings.

Meanwhile, back at the laboratory, Clive had limited success in baiting Mary into the laboratory. Clive had tried everything, but Mary just stood outside. He was okay with this standoff, nobody was harmed. That’s when Mary pulled out her walkie talkie, and spoke “Jack, enter the control room and turn off power for the laboratory”. Clive gasped. Turning off the power would remove the yellow light, his shield. Moreover, Jack entering the control room would spell disaster for Pavel. He had to do something. He opened the door, and in a quick flash managed to grab the walkie talkie away. He yelled into it “PAVEL! Run! Jacks coming!!”

Back at the control room, Pavel heard something loud from a walkie talkie. It was Clive, telling him to run. Pavel crept towards the entrance and looked through the glass. Jack was walking toward the control room, and seemed to have spotted Pavel. Hands fumbling, Pavel braced the door with some chairs. He then sprinted across the room towards the lighting panel Clive had informed him about. The procedure to change the lighting was an elaborate one. First, he would have to turn off lights everywhere, then, another button to change the lighting. The last button would have to be pressed five seconds after the lights came back on, and that should have done it. Pavel saw a spare walkie talkie, grabbed it and said “Clive, be ready to hide for a bit, I need to switch off all the lights for a few seconds”. The door began rattling. Jack was trying to break through. Pavel didn’t know how much longer his barricade would hold. He took a deep breath, and pressed a white button, after which he pressed the green one to its right. Instantly, the lights went off. There was a dull thud as lights went off throughout the ship. Pavel counted down in his mind “5, 4, 3, 2, 1” As if on cue, the lights came on. He looked at the door, which now lay ajar.

Back at the laboratory , Clive had heard Pavel’s request, and was ready to hide. He sprinted into the laboratory, and crawled into the vent. The lights went off. He grabbed the mesh, and was holding it shut from inside. In 5 seconds, the lights came back on. Mary had heard the noise, and made her way toward the mesh, and started pulling. Clive held back with all his might.

Pavel turned around, only to find Jack right behind. As if on cue, Jack grabbed Pavel and strangled him, in an attempt to stop his procedure. In another 5 seconds, Pavel would have to flick that third switch in order for everything to work. His mind wasn’t working. Jacks muscular grip had him gasping for air.

Back at the laboratory, Mary had managed to pull away the mesh. Clive crawled away franticly, and jumped out of another vent. He heard Mary pursuing him.

Pavel had to do something. He decided to knock over Jack. With his feet touching the ground, he pushed back with all his might. It was enough. Both Jack and Pavel fell backward, and Jack momentarily lost his grip on Pavel. This instant, Pavel sprinted toward the control panel, and slammed the button with all his might. He sighed in relief, as the lights began changing to yellow from top to bottom.

Clive was sprinting across the lab, Mary hot on his heels. He tripped, and she had caught up with him. Clive didn’t like the look in Mary’s eyes. She walked over, and picked up a scalpel. She raised her hand. Clive closed his eyes in fear, when the lights switched to yellow. For a few seconds, Mary stood there. She blinked, and the violent look in her eyes was gone. She looked at Clive, and the scalpel in her hands. “Clive? Was I just about to-“ she trembled. Clive got up, “yes, but its all over. Pavel fixed it.”

Clive took the radio, and spoke “Doc? You good? The light change has worked, Mary is fine now” Pavel responded “Clive, all good here. Jack was strangling me, but he’s coming around now. I am so glad this is all over”

Clive and Pavel had informed Jack and Mary about their findings and the events. The crew was relieved that this was no longer an issue. The matter had become so trivial now that the Terravirus wouldn’t be active anymore, that they even jokes about the events. Clive and Jack seemed to have become friends, despite all the history and events that took place aboard the Pallas Athena.

Pavel couldn’t help but wonder about the events. In the end, what they had mistaken for sabotage, turned out to be something they had never anticipated. Moreover, this raised another touch question. Is the human body merely just a machine or tool for the use of microorganisms such as the Terravirus?? He decided not to think too much about this, and focus on the matter at hand.

They had a week until the black hole would engulf them. However, they only needed an hour to change the trajectory of the ship. It was obvious that SHOW wouldn’t be coming online for a while now, courtesy Clive. Once they would land on Beta (which they were now renaming Earth), the “unloading” of the human cargo would go easier, as there were specific programs that were designed in aiding this procedure.

The crew assembled in a group hug, and went a secluded part of the ship, where they saw the motion of the ship in space. The stood there, holding hands, and watching a new dawn on a new planet. They had survived.

There was hope.

                                        . . .

                                   THE END

                                   (For now)