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Roy sat up a little too fast, and the room swam around him. Adrenaline fought against the fading anesthetic and slowly, surely won. The public address system clicked as a new connection came on. Elizabet Aldo's voice was as bright, excited, and controlled as a puppy on a leash. "All teams, please report to your stations for startup checks. Local gravity is a pleasant one g, but let's not hurry, people. We're all still a little groggy."

They weren't on the base. They weren't on Earth. They'd unfolded the package. The room around him, the gray, softly lit hall, wasn't the one he'd been scanned in. Hell, he wasn't the Roy Court who'd been scanned. The idea was simultaneously everything he'd hoped for and still totally surreal.

He walked down the hall, keeping one hand on the wall even though he didn't feel unsteady. The air smelled like cleaning supplies and dust filters, the same as it always did. The gravity was heavy but not oppressive, so wherever they were, it wasn't on one of the outlier worlds with significantly more or less mass than Earth. But the sound was different. He couldn't put his finger on it at first, but there was a different resonance in the quiet. Wind hitting the base station from some unaccustomed direction. Or maybe rain or hail outside. A new outside that humans had never even seen before. Roy let that sink in for a moment.

He fought the temptation to detour through the observation deck. He wanted to see this new world, and if he was being honest, he wanted to see if Anjula was there, giving in to the same temptation. The first moment looking on the planet they were there to remake would be a hell of a time to pull out a ring.

Megan Lee was already at the reactor room when he arrived. The room was small and jammed to overflowing with their equipment. With both engineers at their workstations, they had to be careful not to elbow each other. Below them, the pocket reactor lay quiet. The control panels were up, everything on standby, waiting to kindle the little nuclear fire that would keep their batteries topped up for—if things went right—the rest of their lives. Megan looked stunned. She looked like he felt.

"Ain't this a kick in the pants," she said.

"You know," Roy said, "it's exactly what we planned for, and somehow, I'm still really surprised. You and me and all the others? We're the first people to travel between stars."

It wasn't the first time he'd had the thought. It was the first time it had been true. Roy grinned.

"Prepare for check, primary reactor," Elizabet Aldo said. "And go."

Megan started the system running. Each computer and subsystem cycled through its routine. Each indicator came up within its expected range.

"I'm seeing nothing but green," Megan said. "Confirm?"

"Confirmed," Roy said. "I've got green across the board."

"Admin," Megan said. "This is engineering. Primary reactor is good to go."

Roy pulled up the start sequence, just waiting for the order to begin. Over the speaker, he heard Elizabet, but only distantly, like she had her hand over the microphone. Megan frowned. The voices over the speaker grew harsh. A drop of unease spilled into Roy's blood.

"So, hold up for a second," Gabriel said over the speaker. "Megan? Roy? Tell me you haven't started that reactor."

"We haven't started the reactor," Roy said. "What's going on?"

Gabriel's sigh shuddered. "Turns out that if you had, it would have killed us."

[Roy Court is looking into the camera. The right side of his face is visibly blistered. The image stutters, freezes, and begins again.]

ROY COURT: There is...there is a faulty coolant pressure sensor. I think it's in the H line. It isn't showing that there's backflow from a stuck valve. Um. We're on battery now. I don't know how long we have. We're going to try and send this out. The others are...Anjula's...um...Okay. Okay. Any future missions, we need to get this to them as soon as they unfold. Like to the minute. It's important...It's critical.

[He shakes his head. His hands tremble.]

ROY: We got so far, and now this. It's just not fucking fair.

Normally, it wasn't a meeting Roy would have attended, but since the fault had been in his equipment and the warning had come from some version of him, Elizabet had brought both engineers to the table. Gabriel Hu was there, and Anjula. Kiko, the head of medical and psychological support. Roy and Anjula were two of the oldest people there. Most of the package had been built with people in their twenties. Roy was the oldest man on the planet. Probably the oldest within a dozen light-years.

The meeting room was small, like everything. Four benches around a fake wood-grain table. Elizabet had a mug of smoky tea beside her. The light was soft and full spectrum, designed to look like a sunny afternoon. Outside, it was stormy. If he listened carefully, sometimes he could hear the thunder.

Megan Lee gave a quick report—the stuck valve had been identified, the faulty sensor had been replaced, the reactor was up and running. Then she got out of the way to let the site group report.