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In the days shortly beforehand, Hansol can’t help wondering what it’ll be like to wake up from his cryostatic slumber.
He thinks it might be kind of like this:
Perhaps it will feel like rising, his feet lifting effortlessly off the ground. The gentle sensation of becoming lighter and lighter, unrestrained, until finally emerging completely weightless. The feeling of calm, of the world being quiet, of opening his eyes and feeling at peace because for once, he is at home.
*
Well, sometimes reality doesn’t turn out quite the way one would expect.
When Hansol wakes up for real, it's to a rush of nausea. It’s followed quickly by the worst headache he’s experienced in his life—sharp and splitting, as if someone had dug a cleaver into the middle of his brain.
His vision is blurry when he opens his eyes. All he can really hear is the shuffling of feet and the jittery, frantic cadence of distant voices arguing. The voices swirl around him, becoming louder and faintly more distinct, until, finally, someone says a phrase that comes into perfect focus.
“Ah, I’m sorry,” the voice says. “I have some really bad news for you.”
Despite everything, Hansol still has the presence of mind to think. And what he thinks is: that’s a hell of a phrase to wake up to.
That’s the main thing on his mind as he falls back into unconsciousness.
*
When Hansol wakes up for the second time, everything feels just a little better. His headache’s still there, but it feels milder. There’s no more nausea, though his throat itches, like he hasn’t drank anything in weeks.
Opening his eyes, Hansol finds himself lying in bed. It’s in a room he’s never seen before, a small, cramped one with sterile white walls bathed in a flickery golden light. Looking to his left, a couple of laptops sit on a counter, displaying what looks like diagnostic data. Clusters of multicolored wires snake across the floor and up the walls. From what Hansol can tell, his hospital bed is the furthest in a line of about ten other beds, each of them boxed in by a shabby little curtain cubicle. Beside each bed, embedded into the wall of the cubicle panel, is a small computer screen. Hansol’s, like all the others, is turned off.
He looks down at himself and sees that he’s dressed in a neat hospital gown.
Something about it feels familiar. Even though he’s never quite been in this exact room before, he’s been in enough similar ones to get the idea.
He’s in the infirmary of a spaceship. A pretty nice one, from the looks of it.
Which has to be a good sign. After all, Hansol’s mind is still kind of foggy, his memories still a bit jumbled up, but if he really thinks about it, there’s a nagging sense in the back of his brain that this is pretty much where he’s supposed to be.
With that, Hansol diverts his attention to the next most pertinent thing—trying to move his body. It’s harder than he hoped. He’s still in the midst of willing it to happen when he hears the sound of the door creaking over. Immediately, he raises his head. With a start, he notices that there’s another man in the doorway.
It takes Hansol a moment to recognize the man. It’s the same man he saw when he first woke up from cryostasis. Now that his head doesn’t feel like splitting open, Hansol can see the details of the man’s appearance come into focus—tall, handsome, wearing a shaggy head of hair and a smart lab coat.
The man strides across the room, his movements casual, almost lazy. When spots Hansol, his eyes open wide in an almost comically exaggerated way.
“Ah!” He says. He rushes up to Hansol’s bedside. “You’re awake, finally!”
“Finally?” Hansol tries to repeat. The words come out in a dry croak.
The man stares at Hansol, wordlessly, before immediately turning and leaving the room. Then, before Hansol really has time to wonder what’s up with that, he comes back holding a cup of water.
The water helps, a bit. “Finally?” Hansol repeats.
His voice sounds a little like what it used to be. That’s good, at least.
“Oh, well! We’ve all been getting a bit worried. After all, you’ve been out for about a week since your pod malfunctioned.”
Pod… malfunctioned? The words didn’t make any sense to him.
In any case, there were more important things on Hansol’s mind to clarify. “So, who are you?”
“Oh!” The man’s eyes fly open. “Ah, right. I almost forgot. My name is Kim Mingyu. I’m the attending physician on board at the moment. By the way, you don’t have to call me ‘Doctor’ or anything. You can just call me Mingyu.”
“Um,” Hansol replies.
Doctor? It’s all a little disorientating, but something about that designation seems to make sense. Hansol decides not to question it too much for now.
“Alright,” Mingyu says, giving a curt nod. “Let’s—first things first.” He reaches out, tapping the computer screen next to Hansol’s bed. With a whirr, the screen lights up. Hansol stares, zoning out just a little, as the man presses a number of buttons in sequence until a page pops up, prominently displaying a headshot of Hansol.
“So. Do you remember your name?”
“Uh. Yes. Chwe Hansol, at your service.”
“Okay. So, you were an aerospace mechanic at KARI for six years. On your profile, it mentions that you were a specialist on low-Earth orbit operations.”
That… yes. That… all of that sounds familiar. “Um. I think so. That’s me.”
Mingyu nods. “Alright. Do you remember why you’re here?”
“I—” Hansol starts. It’s still a bit dark, a bit murky in his brain, but not so much so that he can’t start piecing things together. There are memories, lurking faintly in the very surface of his subconscious.
There was the broadcast, the one his sister showed him that morning at breakfast, where he learned about the asteroid for the first time. The chaos in the streets. His mom, crying quietly in the kitchen when she thought that no one was there to see.
The news footage of world leaders, shaking hands and smiling at podiums, expressions tinged at the edges with exhaustion. Interviews with politicians, scientists, astronauts, their tones alternating between reassuring and hesitant. That late night call from his former mentor at KARI. Hansol still remembers the quietness in his mentor’s tone and the way her voice cracked when she explained the news. She had been visited that day by Korean government representatives and, when pressed for engineers to nominate, had brought up Hansol’s name first, with the highest of recommendations.
You have to do this mission, she said. There’s no one I'd trust to do it better than you.
“I remember,” Hansol says. “It’s, uh, what’s it called—the Astra project, right? We gathered thirty thousand people from Earth to put into cryostatic slumber on these spaceships that were going to settle distant planets.”
“Good, good.” Mingyu nods again. “That’s right. That’s our mission. Didn’t they say it all the time, during the last days on Earth? That is, that we were humanity’s last hope.”
Right. That phrase. Humanity’s last hope. Hansol had gotten into the habit of cringing visibly whenever anyone—his mom, the news broadcasts, his neighbours and friends and former coworkers—used that term to refer to him. He’d never admit it out loud, but sometimes, he couldn’t help but think that it made him feel just a little warmer.
Beside him, Mingyu is typing directly on the computer monitor at breakneck speed. “Alright, Mr. Chwe, do you know where we are right now?”
“Um—” Hansol racks his brain.
Back then, there had been a small group of personnel assigned to man the spaceships while they were in transit, as well as a much larger group of passengers who would remain frozen until finally reaching the destination. Hansol had been assigned to the latter, going on the long journey to an Earth-like planet located almost a hundred light years away. Hansol doesn’t remember the exact distance, but for some reason, the exact amount of time that the trip will take is still ingrained in his mind.
Seven hundred years. That’s how long he’d be in slumber for.
It takes Hansol a moment to recall the name of the planet.
“Oh, we must be on—Pomona right? I think that’s what the planet was called.”
“That’s. Well…” Mingyu squirms a bit in his seat, his eyes shifting from side to side. His lips tighten for a moment as he glances down to his lap. When he looks back up at Hansol, something about his expression looks hard and deliberate. “Not exactly. Unfortunately.”
“What?”
“Um, this might be a bit hard to explain right now. Perhaps it’s better for you to rest. I can explain at a later time.
“No,” Hansol says. “Tell me.”
Mingyu clears his throat, waiting an excruciatingly long time before continuing. “Well, unfortunately, an accident occurred with your cryostatic pod." A pause. "Well, Soonyoung can probably explain it better than I can but—there was an electrical failure of some sort. In any case, your cryostatic pod ended up malfunctioning, so we had to wake you up.” He closes his eyes for a moment, his expression taut. “It was out of medical necessity.”
Hansol blinks.
“So,” he repeats slowly. “Then, we’re not… on Pomona?”
“No, we’re not. Unfortunately, we’re still extremely far away.”
Suddenly, a wave of dizziness washes over Hansol. It’s disorientating enough that it feels like he’s not on solid land anymore. “Wait, if we’re not on Pomona, then—where are we?”
That question causes Mingyu to curl his lip. “We’re still on the spaceship that’s carrying all the passengers to Pomona. Hikaru-II..”
Something about it still isn’t quite clicking.
“Uh. Wait. So then I’ve been asleep for—”
“You’ve been asleep for a hundred and forty six years. There’s still, well, more than five hundred years to go before this ship reaches Pomona.”
“Oh,” Hansol says, stupidly, as if he understands.
“I’m sorry. This must be very unexpected news for you.” the man says. There’s something about his eyes, wide and sincere that really does make him look sympathetic.
“I… guess?” Hansol replies.
Hansol doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. There’s something strange about the situation, a fundamental disconnect between his mind and his body. Logically—he gets it. It was a freak accident. Hansol had woken up ahead of schedule. All of that made sense.
But, well, Hansol can hardly explain it. Something feels wrong. It feels like there’s a vacuum underneath him, pulling at him, dragging his whole body down into the floor.
Mingyu clasps his hands, fiddling with them for a moment, before pressing a final button on the computer display. In a moment, the display shuts down, blinking to black.
Afterwards, he takes Hansol’s vitals, administers him some medicine and shows him the call button that he should use if he ever wanted to request medical attention. It’s all still so new to him, all so unexpected that Hansol can barely take in any of the information. It all passes by in a blur.
“Please,” Mingyu says, once all of that is done. “The most important thing for you to focus on now is resting. It’s not easy on the body, waking up from cryostatic sleep the way that you did. As for everything else, well—we can worry about all of that later.”
He stands up, paces to the door, then turns back to smile at Hansol.
Hansol nods and tries to smile back.
*
It takes about a week for Hansol to recover enough to get out of bed and walk around independently. It’s also when Mingyu finally lets up and allows him to receive visitors.
His first visitor comes only a few hours after Hansol takes his breakfast. He’s about Hansol’s age and height, looking smart with his thick mane of black hair and faded coveralls. Hansol recognizes him immediately.
“Wow… Chan?”
Not a second after saying it, the words start to feel weird in his mouth. It occurs to him how incredibly surreal it feels to see someone from his past here, in this particular situation, at this time.
“Ah, hyung!” Chan’s eyes are wide open. “I can’t believe it. It really is you!”
For a moment, Hansol doesn’t know what else to say. Never in a million years could he have expected to see the man in front of him again.
At least this time, it’s a good surprise. For the first time in a long while, Hansol finds himself smiling. “Wow! That’s crazy, haha. So, you got picked out for the Astra Project, too?”
“That’s right. You know, I really didn’t think I’d see you again.” A hint of a shadow passes over Chan’s expression, causing the ends of his mouth to straighten out into a line and for his brows to furrow. “I guess I just wish we didn’t have to meet again in this situation.”
“It’s okay,” Hansol says immediately. It’s—not exactly the truth, but something about the idea of Chan feeling bad for him is weird enough that he thinks he’d prefer to avoid it. “I’m glad to see you. It feels like a while since we’ve worked together.”
“Right. Man, those were the days…”
“What were things like, after you switched to working on space shuttles?”
Chan gives a shrug and a casual wave of the hand and it strikes Hansol as strange, how familiar both of those gestures feel. “Ah, you know, it was fine. You know how it is with engineering operations. We were mostly just performing regular maintenance jobs, nothing too exciting. Oh, then—you know, once the asteroid was detected, we all got moved off of the in-house space shuttles and onto working on these Astra Project spaceships.”
“Wow. So you got to play a hand in building this exact ship?”
Chan’s eyes shift a bit to the side. “Well, not exactly this one. A different one. It wasn’t until after all the ships were finalized that I got selected for Astra.”
“Oh, right. You’re—”
“I’m the current mechanic on board the Hikaru-II. To be honest, when I started out, I kind of wished that I got selected for the settlement team instead of the transit one. But it’s okay, I’ve been enjoying this too. The spaceship is cool. And I’ve really been learning the ins and outs of how it works.”
“Oh. That sounds fun.”
“You could say that… anyways, I was wondering. Any chance you wanted to get a tour? You know, since this is going to be your new home and all. Mingyu told me that you were in good enough condition to do a full walk around the ship.”
Your new home. As soon as Chan says it, the words start echoing in Hansol’s mind. Something about them strikes him as strange and foreign, as something that seems to fit less and less the more you think about it.
Hansol tries his best not to let these thoughts show on his face. “Of course. That’d be nice.”
Afterwards, Chan gives Hansol some space to change from his hospital gown into the standard uniform for crew members—a white shirt and the same set of coveralls that Chan is sporting. Then, the two of them set off for the tour.
Up until now, Hansol has taken short walks but only in the infirmary itself and the hallways leading up to it. What he ends up finding out is that the spaceship is significantly larger than what he had expected—so much that it takes about half an hour to walk from one end of the ship to the other. The hallways of the ship are clean and shiny—all smooth lines and polished white chrome. There’s so many hallways and all of them look so similar that walking through them starts to make Hansol’s head spin. Chan shows him to all the pivotal rooms—the crew member’s quarters, the cafeteria, the engine room, the bio-garden.
“It’s cool, right?” Chan’s eyes sparkle as he walks with Hansol through another hallway. “Actually, we lucked out. Hikaru-II is actually the newest vessel in the Starcrusher class of generational spaceships. It has some real state of the art innovations in the engine design and stuff. It’s the biggest ship too—bigger than our sister ship, that’s for sure.”
Sister ship. Hearing Chan say the words unlodges something in Hansol’s memory.
It had to do with the design of the Astra Project. Back then, leading scientists on Earth identified 3 candidate planets in neighbouring star systems—the three planets most likely capable of sustaining human life. Each candidate planet had been assigned a team of two sister ships, each ship carrying five thousand cryostatically frozen passengers to be woken up upon arriving on the planet.
The leaders working on the project emphasized how important it was that there be two ships assigned to each planet. It had to do with a principle that the project architects called “Reliable Redundancy”. The idea was that there were too many unknown variables out there to depend on everything going smoothly—instead, it was essential to expect failure and therefore rely on built-in redundancy to ensure that at least some segment of Astra Project crew members would survive and continue the human race. Besides, having two ships per destination meant that the crew members could assist and support each other in emergencies.
Which meant—there must be another ship out there located not so far away from the Hikaru, both ships flying in tandem along the same trajectory.
“Our sister ship? Right. How are they faring?”
Chan bites his lip at that. “Oh, you mean the Moonstar-I? They’re—uh. Yeah, they’re around. Their crew is pretty cool too, I’m sure you’ll end up meeting them one of these days. As for their condition—” He pauses for a bit, then places a hand on his temple and shakes his head. “Mingyu told me not to overwhelm you too much. Maybe we can get into more details later.”
Hansol nods. After all, he’s going to be stuck here for the rest of his life, he thinks. There’s plenty of time for him to catch up with the ins and outs of the situation.
After passing through a couple of repetitive-looking hallways, the two of them end up standing in an area with a huge wall-to-ceiling door.
“Here we are,” Chan says. “Here’s the command deck.”
He flips open the small control panel next to the door, presses down on a few buttons and then the door slides open. Chan steps into the command deck and Hansol follows.
As soon as he does, he can’t help but gape.
The command deck is large and spacious, easily five times as large as the infirmary that Hansol had been staying in. Lining the walls of the command deck are various counters and stations, each with all sorts of byzantine looking controls, maps and displays. While some of the stations are empty, some of them seem clearly in use given the stacks of papers and widgets scattered across them. Small fluorescent lights line the ceiling above the stations. Besides that, there are no lights to be seen anywhere in the middle area of the deck.
Finally, Hansol finds his eyes being drawn to the gigantic dashboard lining the entire front of the command deck, above the cockpit.
The view from the dashboard is one that feels both incredibly familiar and incredibly foreign at the same time. It was a vast expanse of darkness, sprinkled only sparsely with a handful of faintly shimmering stars. If Hansol focuses in carefully, he can begin to see a vast faintly colored swirl of intersecting galaxies, gyrating and coalescing into each other. Out in the distance, there’s a tiny but brightly shining star, glimmering brilliantly blue.
There’s something about the scene that reminds Hansol of all the times he had spent in space, performing missions with KARI. Back then, nothing seemed more familiar than the feeling of flying hundreds of kilometers above the atmosphere, fully decked out with his protective gear and rocket thrusters. His insulated suit would feel stuffy and warm in the direct sunlight. Beneath him, the Earth spread out like a rich tapestry of blues and whites and golds.
Now, Hansol thinks, it’s the same vast darkness, the same scattering of stars, the same quiet feeling lingering in his chest. Yet—the color and shape of the stars were all different, none of the constellations were recognizable to him and then—
Of course, there was no longer the beautiful, blue curve of the earth lingering beneath him.
Suddenly, Hansol feels his head getting all dizzy again. He reaches out, pressing his hands on one of the walls to steady himself.
As soon as he does, one of the chairs by the cockpit spins around. That’s when Hansol realizes that there had been a man sitting there all along.
“Oh?” The man on the chair says. “Oh! Wow, is this the new crew member that I’ve been hearing so much about?”
“You bet,” Chan says from beside Hansol. “This is our new ship mechanic on board, my old colleague, Chwe Hansol.”
“Wow, wow wow! I’ve been so excited to meet you! It’s all Mingyu’s fault for being so adamant about not letting you see any visitors.”
Hansol is still in the middle of processing what to say to that when he notices a second man, stepping up from another seat by the cockpit.
“Come on, Soonyoung. Let’s try not to overwhelm him too much.”
The first man, Soonyoung, pouts. “Look, I’m just trying to be welcoming.”
“Well, it might be a bit too much.” The second man shakes his head and then crosses the command deck to come within a more conversational range of Hansol.
“Chwe Hansol,” he says, “Welcome to the Hikaru-II. I’m the captain on board, Choi Seungcheol.” He gives Hansol a firm and steady handshake.
It all takes Hansol aback a little, since he wasn’t expecting to meet new people during this tour, but he tries to stay professional nonetheless. “I’m looking forward to working with you.”
“And I’m the pilot here!” Soonyoung says, jumping out of his chair and striking a pose.
Hansol smiles and greets him too.
“Alright,” Seungcheol says. “Soonyoung and I are just trying to figure out some details about our flight path. I know you have to rest right now, so don’t let us take up too much of your time.”
After that, he goes back to take a seat with Soonyoung by the cockpit. Chan walks Hansol briefly around the deck, pointing out a couple of the stations, then before he knows it, the two of them are walking back through the hallways, heading to some other room.
The whole time, Hansol’s mind feels unnervingly blank. It suddenly occurs to him just how much all of it is—waking up ahead of schedule, learning the complex layout of the spaceship, meeting his new crew members. It suddenly starts to feel almost too overwhelming.
Chan says his goodbyes and pledges to come visit again tomorrow. After that, Hansol lies in bed awake for a long time.
Suddenly, a thought flits into Hansol’s mind. It strikes him that he doesn’t want to be on the spaceship anymore. He doesn’t want to be a participant in the Astra Project. In this moment, all he wants is to be in the bedroom of his parent’s house, all snug and warm in the familiar and worn-out sheets of his old childhood bed, hearing the sounds of his parents talking and his sister’s laughter filtering in beneath the crack of his bedroom door.
No, Hansol thinks. Being woken up ahead of schedule, joining Hikaru-II as an unexpected new crew member—this is his new reality now. It doesn’t matter what he wants anymore. It won’t do anything to change the actual situation.
Maybe the best thing that Hansol can do is to get used to it.
Hansol grits his teeth before burrowing down further in the sheets.
*
Three days later, Mingyu comes and takes his vitals. He jots notes on his clipboard with an approving nod, then flashes Hansol a large smile once the examination is complete.
“It’s good,” Mingyu says. “Everything looks healthy to me. It’s official. You’re discharged.”
After that, there’s not much Hansol can do except to try to get settled into his new life on the Hikaru. He moves out of the infirmary and into an empty cabin in the quarters—really just a cramped but cozy cot with a lamp, a couple of drawers to put his stuff and a beautiful window with the ability to play footage of various landscapes from Earth.
He meets the remaining crew members. There’s Jun, the biogenerative agriculture expert, who is responsible for all the food production on the ship and Minghao, the astronomist, planetary scientist and navigational expert on board.
Here’s the thing. When Hansol first woke up, he kind of imagined that after recovery, he would naturally become a mechanic for the ship. After all, that was his bread and butter back in his KARI days, it was the role that he had been selected for in the Astra Project and it had been what he trained for during those intense weeks leading up to project launch.
The problem, he realizes, is that no one else really seems to expect that from him.
There don’t seem to be many mechanical issues on the ship, and for the ones that do occur, Chan always fixes them. It makes sense. After all, Chan is the real mechanic on ship. Hansol’s team had worked closely with Chan’s back at KARI, which meant he already understood on a deep level that Chan was qualified and more than prepared to handle all of this.
Hansol ends up spending his days wandering the ship, making himself familiar with every nook and cranny of the place. He eventually discovers that there’s a pretty advanced computer system attached to the ship with a large collection of TV shows from back on Earth and that he had been issued a personal tablet connected to the system that he could easily use to watch shows with. After that discovery, Hansol spends most of his time watching those shows.
Even though Hansol finds himself settling into a decent pattern during the day, it’s still challenging for him to adjust to the nights.
There isn’t an enforced curfew, but Hansol finds that most of the crew tends to retire to bed around 11pm. Afterwards, a certain kind of emptiness falls upon the ship. With all the lights turned off, and no one manning the kitchen or wandering the halls, it truly feels like you were all alone in the universe.
This night, like many of the previous nights, Hansol finds it hard to sleep.
Restlessness comes creeping in. Hansol decides to get out of bed, stepping out of his cramped little cabin and walking aimlessly through the halls of the spaceship.
The ship, so sleek and clean during the day, vibrates with a hushed ambience at night. Though the main lights of the ship were turned off—normal procedure for nighttime—there are still small emergency lights lining the floors, and these cast a gentle golden glow as Hansol steps through the darkness. Though one side of the walls are nondescript, the other side has rows and rows of cryostatic pods, nestled neatly into the spaceship walls.
At night, the name tags attached to each pod are lit up with a faint blue glow. As he walks, Hansol’s eyes linger on each one. With few exceptions, they’re all people that Hansol has never met and that he will never get the chance to meet in the future.
Before he knows it, Hansol ends up in front of the gigantic chrome gates of the command deck. That’s right, he thinks. He might as well take a look at how it looks at night. A small wave of curiosity seizes him and he finds himself pressing the button on the control panel by the gates to open the door.
The doors of the bridge slide open. Hansol steps in.
As before, the command deck is quiet and dimly lit. The view outside of the dashboard feels magnetic to Hansol’s eyes, looming large over the whole room.
Looking further, Hansol sees that Mingyu is sitting by the cockpit, reading a book. He startles a little as Hansol enters the room, but then calms down enough to give a small wave.
“Can’t sleep?” Mingyu asks, as Hansol approaches the cockpit.
“Yeah,” Hansol says. “Despite everything, it’s still—just a lot.”
“Yeah, I get it.” Mingyu distractingly rubs the pages of the book between his fingers. Then, his eyes light up, as if an idea has just come to him. “Actually, you know what? It’s good that you’re here. There’s some things I’d like to check in on in the infirmary—supplies and inventory and things like that. Any chance you can man the deck for a bit while I do that?”
Something about this voice sounds a little forced, like it was an excuse. Just anything to give Hansol something to do. Hansol can appreciate the thoughtfulness. “Sure,” he says. “What do you want me to do?”
“Honestly, there’s not much. Night shift is pretty boring, honestly. Just keep watching the navigation, make sure our ship is on track. Respond to the Moonstar’s calls if they have any. Oh, if there’s any emergencies, you should just page me on your tablet.”
Mingyu spends about five minutes giving him a quick tour of the command dashboard, pointing out the navigational panel and the communications radio setup. Then, he stands up to leave.
After that, Hansol is left all alone.
Wordlessly, moving without even thinking about it, Hansol takes a seat at the desk where Mingyu was sitting. Helistens quietly to the dim humming of all the computers embedded in the ship. From his vantage point, it’s impossible for his eyes not to be drawn to the gigantic viewport at the front of the room. Out beyond the viewport lies the same vast expanse of darkness.
It’s so black and so empty that Hansol could barely stand it.
It’s strange, he thinks. Back before the Astra Project, back before his cryostatic slumber, back when he was still a junior aerospace engineer at KARI, he had been in love with the feeling of space—its vastness, its silence, its beauty. But now, sitting in the darkness of the command room, something about the vastness feels different somehow, unfamiliar.
Suddenly, a loud beeping sound rings out.
Hansol’s first instinct is to whip his body around, so sharply that he accidentally knocks his knee against the side of the desk. It hurts. It takes a few more seconds after that to realize that the beeping was coming from the comms system.
Someone is calling the ship.
Hansol barely hesitates for a moment before accepting the call.
Static fills the air, then, the sound of metal clinking against metal and a voice—one that he’d never heard before—exclaiming something loud but incomprehensible.
“Hello?” Hansol says, and then it occurs to him that if there’s some protocol for communication on the ship, he doesn’t actually know it. He figures that he’s fine, he at least knows how to be professional and that’s probably good enough. “This is Hikaru-II. Ship mechanic Chwe Hansol speaking.”
“Oh… hello?” says the voice on the other side of the comms system. “Chwe… Hansol? Ah, I don’t think we’ve ever met before…?” The quality of their voice is remarkably clear, except for occasional bursts of light static. “Wow, come to think of it, I did hear that Hikaru-II gained a crew member, I guess that must be you?”
“Uh.” Something about that makes Hansol feel a bit self conscious, but tries his best not to show it. That’s right, he needs to stay professional. “Yes. Good to make your acquaintance.”
“Oh, yes! Good to make your acquaintance. Oh, right, my name is Boo Seungkwan. I’m the navigation officer on Moonstar-I. I’m looking forward to working with you!”
Something about the enthusiasm strikes Hansol as a little cute. “Likewise.”
“Ah, I was just wondering who was on shift today. Um, I believe that Hikaru has rotating shifts for night watch—I just wanted to see if Chan or Soonyoung was around.
“Oh.” Hansol brings his hand to his brow. “That’s—uh. Well. Chan isn’t here. Soonyoung isn’t here. Actually, it looks like Mingyu’s on shift right now but he had to step out for a little while. Yeah. That’s why I’m here, I suppose.”
Boo Seungkwan draws out a long hum. “I see. That’s too bad! Don’t let me bother you too much, then. I’ll, uh, I’ll call again later.”
“Wait. Did you want me to get one of them? Or pass along a message?”
A sigh reverberates out from the comms speaker. “No, it’s… it’s not that. Actually, it’s, I mean. It looks like the heating system’s been having some issues in the engine room here on the Moonstar. Looks like some of the vents here are just—not working? We’ve been kind of at a loss for how to fix it. Usually Chan has a really good intuition for how to handle stuff like this—Soonyoung too, sometimes, so that’s so that’s kind of why I was calling in. But—I don’t think it’s an emergency or anything… it should be fine to wait until the rest of the crew is awake to figure things out.”
An issue with the heating vents? Hansol’s ears perk up. “Wait. What’s the issue? Maybe I can help.”
“Wait, are you sure? I really don’t think it’s urgent and… I mean, didn’t you just recently wake up from cryostasis? I don’t want to be a bother…”
Hansol can’t help but chuckle a little. “No, seriously. It’s fine. I mean, I went to school for this kind of thing.”
Another short pause. Then—”Okay. I understand.”
After that, Seungkwan spends some time describing the particular issue with the vents. After a while, it becomes clear to Hansol that it’s a simple issue with some of the heating ducts leaking. He walks Seungkwan through the process of locating some of the leaks and then sealing it using some of the materials on hand.
All in all, it’s not as complicated of an issue as Hansol had been expecting. It takes around half an hour for the two of them to fix it.
Once they confirm that everything is back to normal, Seungkwan lets out a big sigh. “Ah,” he says. “Wow. That really wasn’t so bad.” A pause. “Thank you, Chwe-ssi for your help. So, you’re a mechanic, aren’t you?”
Something about the praise makes Hansol feel warm. “I am. I’m just happy to help.”
“Ah. Thank you again, from the bottom of my heart.”
For some reason, Hansol can feel his cheeks burning up a little. It’d be a lie to say it didn’t feel nice, being useful again.
But, no. That stuff wasn’t important. The important thing here is to stay professional.
“Of course. It’s my pleasure. Um, though I will say. Next time, I think that you should go ahead and wake up the mechanic on board. After all, dealing with this kind of thing is their job.”
“Um. About that.” Seungkwan pauses for a moment. “It’s a little complicated to explain. In any case, it’s our first time meeting! Actually, all of us on the Moonstar are really curious to get to meet you. How’s your time on the ship been so far? It—it must really be shocking, waking up ahead of schedule like this.”
“Yeah.” Well, that’s the understatement of the century, Hansol thinks to himself. He decides not to mention that out loud. Instead, he says, “It’s been okay. I’m just trying to get my bearings together, figure out how everything works. That kind of thing.”
“Oh wow yeah.” There’s a sort of warmth in the words. “I’m sure it’s a lot to get used to. Is there anything you need help with?”
“Mm. Not really. I guess I’ve just been trying to adjust to the ship and also get more familiar with the crew members. There’s just a lot of people to keep track of.”
“Yeah, that definitely sounds like the kind of thing that’ll take a bit of time… oh! Come to think of it… have you taken a look at all the crew member interviews yet?”
That didn’t sound familiar at all. “Um, I don’t think so?”
“Oh, don’t you remember? Back when we were applying for the Astra Project, we had to go through all these rounds of interview, right? The good news is that each of the ships have recordings of all of the interviews. For each passenger on the Astra Project.”
Hansol blinks. “Wait. You mean, all thirty thousand passengers?”
“Yeah! Actually, they’re kind of interesting to watch. Maybe they’ll help you learn more about the crew members on Hikaru-II? Anyways, if you’re interested, I think you can access them from the central computer on the main deck. Oh, you know the tablets we have by our sleeping quarters? I think those have it too.”
“Oh,” says Hansol. “Cool.”
“Wait, just to be clear, no pressure okay? I was just saying it to be helpful, I didn’t mean to—uh, like—”
Hansol finds himself smiling again. “No, no, it’s okay. I get it. That is helpful.”
From the other end of the line, Seungkwan chuckles. Hansol thinks that it’s kind of a nice sound. “Okay. That’s good. I—” he starts, but then gets interrupted by the sound of footsteps, then something shuffling, then indistinct conversation, far away enough from the microphone that Hansol can’t particularly make out the words. It takes a few minutes before Seungkwan gets back on the line. This time, his voice sounds a bit more tentative, a bit rushed. “Hey, Chwe-ssi. Actually, it looks like I’m needed for something. Uh, it’s not an emergency or anything. We just need to check a few things about the ship’s health. Anyways, yeah. I’m going to end the call now, alright?”
Hansol nods, then immediately feels kind of stupid about doing so since, obviously, it’s not like anyone could see it. “Okay,” he says instead.
“Ah…” Seungkwan’s voice softens. “I wanted to say, it was nice chatting with you. I really hope we can speak again sometime.”
“Mmm,” says Hansol. Me too. The words spring up to the front of his mind, but before he can commit to saying them, the speaker emits a clicking sound and with that, the call is over.
*
When Hansol wakes up the next morning, the artificial window beside his bed shows a blue expanse of sky, sprinkled with thin veils of white clouds. It looks just like how Hansol would imagine the sky being on a beautiful day in midsummer, filled with the sound of cicadas and the gentle scent of sunflowers and honeysuckle.
It’s almost a bit too much, and Hansol ends up flipping the display off. In a moment, the tableau fades away, replaced by the familiar image of endless darkness.
After getting ready, Hansol trudges to the cafeteria. When he gets there, Chan and Junhui are already present, having taken their seats and food tray. Hansol joins them, listening wordlessly as the two of them chat about some of the new vegetables—radishes and chili peppers—that Junhui is trying to grow in his gardens.
Afterwards, Hansol heads straight back to his cabin.
It’s time to get to business, he thinks.
It takes Hansol a few minutes—and a bunch of rummaging through all of the drawers attached to his sleeping pod—to find where he last put his tablet. He turns it on and navigates to what Seungkwan was talking about—the collection of crew member interviews.
Hansol takes a moment to gather himself and decides, for pretty much no reason, to start with looking up Mingyu’s.
He finds the video within seconds. When it all boots up, there is Kim Mingyu, looking undeniably familiar, sitting politely with his hands pressed up against his knees in that white sterile interview room. There’s some differences in how the man looks—wearing a smart gray blazer over a black shirt instead of his usual physician’s coat, and with his hair more sleekly styled than Hansol has ever seen before—but it’s undoubtedly the same man that he recognizes.
“Please state your name, age and occupation,” says a woman’s voice from offscreen.
Mingyu nods. “Kim Mingyu. I’m turning 33 this April. Up until now, I’ve been working as a United Nations Mission medical officer in Liberia.”
“I see.” The sound of a pen scribbling on a noteboard. “Can you describe why you feel qualified to join the Astra Project.”
Mingyu leans forward, resting his head on his chin. “I would say that my skillset and background make for a good match with the project. I have a lot of good training, both theoretical and the field, and also decent experience working in high-pressure environments.”
A slight pause, followed by more scribbling. “Can you elaborate on said training and background?”
“I can. My education is that I did an expedited undergrad degree in biology at Kyung Hee University before receiving my medical degree at Korea University. After that, I completed my family practice residency with the Korean military, then served as a military medical officer for several years…”
Hansol feels his eyes widening. Of course, Mingyu had always struck him as professional, but he never realized the depth of the man’s qualifications.
Once Mingyu’s video is over, Hansol proceeds to watch all the other videos for his crewmates. What he finds is that when it comes to impressive accomplishments, Mingyu is far from an outlier. Soonyoung? A former fighter jet pilot and instructor for the Korean military with an impressive number of flight hours logged. Seungcheol? The assistant director of the Gaia Space Center at NASA. Minghao? A postdoctoral research fellow at Tsinghua University, known for his innovative publications in the field of stellar astrophysics. And so on and so forth…
It’s certainly illustrative. Although, Hansol’s not sure if watching the tapes equipped him to get along with the crew so much as they gave him an incredible sense of awe around them.
Once all of it is over, just out of curiosity, Hansol decides to pull up his own tape as well. He watches over the footage carefully.
There he is, sitting in the same white interview room as all the others. To be honest, Hansol can barely remember anything about the day of the interview. It feels like it happened decades and decades ago.
“Chwe Hansol. 32 years old. I’m an aerospace engineer at KARI.”
The same woman’s voice as before. “I see. Can you tell us a little bit about your educational background?”
“Yes. I have an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from Dongguk University, and a graduate degree in aerospace engineering from KAIST. I interned for two years before starting full time work at KARI.”
“Tell us more about the work you did at KARI.”
“Well, I was a low-Earth orbit specialist at KARI. Specifically, I was attached to maintaining, repairing and upgrading space elevators attached to the Oracle Space Station. There are a couple of high profile projects that I worked on, including the Skylab Repair project and…”
Hansol’s eyes start to glaze over as he watches the rest of the tape.
Having watched all the tapes, there’s something that feels very apparent to him. That is, in no way were his accomplishments or qualifications lesser than any of the other members of the crew. He had been specially selected out of an unimaginable large pool of candidates for the Astra Project and rightfully so.
That’s right. He has a lot to contribute. And, he can contribute—really, the only thing he needs is to find the right opportunity.
He sighs and flops down on his bed. The thoughts keep swirling around in his head.
*
It may not be the most impactful thing, but there’s one obvious way for Hansol to help.
After dinner, instead of following his usual pattern of wandering the halls aimlessly, Hansol decides to intercept Seungcheol on his way out.
At that point, Seungcheol and Soonyoung are chatting, their voices low and their postures tense as they stride together out of the cafeteria. When Hansol approaches, he can only hear a bit of their conversation.
“—Jeonghan’s status report. Things seem difficult,” Seungcheol says.
“We really need to think of a way—” Soonyoung starts, before spotting Hansol and falling quiet.
At that, Seungcheol clears his throat. “Ah, Hansol. Is there anything I can do to help you?”
Something about it is undeniably shifty, but Hansol decides to let it pass. After all, spying on their conversation wasn’t exactly the main thing he was hoping to accomplish.
“Um. I was wondering. I heard that the night watch shift is currently a rotation between all the crew members?”
“It is,” Seungcheol says, then frowns. “What’s this about? Are you maybe interested in joining the rotation?”
“Yeah, I guess so. Actually, I was wondering—would it be helpful for me to permanently man the shift? I’ve been looking for something useful to do with my time.”
Seungcheol raises an eyebrow. “Is that a good idea, given your condition?”
“Huh, why not?” Soonyoung interjects. He glances at Hansol with a knowing expression in his eyes. “I think it might be a good idea. Hansol’s a member of the crew too now, you know. For real. It’ll be nice to take a bit of the load off of the others.”
It seems like Seungcheol really decides to take those words to heart. He gives a nod. “Alright, fair enough. Hansol, we can give it a try. When would you like to start?”
Hansol blinks. It feels quite surprising to him, how easy that was.
“Maybe tonight?”
Seungcheol hums. “Alright. If you insist. In that case, I’ll let the rest of the crew know.”
*
“Okay,” is the first thing Soonyoung says when the two of them get down to the command deck that evening. “So, it’s your first time working the cockpit of a spaceship?”
“Yeah,” Hansol replies.
Weirdly, despite the whole KARI aerospace engineer thing, it occurs to him that he doesn’t have a lot of experience sitting in spaceships at all. Back then, he had friends on the spacecraft and space habitat teams, of course. It had always sounded interesting listening to bits and snippets of the work they did at lunch in the KARI cafeterias or when hitting the bar after work but, well, his specialty had always been in planet-to-space transportation systems. That was what he would consider his bread and butter.
Despite whatever Hansol’s expectations were, it turns out that Soonyoung is quite effective at both teaching and communicating. He walks Hansol through the intricacies of using the comms system with a clarity and straightforwardness that Hansol deeply appreciates.
“Look at that,” Soonyoung says, gesturing to the radar system.
Hansol blinks, squinting down at the nested circles glowing ghostly blue against the black screen.
“See these white dots? Those are unidentified bodies—basically, like, asteroids or other unknown astronomical bodies. And that—” Soonyoung points at a smaller, red dot. “That’s Moonstar-I. Yup, it’s our sister ship. We always try to make sure that our two ships stay within, like, about a hundred thousand kilometer radius or so. Well, the safe flying distance is closer to eighty thousand kilometers, but usually it’s fine to stay a bit further away than that.”
“I see.”
Afterwards, Soonyoung moves on to give brief overviews of all the other systems—the payload systems and navigation controls and sensor displays and so on.
“Cool,” Soonyoung says, once the tour is over. There’s a grin on his face, smug and satisfied. “So, whaddaya think?”
“Huh?”
“Pretty cool, huh? These Starcrusher class ships have some of the most complex, state-of-the-art navigation and monitoring tech that’s ever been produced on Earth.”
“Wow.”
Soonyoung clears his throat. “Hmm, actually, have you ever thought of giving piloting a spin? Like, we can actually do some crazy maneuvers on these ships. I’ve actually been giving Dino lessons once in a while.”
Hansol can’t help but chuckle at that. He had met more than a few pilots during his stint at KARI. They were proactive people, high-performing, fast-talking, bright and insanely durable under pressure. Hansol never really saw himself being someone like that.
Still, now that he was stuck on this spaceship with the rest of his life to live—hell, why not?
“Sure,” he says. “One of these days. I’d like that.”
When Soonyoung smiles back, his expression radiates warmth. “Alright! Hmm, maybe after you give it a try, we can get some friendly competition going… y’know, do some racing and all of that. It’s been getting a bit boring recently only competing with Jihoon…”
After that, Soonyoung sits with Hansol for about an hour into the shift. What’s interesting, Hansol notes, is that, when Soonyoung is seated at the cockpit, his demeanor starts to shift into that of a different person—all fussy and attentive to detail. Soonyoung spends a solid twenty minutes fiddling with the navigation systems. He repeatedly checks what Hansol guesses is the ship’s intended route, before muttering a bit to himself and making various adjustments on a couple of different screens that Hansol can only begin to understand.
Then at some point, Soonyoung clicks his tongue and lets himself out of his seat, clearly satisfied. He sighs, then lets out a huge yawn.
“Okay,” Soonyoung says. “Cool. In that case, I think I’ll leave it to you for the rest of the night.”
“Sounds good.” Hansol flicks him a thumbs up.
Soonyoung looks at him and nods sleepily before slowly ambling out of the cockpit area.
After that, Hansol finds himself left to man the shift on his own in silence. He starts by taking the time to examine some of the systems that Soonyoung had shown him—flipping through the navigation interface, followed by examining the various control systems. Each screen he looks at seems harder to understand than the next—filled with densely packed numbers, diagrams and acronyms he can barely start to make out. His training had always been in mechanical repairs, not in being able to work with or understand any of this stuff.
It’s okay, there’s no rush, he thinks. He has more than enough time to slowly learn what all of this means.
Finally, after what seems like an hour or two of waiting, the comms system starts beeping again.
Hansol immediately accepts the call.
“Hello. Hikaru-II. Ship mechanic Chwe Hansol speaking.”
“Ah, hello!” The voice that responds is soft and familiar. “Chwe-ssi? It’s you, right? It’s great to hear from you again.”
It’s not like Hansol volunteered to take the night shift in particular because he was hoping to speak again to the man or anything, but still. There’s something about his voice that feels comfortable, steadying. Hansol can feel some of the tenseness in his bones ease up. He closes his eyes. “Ah, you can just call me Hansol.”
“Oh? Okay, uh, Hansol, then.”
Hansol smiles. “So, what’s the status like today, on the Moonstar?”
Hansol hears a slight gasp from the other end of the line. “Oh no, we’re totally good. Everything is fine. No, I’m not—I’m not just calling in because I needed help or anything. That was just a one time thing, I promise.”
“That’s not what I was trying to say either. Sorry. I was just asking.”
Some shuffling sounds, then—“Oh, it’s—it’s okay. Actually, I heard from my captain, Jeonghan, that you were going to take on the night shift from now on. So, I just wanted to call in and see how you were. If you had any questions or needed any help. Just stuff like that.”
Despite everything, Hansol can feel himself smiling. “It’s—I’m doing well. But it’s nice to hear from you. Oh, thanks for the tip about the interview tapes, by the way.”
“Oh!” A slight pause. “Did you end up watching them, then?”
“Yeah.” Hansol draws in some air between his teeth. “Hah, I never realized how impressive some of the people on this ship were. United Nations… NASA… just—wow.”
“Yeah…” For some reason, Seungkwan’s voice sounds a tad less enthusiastic than before. “It’s the same on my ship too, honestly. I think the selection process for the Astra Project really was comprehensive. They really chose the best of the best.”
“In that case, it’s kind of surreal. The fact that we’re both here.”
“For sure. Sometimes I do wonder…” Seungkwan’s voice trails off.
Hansol curls his lip and decides to bring up something else. “So, how long have you been on shift at the Moonstar for?”
“I was unfrozen pretty recently actually. Only about three years ago. Actually, most of the crew is pretty fresh. We had a lot of crew members turn around in the last decade or so.
“Oh! The rest of the crew?”
“Yeah! The crew is—nice. We’re like a little family here, that’s what I think. There’s Yoon Jeonghan, our captain. He’s—um. So, at first I thought he was scary but he’s really easy to get along with once you get to know him. Then Jihoon… he’s our pilot. He has a lot of military experience and you can really tell, by the way he acts and talks. He really cares in his own way though… There's Lee Seokmin, our botanist. Joshua Hong, our doctor. Oh, and Wonwoo. He’s a linguist. Similar story to you actually, woke up due to some issues ahead of schedule, but we’re all really glad that we have him.”
“Wow,” Hansol says, taking it all in. There’s something about all of it that strikes him as being a bit off. “Wait a minute, there’s—don’t you have a mechanic on board?”
“Oh. About that. Um…” Seungkwan’s voice trails off again. For a while, no one speaks, the only sound in the room coming from the faint buzzing of the computer systems in the cockpit. Then, finally—”Did no one fill you in about the situation?”
“What situation?”
Seungkwan sighs. “I mean the situation with the Moonstar.”
“I—no.” Hansol can feel his body tensing up. Something about the tone of the conversation felt weird, like it was totally off.
“It’s, well. I don’t understand a lot of the details myself. But basically, the Moonstar had a pretty bad accident decades and decades ago. As a result, we don’t have any mechanics here. Not awake, and not in cryostatic slumber either. That’s how it’s been even since I woke up from my sleep.”
“Ah,” Hansol says. He tries his best to rack his brain with a proper way to respond to that, but nothing comes up.
“Sorry,” Seungkwan says, voice all soft and disappointed. “The conversation got kind of weird, all of a sudden right?”
“It’s not weird. It’s important for me to know this information, as a crew member.”
“I… guess. Hm.” After that, there’s an awkward silence again. Then, Seungkwan responds again. His tone is so much noticeably brighter that it sounds almost forced. “In any case, on a different topic, I was wondering—you didn’t get the chance to watch my interview tape, did you?”
“Oh!” Hansol’s eyes widen. For some reason, the thought of doing that hadn’t even crossed his mind. “No, not yet. Um. I will, though.”
“Ah, no.” Seungkwan’s response comes immediately. “Please, please don’t. It’s so embarrassing, okay? I’m honestly cringing at the thought of it.”
“I—um—”
“Promise me you won’t watch it.”
“I… promise.”
“Okay.”
“You should definitely watch the tapes for some of my other crew members though… they really showcase everyone’s charms well. Oh man, the one for Seokmin—now that one was hysterical…”
Hansol smiles, leaning comfortably in his chair as he listens to Seungkwan babble on about his crew members and their tapes. It’s nice to get some company during the shift, he thinks. Things feel a bit less lonely this way.
As for the issues with the Moonstar, those barely even enter into his mind again until much later that night, after the call is over.
*
When Hansol gets back to his cabin after his shift, the first thing he does is fish out his tablet and browse to the area with the interview tapes.
Why didn’t he think at all to watch Seungkwan’s? He’s not sure how something as obvious as that could have slipped his mind.
In any case, he did promise Seungkwan that he wouldn’t watch the tapes, so he won’t.
However, there is one thing he’s curious about.
He clicks on Seungkwan’s video, then immediately pauses the video, quickly enough so that he’s not able to catch anything of substance. Then, he takes a careful look at the screen.
At this point, even though he’s only had two conversations with the man, Hansol thinks that they’ve spoken enough that he has a pretty good impression of his manner of speaking—gentle, articulate and animated. It’s weird how strange it feels to see a person’s appearance only after having multiple conversations with them. The man in the video sure doesn’t match his expectations but then again, he’s not sure how anyone could, given that he’s not sure what he expected in the first place.
In the video, Seungkwan is seated at the same, familiar white interview room. There’s something about his posture that feels a little more out-of-place than some of the other crew members, a little more tense. Still, something about the wideness of his eyes and the smile on his face projects a certain sense of excitement that causes Hansol’s heart to feel a little warm. He’s wearing a smart-looking brown blazer, his auburn hair is styled up neatly and there’s a big set of round glasses on his face.
Hansol looks down at the screen for a long time, then smiles and turns it off.
*
That evening, Seungcheol isn’t at his usual spot by the command deck. After searching around the ship, Hansol eventually finds him in the captain’s office.
The office is small but nice—a couple of neat looking leather couches squeezed into a tiny cabin along with an authoritative-looking oak desk and a sleeping area. Splayed across one of the walls are a number of different maps and diagrams of stars. Pressed up against another wall is a small bookshelf filled up with a number of different books.
Hansol knocks before entering. When he does, Seungcheol is seated at his desk, brows furrowed, leaning over what looks like a series of complicated logs. It takes a moment after Hansol enters, standing there awkwardly by the door, before Seungcheol looks up and gives a gentle smile.
“Ah, don’t just stand there! Take a seat.” Seungcheol gestures to one of the leather seats.
Hansol follows his instructions.
“It’s good to see you,” Seungcheol says. “I was just meaning to check in on you. How was manning the night shift last night?”
“It was—good. Yeah. I’d like to keep doing it.”
“Did Soonyoung help set you up properly?”
“Yes! He did. He was really helpful actually.”
“Great!”
“Yeah.” Hansol pauses, biting his lip. Seungcheol tilts his head, silent, waiting for Hansol to continue. “Well, I was just wondering,” Hansol continues. “I was talking to the navigator on the other ship—Boo Seungkwan, and he mentioned that there were no mechanics on the Moonstar.”
“Ah.” Seungcheol looks down for a moment, a shadow passing over his expression. “Yes. That.”
“I guess I was just wondering… I thought you could tell me more about what’s up with that.”
“Yes.” Seungcheol nods. “I suppose now that you’re a crew member, it’ll be good for you to know. Soonyoung and I have been talking about this a lot, along with Jeonghan—well, the captain of the Moonstar. Actually, it seems like the ship is really struggling.”
“Struggling…? What do you mean?”
“What I mean is that, the Moonstar got into an accident. It was 62 years ago. It was really unfortunate. Both sister ships ended up getting caught in a radiation storm. The Hikaru was able to emerge unscathed. As for the Moonstar—they ended up experiencing some proton collisions… the resulting electronic meltdowns wiped out most of the passengers on the ship. Including all of the engineering experts on board.”
Hansol feels his eyes opening wide. “In that case, how many passengers are still on board?”
“Close to five hundred, out of the original five thousand passengers.”
Hansol swallows.
For a moment, he feels almost a bit ashamed of himself, proceeding along so happily with such complete lack of awareness of how dire the situation was. He thinks about Seungkwan, the cheerfulness in his voice. What kind of man did Seungkwan have to be to sound like that given these circumstances?
“That sounds serious,” he says. “So, they’ve gone 62 years without any kind of mechanical help?”
“Well, some of the existing crew members have a bit of engineering experience. And others are trying to learn. It looks like Jihoon, in particular—their pilot—has been performing a lot of routine maintenance. But still, it’s—from what we can tell, the ship has sustained a lot of mechanical damage from the storm. I’d be lying if I said this was overall a good situation.”
“We have mechanics on our ship, don’t we? Haven’t we been able to help?”
Seungcheol’s expression just looks resigned. “Of course, Chan is trying his best. He and the other crew members on the Hikaru have been trying to provide verbal assistance. That’s really the best we can do, anyways, given our resources.”
“I see.”
“Anyways, don’t worry.” A smile resurfaces on Seungcheol’s face, but this time it looks taut and forced. “Soonyoung and I have been in communications with the Moonstar almost every day. We’re trying our best to provide all the help they need. It is absolutely my intention that we protect the Moonstar and do everything we can to ensure they complete the mission with us.”
Hansol nods. Soon afterwards, their conversation ends.
The whole time Hansol spends walking back to his cabin, it feels like his chest is about to sink to the floor. If he didn’t feel useless enough before, well, he sure does now.
Here he is, an extra mechanic on a ship that didn’t even need him while, in the meantime, their sister ship didn’t even have a single one.
But maybe… it could be an opportunity?
He needs to do something, Hansol thinks to himself. His ability to solve problems, his eagerness to help—weren’t those both crucial reasons as to why he was selected for the Astra Project in the first place? If he racks his brain enough, surely he can figure out a way to fix this.
The problem is that he just can’t think of anything to do.
*
The next few night shifts pass uneventfully.
Hansol doesn’t receive any calls nor do any incidents occur, which means that he ends up spending the entire shift bored out of his mind, trying not to think too hard about his newfound situation on the ship. He ends up finding the flight operation manual on the ship’s computer and decides to give a shot at reading through that, to see if he can better understand all the different subsystems in the cockpit. It’s all very technical and arcane, except not even in the field that he’s familiar with. By the fourth shift, he finds his eyes glazing over as he reads a particular section about velocity and altitude monitoring.
With a sigh, he closes his eyes and shuts off the computer. That’s more than enough for the night.
He glances around at the different modules of the cockpit, trying to see if there’s anything else that might be able to sustain his interest. There’s rows and rows of switches and dials and monitoring displays and then, on a countertop beside the cockpit, the comms system.
Well, why not? Hansol thinks. Before he has time to reconsider his decision, he reaches over to it, fiddling around to set the radio to the correct frequency, then initiates a call.
Almost immediately, his call gets picked up from the other end of the line.
“Hello? Moonstar-I here.” The voice is unmistakably Seungkwan’s. When Hansol hears it, he can’t help but feel a shudder of relief.
“Ah, Seungkwan,” Hansol says. Uh, hi.”
“What’s the situation?”
“Well, there’s no situation.” Hansol pauses, takes a moment to figure out how to explain himself. “I guess… I didn’t have anything to do so I just wanted to see if you were around.”
“Oh.” Seungkwan’s voice sounds surprised. “Yeah. Okay. Hi then. You know, it’s nice to hear your voice again.”
Hansol smiles in spite of himself. “Yeah. Me too.”
“Okay. So how have your shifts been recently?”
“It’s been, well. Pretty boring, honestly. I’ve been trying to study up on how all the stuff on the command deck works but it’s been kind of hard. You?”
A small sigh. “It’s been fine. I just started my shift so nothing’s happened yet.”
“Right.” Hansol decides that it’s time to bring up the thing that he really had on his mind. “So. I ended up talking to Seungcheol about the Moonstar. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize the situation.”
“Oh.” Seungkwan pauses for a bit, as if carefully deliberating how to proceed. “Don’t be sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just—it’s better for you not to worry so much. After all, the way it all happened, that didn’t have anything to do with you or me. It’s an unfortunate accident, that’s all. It’s not like there’s much we can do to fix it.”
“Hmm…” Hansol taps his fingers against the counter. Is it… really true that there’s nothing they can do? He deliberates for a moment about saying these thoughts out loud, then decides against it. It’s not like he has a plan, after all.
A pause, then—“I’m being serious, don’t worry. Jihoon is doing a lot of studying around engineering and mechanical stuff. All in all, I think we’re doing remarkably well given the circumstances.”
Hansol doesn’t say anything in response to that.
The silence stretches on and on before Seungkwan speaks up again. “Ugh, sorry, this topic is kind of depressing, isn’t it? Let’s—um. How are you finding it, manning the night shift?”
Something about the abrupt topic change doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel quite so easy and natural for Hansol to just forget about the reality of the situation and move back to small talk. The problem is that it’s not like he has anything to contribute on the topic of the Moonstar anyways.
Whatever, he thinks. For now, for Seungkwan’s sake, he might as well try to go along with the flow.
“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s good. I’m glad to be chipping in for the team, finally.”
“Oh, really?” This time, when Seungkwan speaks, there’s a tinge more humour to his voice. “Hmm, it kind of sounds like you’re about to say ‘but’?”
Despite the situation, Hansol finds himself chuckling. “Yeah. You’re right. I guess it’s just been a little boring, that’s all. Uneventful. I’m honestly not really sure what to do.”
“Yeah. That really is a problem, isn’t it?” Something about Seungkwan’s voice makes Hansol think that he might be smiling, all the way from the other end of the line. “I think what’s pretty common is for the other crew members to read a book or watch TV or something.”
“Right.” Come to think of it, that was exactly what Mingyu had been doing, when Hansol stumbled in on him for the first time. “Um. How about you? Is that what you do?”
“For me… yeah, sometimes. Other times—I guess I don’t know. It’s probably a little embarrassing, actually, but I kind of like just looking out into space. Observing the stars, things like that.”
“Oh?”
Seungkwan makes a tutting sound. “Ugh, that’s weird, isn’t it?”
“No. Not really.” As Hansol says it, he turns to face the dashboard. He tries to look, really look, at the sparse splattering of stars amidst the all-encompassing darkness. It’s not something that he’s particularly used to doing. Even back in the day, during his work in near-orbit Earth with KARI, Hansol always found his eyes drawn more to the beautiful vast blueness of the Earth than to the faint twinkling of the stars beyond that.
“Hm,” Hansol says. “So, what is it about the stars?”
“Oh, I mean it’s a goldmine, isn’t it? From a scientific point of view, I mean. Like, for so many of these stars, this is the closest proximity that any human has ever come to them. Actually, a lot of these stars aren’t visible at all from Earth! So yeah, just observing them, tracking their movements, trying to figure out things like their composition or their distance. It’s cool!”
Seungkwan’s tone of speaking is so enthusiastic, Hansol can’t help but smile. He’s not sure if he can relate, but still. It’s nice, hearing the other man sound so happy.
“Besides, I don’t know, on a more basic level—it’s just pretty, right? The stars are pretty. It’s peaceful and beautiful. Honestly, that’s why I got into the field of astronomy to begin with. Space, the night sky—they’re just all so beautiful. In a special way, too. In a way that you can’t quite find on Earth.”
“Right,” Hansol says. “Yeah. I get that.”
He really does. He thinks back to his missions with KARI. Back then being out in space was a breathtaking thing—enjoying the feeling of weightlessness, enjoying the silence and the peacefulness and the confirmation of how small he truly was in comparison to everything out there.
For him, the feeling had never particularly been tied up with the stars in particular, more centered around the ambience of being in space in general. Still, the fascination in Seungkwan’s voice, the awe, the admiration—Hansol thinks that he can relate a bit to that.
“Okay,” he continues. “So, are you saying you’ve looked at all the stars we’re seeing right now?”
Seungkwan scoffs. “I mean, obviously not all of them.”
“Some of them, though.”
“I guess…”
“I’ll be honest. They kind of all look about the same to me.”
“They’re not though, that’s the thing. Um, like, take a look at this star—this big bright orange star to your left. Do you see it?”
Hansol squints his eyes and takes several moments to spot the star in question. “Yeah.”
“It’s pretty remarkable, isn’t it? The star would have been barely identifiable from Earth but from here, it looks so bright and visible, right? Actually, it isn’t a single star at all but a system of two stars, gravitationally bound to each other. It’s impossible to see with the naked eye but there are special imaging techniques you can use to observe both stars seperately. I’ve been observing them with some of the telescopes on the ship. Yeah, stuff like that. That’s what I’ve been looking into.”
“Wow. That’s… pretty interesting.”
“I guess.” Seungkwan sounds a bit bashful.
Hansol scans the rest of the stars, trying to look for anything that stands out. His eyes end up lingering on the brightly blue shining star that he had identified, back during his first day visiting the command deck.
“How about this one?” He asks. “This bright blue star. The one, uh, a bit to the right of the orange star from before. Have you been looking at that?”
“Oh! I have. It’s hard not to notice it, given how brightly it shines, right? Actually, it’s not a star at all but a planet, orbiting the Gliese star system. The reason it’s so bright is because it’s really close to us, about a twentieth of a light year away. Actually, our ships’ trajectory is planned to do a pretty close approach of the planet, so we should be able to get a close up look before long.”
Hansol blinks. “A close approach?”
“We’ll be going right up by it. I mean, it’ll take a bit of time before we get there, but we should be able to get a pretty breathtaking view of it. Pretty cool, huh?”
“Yeah,” Hansol says. “That’s cool.”
He keeps looking at the blue planet in the distance. At the moment, despite shining brightly, it still seems quite small, just a tiny dot in the far distance. Hansol tries to imagine what it might look like up close but ends up only being able to draw a blank.
For the rest of the shift, he continues talking to Seungkwan, listening to the man point out different stars visible from the dashboard and describe their characteristics. It’s calm and easy—so much so that the time flies by and it becomes time for the shift to end before he even knows it.
By the time he’s done exchanging goodbyes with Seungkwan, Junhui has already arrived at the command deck, fully prepared to take over the next shift.
As Hansol tidies up and gets ready to leave, he can’t help but look again at the blue planet in the distance.
There’s something nostalgic about the planet, about the deepness and richness of its hue.
For a moment, a bittersweet feeling rises in his chest.
*
Afterwards, Hansol starts to settle into a bit of a routine. Due to manning the night shift, he tends to wake up late in the day—too late to make the scheduled breakfast time, which means that his day always starts with lunch in the cafeteria with the rest of the crew. After lunch, he fills his time taking on some helpful tasks here and there—helping Chan fix a mechanical issue or two, or tagging along with Junhui as he tends to the garden or Mingyu as he prepares meals for the crew in the kitchen. After that, it’s dinner and then time for Hansol to go to the command deck to man the night shift.
It all means that, besides some minor work with Chan, Hansol still doesn’t get much of a chance to put his technical and engineering knowledge to work. That is, until one week when Chan calls out to Hansol after lunch, stopping him before he has the chance to slip away to his quarters.
“Hey, hyung!”
“Yeah?”
“Last time we talked, you were saying that you wanted to come help out with some mechanical stuff on the ship, right?”
“Yeah, right.”
“Ah, I was wondering—today’s the day that I’m planning to do some regular maintenance on the solar sails. Any chance you’d like to come help me out?”
“Uh—” Hansol starts. It was a bit of a surprising request. Working on the solar sails, doing any kind of extravehicular work—that wasn’t a simple kind of job. Performing any kind of mission outside of the aircraft, exposed to the elements of space—those required the finely toned kind of skills that Hansol and Chan and their cohorts had spent years training back during their days in KARI.
It was precisely the kind of work that Hansol used to excel at.
Chan stares at him for a few moments before his expression softens. “I mean, only if you want to. I was just thinking, it might—you know, be kind of like the old days.”
“I want to do it. ” Hansol says. “When?”
“Hmm…” Chan takes a brief look down at his watch. “I mean—how about now?”
Well, it’s not like Hansol has anything better to do at the moment.
“Sure,” he responds.
*
Given how extravagant the rest of the ship was, Hansol had almost been expecting something of similar scale for the ship’s airlock—large, fancy, and high tech. When he finally makes his way there, he’s surprised to find that the airlock looks almost the same as the ones he had become intimately acquainted with during his time on various space stations with KARI.
Compared to the rest of the ship, the compartment is small and cramped, lined from ceiling to floor with various cabinets and closets. On the top of the compartment sits a big, circular door—the exit hatch. Chan enters the airlock first, followed by Hansol. Hansol stays silent as Chan gives a little door, pointing out the control panel and the decompression modules and the storage units.
“The escape pods are here too,” Chan says, gesturing to a row of small chrome vessels embedded into the wall. “I suppose these were mostly meant for evacuating to Earth during take off. They’re not particularly useful now, since we’re light years away from any habitable planets.”
Hansol looks at the escape pods carefully.
Once the tour is over, Chan strolls up to a relatively large cabinet, opens it and pulls out the spacesuit components. After hesitating for a moment, Hansol goes to follow Chan’s lead.
As usual, putting on the suit is quite the ordeal.
It takes the two of them a good part of an hour to fully suit up—putting on all the underlayers, squeezing into the suit itself and then attaching all the miscellaneous components. Hansol fusses over his thermal protection layers and his communication carrier and his toolbelt and his oxygen supply. He helps Chan attach some of the most finicky parts of the uniform and the acquiesces when Chan insists on helping him do the same.
“Geez,” Chan says, once both of them are fully suited up. “Doing this never gets less annoying over time, huh?”
“Hah, well. It’s been a while. I almost forgot how much time it takes.”
The suit is bulky and stiff, a tad bit too big for Hansol’s body and it’s hard to breathe. Still, something about it feels like home.
Once they don the spacesuits, Chan slowly paces up and down the airlock before settling by the control panel.
“Alright,” Chan says. “Ready?”
“Uh huh.”
“Okay.” With that, Chan grabs a lever and pulls up, disabling the artificial gravity inside the airlock. In an instant, Hansol finds himself floating up from the ground, rising up towards the ceiling of the ship. It’s disorientating, yes—all lack of control and groundlessness and yet… Hansol really, really doesn’t mind it.
He still remembers the first time this incoming engineer cohort at KARI tried out the zero-gravity simulator. Back then, two of his cohort had thrown up, and a number more complained about the headaches and the weirdness and just, the uncomfortable feeling of endless freefall but even back then, Hansol hadn’t minded it. Sure, he felt it too—the nausea and the congestion, but really, all of that stuff was just bodily sensations. It didn’t have to bother him if he didn’t let it. What no one else had described but what Hansol had felt acutely was this sense of exhilaration, starting as a faint but sure feeling in his chest and then soon spreading out to his whole body.
In any case, he can feel the mix of sensations getting to him now—the dizziness, the blood rushing to his face, the sensation of his stomach turning on itself, but also the thrill of it, the anticipation, the tingling sensation running all the way down his arms and towards his fingertips.
“Hah,” Chan says, hand pressed to his temple. “Wow. You know what, I think I’m going to strap myself in after all.” Slowly, he pushes himself through the chamber, situating himself with his hands against the walls, until he finds the appropriate panel on the wall and ties himself to the wall with the attached Velcro straps.
As for Hansol, well, he really can take it or leave it. After a moment, he decides to also float over to the straps area and also tie himself in, mostly for camaraderie’s sake.
After that, it takes about an hour for the airlock to fully decrease the pressure. The two of them squeeze through the exit hatch into the tiny little payload bay. They strap themselves to their tether cables. Then, Chan presses a button opening the door of the payload bay and—Hansol finds himself looking out into space.
Legs shaking, grabbing on to his tether for support, he makes his way onto the exterior of the spaceship.
Hansol’s first impression of the scene around him is this: at least from a purely visual standpoint, it looks remarkably similar to the view outside the command deck cockpit. As usual, there’s the darkness—pure black enveloping the space around him in all directions—as well as the faint light of stars, too many of them to count, swirling in on each other, forming constellations and galaxies.
It’s just different, for Hansol, being physically present in space.
It’s the feeling of just being out there in the void with no walls or ceilings or floor; of having nothing out there to case him in; of seeing, with his own two eyes, and feeling, deep in his bones, just how small he really is in comparison to the scale of the universe. He can feel the blood pumping through the veins of his arms. He can feel his heart pounding in his chest.
It’s a feeling of pure euphoria.
Even though he’s experienced it more than a handful of times now, each time still never fails to take his breath away.
“Hyung. Do you see it?” Chan’s voice filters in through Hansol’s radio receiver.
Hansol grasps onto his tether, using it to turn his body around to face Chan’s. Chan is pointing out into the distance, at a tiny strip of gold peeking out from the side of the ship, illuminated by only the ship’s gigantic headlights.
“That’s—the sail?”
“You got it. Here. It’s a little hard to see it from here but if we can get to the other side of the ship—the visibility’s a lot better from there.”
Hansol follows Chan in climbing up the body of the spaceship. They round a notch in the spaceship’s exterior. Suddenly, the solar sail comes blooming into view, looking large and authoritative, a massive golden canopy eclipsing the front of the ship.
Hansol can’t help but gaping.
“Wow.” The word leaves his mouth before he really even knows it.
“I know right?” Chan responds. His voice is fuzzed at the edges by occasional bursts of static. “It’s pretty crazy. Anyways, how do you want to do this?”
“Um. Divide and conquer, maybe? You take the left, I take the right?”
“Works for me.”
Once they get close enough to the mast of the sail, Chan climbs onto it first. He moves with the ease of someone who’s done the same complicated maneuver many times in the past. Hansol tries his best to match Chan’s movements. Every fifty meters or so, there’s a notch in the mast for their tethers, and every time, Hansol watches carefully as Chan ties his tether in with a firm knot before following with his own.
Finally, once they get about halfway up the mast, Chan gives Hansol a nod. “Okay. I’ll see you. Make sure to let me know if you need any help, okay?”
“Okay.”
With that, Chan engages his thrusters, which turn on with a sputter, then zips off to his assigned part of the sail.
Immediately, Hansol does the same.
The truth is that it’s been quite a while since Hansol’s done any work on sail membranes—it just wasn’t his team’s specialty. Still, he thinks that he mostly remembers the basics from training. What comes much more naturally to him is the intuition for how to maneuver himself using his thrusters. Before he knows it, he’s flying out in space, skimming over the surface of the sail. He carefully uses his industrial-grade flashlight to inspect every bit of the sail’s surface, checking for microtears, for any other breakages and even for any signs of degradation that might become concerning in the future.
The procedure for microtears is pretty easy. He remembers it well from training. For the ones he finds, he uses his polyimide gun to deposit a thin layer of polymers, filling in the membrane of the sail until it’s practically as good as new.
It’s all fine and good until he spots an actual, full-on tear in the sail. It’s really tiny—pretty much smaller than the size of his hand—but still. To Hansol’s eyes, it looks pretty bad.
“Um—hey, Chan. There’s an actual hole in the sail right here.”
“Oh.” Chan’s response comes on the speaker immediately. “Huh. Yeah, that happens sometimes though. It shouldn’t be much of a problem as long as we keep detecting them before they get too big. Anyways, there should be some microfiber bandages in your toolkit that you can use for this kind of thing.”
Hansol digs in his kit and quickly locates the bandages that Chan was talking about.
While he hasn’t seen the exact brand of bandages before, he’s familiar enough with the concept that he has a decent idea of how to apply them. Working carefully, he warms up the bandage using his heat torch—enough so that the bandage becomes soft and malleable. Then, he stretches it over the tear, completely sealing it. Finally, he uses his flashlight to shine a beam of ultraviolet particles at the bandage, watching as the bandage stiffens and fuses with the polymer microfibers in the sail.
“Oh wow. Okay,” Hansol says. “Neat. It worked.”
“Cool. That’s good.”
Besides that, the rest of the mission goes pretty smoothly. Hansol quickly finds that the sail must be tens of kilometers long—significantly larger than anything Hansol’s practiced on before. It all becomes a bit of an endurance mission more than anything, but still, it’s nice. It’s been a long time since Hansol has flown out in space and he misses it more than he expected. He quickly falls into a decent rhythm, almost spacing out as he works.
It takes what must be a couple of hours for Hansol to fully finish inspecting his side of the sail. By the time he makes it back to the mast, Chan is already there waiting for him, having finished already.
A lot has changed, Hansol thinks. Back in his KARI days, during the few times that their teams had worked together, Chan had always been his hoobae—always diligent, always hardworking but still young, still in need of guidance and direction, still inexperienced enough to fumble, at times, with his tools and directions.
But now, Chan is different.
Hansol takes a good look at him, as they make their way back down into the airlock. There’s a sort of pride and confidence in Chan’s posture.
In a way, it almost feels like Hansol is the junior now.
It makes sense, Hansol thinks. Given all the shenanigans with cryostasis, by now, Chan has years more experience than Hansol does.
Once they’re in the airlock, it takes another huge stretch of time to properly take off their suits. As Hansol fiddles with all of his components, he finds his eyes being drawn to the row of escape pods that Chan had pointed out earlier.
He blinks. The beginnings of an idea start to form in his mind.
*
The next night that Hansol sits for his shift, he barely needs to wait for twenty minutes before the communications device begins to beep again.
It doesn’t strike Hansol as surprising at all. They’ve been doing a lot of talking during all of the night shifts that Hansol’s been manning in the last weeks. He’s pretty sure that staying on a call with the navigator of his sister ship isn’t actually a required responsibility for his job, but there’s no rules against it and besides, it’s not like there’s much of anything else for him to do.
“Seungkwan! How are you?” Hansol asks, after accepting the call.
“Good…” Seungkwan says, his voice trailing off. He sighs. “I’m good, I’m good. I mean, I’m better now that I’m here with you.”
“You weren’t good before?”
“No, I was good, it’s just—I guess it’s been a stressful day. We were having some issues with the engines here on the Moonstar and all of us were kind of scrambling to deal with it. Luckily, it looks like Jihoon has most of it down though.”
“Oh,” Hansol says. It definitely sounds quite stressful.
Another sigh. “It’s okay. Sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“No, it’s okay. I don’t mind.” There’s something that Hansol has been thinking about for a while. In that instant, he decides that maybe it’s a good time to bring it up to another person, finally. “Hey, Seungkwan, there’s something I’ve been thinking about.”
Seungkwan’s voice perks up. “Oh? What’s that?”
“Do you think it could be possible for a person to travel from the Hikaru to the Moonstar?”
“Um… I mean.” A long pause. “Why do you ask?”
“I was just thinking. It’d be good, wouldn’t it, if it was possible? After all, there’s two mechanics on the Hikaru and none on the Moonstar.”
“Hmm… yeah. That would be good, wouldn’t it. Haha, I mean, even besides that, it’d be nice, getting to finally talk to you in person. It’s just—maybe there is a way. But if there is, none of us know it yet.”
Hansol uses his thumb to stroke his chin. “There’s escape pods on the ship, right? I was wondering if we could do anything with that.”
“That’s interesting… I guess it could be possible. The problem is that those pods have barely any propulsion though, right? I think they were meant more for returning to Earth if we encountered any issues during takeoff.”
“Right.” Hansol pledges to himself to take a look when he has time.
After that, the two of them sit in silence. Hansol soaks in the ambience of the dim command deck, of the beautiful panorama of space unfolding before him. Suddenly, an image floats to the top of his mind. It’s of Seungkwan—the man he saw in the interview tapes, same chestnut hair and brown blazer—sitting on a command deck not so dissimilar from Hansol’s, on a spaceship so far away that it feels impossible for Hansol to reach, glancing out at the stars in front of them with admiration in his eyes, his figure leaning over stacks of arcane-looking maps and star charts.
“Hey, Seungkwan,” he can’t help but say. “You’re an astronomer, right? What kind of stuff did you do back on Earth?”
“Oh…” Seungkwan starts before his voice trails off, not sounding quite as chipper as Hansol would have hoped. After a beat, he continues—”Actually. When I got chosen for Astra, I was studying as a PhD student.”
“Cool.” Hansol tries to imagine the Seungkwan he saw, hard at work in a university library or perhaps one of the grad student offices that he remembers from his university days. It’s a nice image. Hansol thinks that it all feels very fitting for him. “Wow. So you were doing research?”
“Yeah. Kind of. I guess I was just starting to do that stuff. I was only in my first year so—more of my time was being spent on schoolwork and things.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” Another short gap of silence. “It’s weird, isn’t it? I mean, I really didn’t have much experience at all in astronomy before getting chosen for the Astra Project.”
“That’s not true,” Hansol says immediately. “You were a PhD student. It sounds like you were doing research, at least a little. That’s what it means to work in astronomy, right?”
“I guess…”
It’s weird, Hansol thinks, how reticent Seungkwan sounds about the whole topic. “Hm,” he continues. “What was it like, going in for your PhD?”
“Huh. It was okay. Stressful, honestly. It was actually—if you can believe it, I actually did my undergrad degree in communications… so it was a lot of stress, catching up on all the proper science classes. But, I don’t know.”
“That does sound hard.”
“It was. Actually, before my PhD, I spent five years working as an air traffic controller. So, I think it was just a big change of pace, being in an academic environment. A lot less busy on a day-to-day basis, a lot more self driven. But in some ways, it was nice.” Seungkwan sighs, then gives a hum. It’s a surprisingly tender sound. “Honestly, Hansol. I think I was really happy. Studying astronomy was my dream. It has been, ever since I can remember. So, being able to actually do it full time—it was amazing. That was a wonderful year for me.”
There’s so much fondness in Seungkwan’s voice. Hansol can’t help but wonder what kind of experiences you had to have to fulfill a sort of dream like that. It isn’t something that he himself has ever experienced. KARI, the space elevator stuff—while those experiences had been good for him, they kind of felt like things that he had stumbled into, opportunities that he had taken just because they happened to be there.
“That’s amazing,” he says. “Seungkwan, it really sounds like you love what you do.”
“Yeah. You could say that! I think it’s just—they’re awe-inspiring right? It’s so easy to get caught up in our day-to-day lives but when you looking at the stars, studying space—all of that makes you realize that there’s things that are so much bigger than us. Things that are beautiful, even if we don’t understand them. I mean, that’s so cool! It’s such a privilege, I think, being able to spend your life dedicated to studying them.”
Hansol closes his eyes. He thinks back to his own experience of being in space, how peaceful and centering it is—how exhilarating it is. It’s never been a feeling that he’s particularly thought to put into words. He wonders for a moment about the feeling that Seungkwan is describing, if it’s something that can be said to approximate his own.
It’s not something that he can ever know for sure. But he finds himself hoping that it’s the case.
“You’re right,” he says. “That’s cool. It really is.”
Seungkwan hums softly from the other side of the line.
*
A few weeks later, Hansol finally finds time to investigate the escape pods in the airlock.
It takes barely any time at all for him to realize that Seungkwanhad a point—the pods really seemed to be designed to be deployed in near-Earth orbit. For one, the airlock itself has no source of propulsion attached. All it’s designed to do is to detach the pods from the spaceship which means that in the absence of any source of acceleration, trying to leave in the escape pod will just result in him floating adrift in space, without any direction or destination.
One helpful thing that Hansol discovers is that there are engines attached to the escape pod. The bad thing is that the fuel capacity is pretty crappy, enough so that the engine is only able to accelerate to an incredibly modest velocity before the tank gets emptied out. He does some back-of-the-envelope calculations. It turns out that it would take a little less than four years for the escape pod to reach the Moonstar, assuming that the two ships are even able to position themselves at the minimum safe flying distance.
All in all, the investigation is pretty demotivating.
But here’s the thing, Hansol thinks. He’s an engineer. The whole point of his job was to create possibilities where there would otherwise seem to be none. Maybe if he’s clever—if he thinks hard enough—he can figure out a way.
He can do this, Hansol tells himself, no matter how impossible it feels. After all, if he didn’t have the ability, then he wouldn’t have been selected for the Project in the first place.
He starts with examining the engine more closely. From what he can tell, it’s a pretty classic electrostatic ion engine, the kind that had been popular about ten years before the asteroid appeared. In the one or two years beforehand, there’s been some more experimental optimizations that have become trendy to use in newer models, in order to vastly increase fuel efficiency. Hansol peeks in at all the different components of the engine and thinks that it might be possible to make a few of the changes, provided there are sufficient parts lying around in storage.
The other thing is the size of the fuel tank. For some reason, the escape pods all have truly tiny fuel tanks —probably because whoever selected them for the ship assumed that there wouldn’t be any need to use the engine except in extreme circumstances. But, based on the shape of the pod, Hansol thinks that it could be possible to combine multiple fuel tanks from different separate escape pods to construct a single, larger one.
All of these options are kind of a long shot. After all, the truth is that the pods absolutely were not designed for something like traveling between two moving ships in the vacuum of space, which means that all modifications will end up having a bit of a haphazard quality to them.
Still, Hansol thinks, at least now there’s a possibility.
Anyways, it’s good for him to have a real, meaty project to dig into. Much better to focus his mind on that then on the purposelessness of his new life on the ship. Besides, he really misses getting to make and fix things with his hands.
There’s a comforting quality to doing these kinds of repair tasks again.
With that, Hansol gets down to work.
*
“Wow,” Hansol says, staring wide-eyed out of the dashboard. “It’s getting pretty close now, isn’t it? The blue planet we were talking about.”
It’s the beginning of Hansol’s shift. In the last few weeks, he and Seungkwan had been spending more and more time peering carefully out of the dashboard, examining all the various stars and planets and other celestial bodies visible.
What Hansol discovers is that, despite all the time that he spent in space, he really knows very little about the stars and how they work. It’s all fascinating though, in its own way. Seungkwan talks to him about the compositions of stars and the different techniques that can be used to determine that composition based on colour and wavelength. He learns about the life cycle of stars, how stars gradually grow in size until they inevitably exhaust the gasses necessary for nuclear fusion and collapse under their own weight in brilliant explosions of light and dust.
Hansol thinks that he’s getting more sensitive to looking out into space, as well. He learns to distinguish between real stars and nebulae, the difference so subtle when just seen with the naked eye. He starts to make out gas and dust clouds, splotches of faintly visible gray and blue shimmering in the spaces between the stars.
Seungkwan raves to him about how much easier it is to see all of these things through proper telescopes, after which Hansol promises to ask Minghao how to use all of the different observation tools on deck.
In recent days, when looking out at the stars, it’s been hard to ignore the blue planet from before. Where once it had been a tiny speck in the distance, its grown to the size of a button, making itself easily the largest and brightest object in the sky.
“It is, isn’t it? Actually, back before Astra, I never really thought I’d be able to see whole planets like this up close. Pretty cool, huh?”
“It is.” For some reason, Hansol can’t stop looking at the planet. Something about it tugs a little at the space inside his chest. “It kind of… reminds me of something.”
“Hmm, it’s a blue planet. Could it be the Earth, maybe?”
Hansol squints a bit. The color of the Earth, its curvature, its beauty—those are things so haunting that Hansol really can never forget them. As for this planet, its color isn’t an exact match—it’s more vivid than the Earth’s, and darker—but maybe, he thinks, it’s close enough.
The reality strikes him. He’ll never be able to return back to Earth again. He sighs.
There’s a brief pause before Seungkwan speaks up. “Missing home, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“I get it. Me too.”
After that, a bit of silence stretches out. No noise emits from the comms device except for the usual brief bursts of static. Hansol finds that it’s hard to put the exact sensations in his body into words. But then again, maybe with Seungkwan, he doesn’t need to.
He sits there, lingering in the silence before it almost starts to feel a bit too oppressive.
“So, where did you live?” He decides to ask. “You know, back in the past?”
“Actually, right before I signed up for the project, I was living in Seoul for my PhD.”
“Really?” Hansol’s eyes widen. “Me too, actually.” A beat. “Well, not the PhD part, obviously. That’s just where my family lived.”
“No way! Where were you? I had an apartment unit close to Nakseongdae station.”
“Oh, hey. We must have lived pretty close, then. My family lived just a bit south of the River.”
“For real?”
“Yeah. Actually, sometimes I would go to Nakseongdae Park, just to clear my head…”
“Hah…. wait a minute. Do you think we ever ran into each other? That would be so crazy, wouldn’t it?”
Hansol stops for a moment to think. It didn’t seem so impossible at all. The park was right next to Seoul National University. It was common to pass college students whenever he visited—chatting with their friends, riding bikes, lining up for the bus stop. He tries to dredge up one of his memories of walking in the streets around the park. There's the sound of birds, the warmth of the sun shining down on his face, the usual trickles of pedestrians slowly milling to and fro. Could Seungkwan have been there, embedded in one of those clusters?
Of course, there was no way for him to actually know.
For some reason, the idea of it just starts to feel a bit strange. It would have been so easy for the two of them to have met, to have passed each other in the street without even knowing. But now? Well, now such a thing has become almost prohibitively out of reach.
“Wow. That’s really weird to think,” he responds.
“Yeah, you can say that again.” Seungkwan chuckles lightly, a soft and pleasant sound. “Actually, now that I think about it, I take it back. There’s definitely no way that happened. I mean, I think if I ever ran into someone like you, I’d definitely remember, don’t you think?”
“Um—” Hansol isn’t quite sure how to respond to that.
“I guess it’s just something interesting to think about. Did you live in Seoul all your life?”
“Nah. I was born in New York City. But yeah, I’d say I spent most of my life growing up in Seoul.”
“Wow, I can only imagine! Actually, doing my PhD was the first time I ever lived in Seoul. Before that, I was working in Busan and before that, I actually grew up on Jeju Island.”
“Jeju Island? Wow, I’ve always been meaning to go.”
“Actually, I wish you could have. It’s so beautiful there, the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived. When I was a kid, my dad owned a local tourism business…”
Prior to this conversation, Hansol’s always had some idea of what Jeju Island might have looked like. It’s a pretty image, but a two-dimensional one, one suited for a postcard or a travel ad. Now, he leans back in his chair by the cockpit and listens as Seungkwan describes his time on the island—the pools of water on the beach, the bike path in the forest behind his house, the little market on the corner that he always visited after school—and the people—his sisters, the other kids in the neighborhood, the granny at the sweets store down the road.
It all sounds so idyllic. Hansol finds himself enjoying taking in all of it until finally, the shift comes to an end.
*
As the days pass, Hansol continues to make progress on the escape pod work. After making some slightly haphazard alterations, he manages to construct the larger fuel tank and properly attach it to the pod. As for the optimizations—in the end, he struggles to find enough parts on the ship to make all the changes he had in mind, so he’s only able to make a few improvements: slightly increasing the strength of the magnetic fields and adding some basic solar panels for increased power.
The problem is that the changes aren’t as helpful as he would have hoped. After updating his calculations, he finds that the timeline for the escape pod to reach the Moonstar had decreased from four years to closer to two and a half.
Still, he tries to keep thinking of more ideas. He talks to all of his crew members and also to Seungkwan.
While all this is happening, what surprises Hansol is how quickly the blue planet grows in size. It’s strange, given how little the planet seemed to change during his first weeks on the ship. Now, day after day, the planet seems to grow in size, changing from the size of a golf ball to that of an orange within the span of a week.
There’s one day when Hansol is sitting for his night shift, staring out at the vast expanse of space, when it strikes him.
“Wait,” he says suddenly. “You know what it is?”
“Do I know what what is?” Seungkwan responds. Having him on speaker during the shift has long felt like one of the most natural things in the world.
“What it is that the planet reminds me of.”
“Oh. What does it remind you of?”
“It reminds me of—um. The Earth’s atmosphere.”
“What? Honestly, I don’t know if I understand.”
“Well, when you rise up from the surface of the Earth up into space. The atmosphere of the Earth has this beautiful deep blue colour. That’s what the planet reminds me of.”
“I see.” Seungkwan doesn’t respond for a while after that, as if taking all of it in. “Wow. That’s cool. I’ve never been in space, so I’ve never been able to see that in person.”
“Oh, right,” Hansol says. He kind of forgot that the view of Earth up from space was a pretty unusual thing for anyone to get to see.
“That must have been really beautiful, though. Being able to see the Earth like that, I mean.”
“You’re right” Talking about it, Hansol’s chest feels warm. “It was really cool.”
“You used to work at KARI, right? Were you up in space a lot, during your time there?”
Hansol smiles. “Yeah, I was. Back then, I was on a low-Earth orbit team, which basically means that we performed missions about a hundred kilometers above the Earth. Anyways, when you’re up that high and you look down at the Earth’s atmosphere, well—the color would look a little bit like this.
When Seungkwan responds, his voice sounds a little breathless. “That sounds spectacular. I wish that I'd been able to see that.”
“Who knows? We’re going to be passing through lots of different areas and planets on our journey, right? Maybe one day we’ll get close enough to a planet that you can.”
“Hm, yeah you’re right! It’s possible! It’d have to be a planet with an Earth-like atmosphere though… maybe I can check the maps.”
“Yeah.” Hansol hesitates for a moment. Then—”Hey, do you know if this planet has a name?”
Seungkwan clicks his tongue. “I don’t think so? I mean, we never discovered this planet back on Earth, so—unless Minghao or one of the previous navigators on the ships named it, then probably not.”
“Oh.”
“Well, that just means that it’s up to us to give it a name, right? Anything you have in mind?”
“Huh. How do people usually name planets, though? In English, they’re like… named after the Gods or something, right?”
“Yeah, the English names for planets in the Solar System are all based on Roman Gods. I mean, after that, the IAU had rules and processes for how to name other planets that we discovered, but—right now, the only people observing the planet are the crew members of the two ships, right? So there’s no one to argue with us if we want to name it whatever we want.”
“Hmm… maybe I’ll name it Big And Blue.”
“Uh.” Seungkwan takes a sharp breath in. “Okay, no. I’m going to veto that.”
“Oh, do we need a Roman name, maybe?”
“Okay, it doesn’t have to be Roman, it just has to be—not that. We could do Latin, though. How do you say ‘blue’ in Latin again…? It’s, uh, caeruleus, I think.”
“Caeruleus.” Hansol repeats the word a couple of times, feeling the shape of it on his tongue. “That’s not a bad name. A bit hard to say, though.”
Seungkwan responds to that by humming for a long time. “We could try something else. I wonder…. Actually, the word for blue in Latin was actually derived from the word for ‘the sky’—caelum. Maybe that fits a little. It matches what you were saying, right? About the colour of the atmosphere.”
“Wow! That sounds perfect. Yeah.”
“Alright! Let’s do it. In that case, I’m going to write it down right here in the computer’s star map, and then it’ll be official.”
Hansol looks carefully back at the planet. “Caelum. Actually, I think I like that name a lot.”
*
“Hey Hansol,” says Seungkwan, about a week later. “You know what?”
By now, Caelum has grown so large that it’s impossible to see the whole planet looking out of the dashboard. From Hansol’s position by the cockpit, only about half of it is visible, the rest of it obscured by the walls of the command deck.
“What?”
“I realized that I talked a lot about my life before the asteroid, but not a lot about yours.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t know. I feel like there’s not a lot to talk about.”
“What do you mean? Chwe Hansol, of course there’s a lot to talk about! I mean, you worked at KARI, didn’t you? You were literally doing missions in space.”
“Uh, well yeah. I guess.”
“So? What was it like? Do you miss it?”
“Hm, I don’t know. I guess it was nice.”
“It was nice? It was just nice? So you’re literally spending your day to day working in space and living out the dreams of millions of little kids everywhere and all you can say is that it’s nice?”
“It’s—” Hansol smiles. Maybe he was underselling it a bit. “Okay, yeah. It was really cool. It was definitely a privilege.”
“So, you said that you were a low-Earth orbit specialist?”
“That’s right. Well, the team that I was on was specifically assigned to work on the space elevators. These elevators would go all the way up hundreds of kilometers above the Earth, connecting up to where the space stations are and stuff. So we did our missions like that.”
“That’s cool! That sounds so spectacular.”
“I liked it. It was calming, being up there. And I guess—how do you say this? It felt like I was doing something important. There weren’t a lot of people in the world capable of doing that kind of work, but I was one of them. I think that’s what made me feel proud.”
“Wow…” Seungkwan’s voice grows a tad softer, harder to read. “I can’t imagine. How it feels to be useful like that.”
Hansol hesitates for a moment before responding. “I don’t know about that. Don’t you think being part of the Astra Project is useful?”
Seungkwan takes a deep breath ink, then exhales. “No, you’re right. It is. Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
Seungkwan doesn’t respond immediately. Hansol lets it be, allowing the silence to wash over him. He thinks that Seungkwan will respond when he’s ready to. No need to rush.
After what feels like a long time passes, Seungkwan eventually speaks up. His voice is quiet. “So then, tell me. What was it like, working up in space?”
“It’s, well. It’s hard to explain. It’s really exciting being up there but also, it’s kind of calming? It’s so quiet and so sparse. It’s really easy to focus. Easier than on Earth, I guess.”
“That sounds really nice.” Hansol can almost hear the smile behind Seungkwan’s voice.
“It is. I think that’s why I wanted to sign up for the Astra Project. There’s a lot of things I’m not suited for, but when it comes to being in space, well. That’s something I can do, you know.”
“I get that.” There’s a sense of excitement, reverberating in Seungkwan’s voice. “I really get that. I know what you mean. Me too.”
“Yeah,” Hansol breathes out. “We did it. We’re here now.”
He reaches out and presses his hand against the dashboard, so that his fingers are brushing along the curved arc of Caelum’s perimeter. The touch of it feels cool and refreshing.
After that, it’s back to silence. Hansol doesn’t quite mind it though. There’s something nice to being able to share that sense of understanding without needing to say a word.
It’s a few hours later when Hansol finally finishes up with his shift. He exchanges his usual goodbyes with Seungkwan before ending the call. Then, he starts his usual routine of checking each of the different display panels in the cockpit.
When he gets to the radar monitor, he can’t help but stop. Something about the map looks a bit off.
He squints at the panel a bit longer. It looks like the distance between the Moonstar and the Hikaru is a little larger than usual. It’s not so much to be concerned about anything, he figures. It’s probably nothing.
*
After that, Hansol hands off his shift to Junhui and heads back to his cabin to go to sleep.
Compared to his first few days on the ship, Hansol’s sleep is much better these days. He gets into bed, enjoying the snug feeling of burrowing into his sheets before slowly drifting off.
*
Hansol is woken up by the sound of sirens blasting through the speaker in his cabin.
The sound of them is loud, enough so that it immediately starts to cause Hansol’s head to ache. He reaches up and rubs his temple. That’s when the unmistakable sound of Seungcheol’s voice comes bellowing through the speakers. “All members of the Hikaru crew. Please come to the command deck. There’s been an emergency.”
The words hit Hansol like a bucket of freezing water. Even though he’s barely awake, even though his mind feels groggy with sleep, he tries his best to throw on some appropriate-looking clothes and then rushes out of his cabin.
He barely gets to start making his way down the hall when he runs into a wide-eyed Chan.
“What’s going on?” Hansol asks immediately, shouting to be heard over the sirens.
“I have no clue. Let’s get going.”
Chan barely finishes speaking before Seungcheol’s voice rings out again. “All members of the Hikaru crew. Please come to the command deck. It looks like the Moonstar is experiencing navigational issues.”
*
Immediately, Chan and Hansol make their way to the command deck.
When Hansol opens the door, he sees that the rest of the crew has already gathered. Seungcheol is standing at the cockpit, leaning over the comms system with a strained look on his face, with Soonyoung close by. Not far away, Mingyu, Minghao and Junhui sit in an awkward semi-circle. Minghao looks strikingly poised for the situation whereas Junhui looks distracted, fiddling with some cables by the counter. Meanwhile, Mingyu doesn’t seem alright at all, all scrunched up in his chair with his head in his hands.
“What’s the situation?” Chan asks immediately, as they walk in.
“Looks like Moonstar-I is drifting off course,” Minghao says, in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. “They’re experiencing some sort of navigation issue. We’re getting the debrief from Moonstar’s crew now.” He gestures over to Seungcheol and Soonyoung’s position by the comms system.
A small burst of static comes through the speaker, followed by a voice that Hansol doesn’t recognize.
“I noticed the problem when I was on watch. It was—it was a bit less than three hours ago. When I checked the navigation system, it looked kind of like the ship was veering off course. To be honest, I wasn’t completely sure, but after a bit, it did start to seem a little scary, which is when I woke up Jihoon—”
“Yeah,” another voice cuts in—a firmer, more monotone one. Jihoon’s voice. “Seokmin was right. When I arrived, I checked the ship’s course and it was off. After that, we found out that the radiation pressure measurements on the solar sail were off, much lower than expected. Which is why we think the issue is that the sail must have sustained damage somehow.”
“I see,” Seungcheol responds, tense. “Do we have an idea how the damage was sustained?”
“We do.” Jihoon’s voice again. “Seungkwan had a theory.”
“Yes!” The next voice that comes filtering out is unmistakably Seungkwan’s. The cadence of his voice sounds different somehow—a bit stiffer, a bit more formal—but still. Upon hearing it, Hansol can’t help but feel himself becoming a little calmer, despite the situation. “I’ve, um, been checking all of the logs of our radar and sensor measurements. What we’re seeing is that Moonstar entered an area with high concentration of space debris around that time frame. There are some objects—asteroids or something—that came close enough to the ship. It all kind of suggests that there might have been some collision with the solar sail, damaging the solar in the process? That’s the main theory I’ve got, at least.”
“But it’s just space debris, right?” Soonyoung says. “Isn’t the whole point that the sail’s supposed to withstand impacts like that?”
“Well, Moonstar’s sail hasn’t undergone maintenance or repair in over sixty years,” Seungkwan says. “I was talking to Jihoon and our best guess is that the collision occurred at a site that may have already sustained damage.”
Seungcheol presses a hand to his forehead. “So, the issue is that Moonstar-I is no longer able to maintain course?”
“Basically,” Jihoon responds. “We have some fuel in the reserves, which we can use to make small-scale maneuvers. But without the solar sail intact, we won’t have enough propulsion to do any kind of long distance travel.”
“I see.” A slight pause. Seungcheol curls his lip. “Jeonghan. What are your thoughts?”
A new voice comes filtering through the comms system. The voice is soft, with a bit of a lilting cadence. “It’s—unfortunate, but it’s our reality now, isn’t it?” The voice sighs. It takes a moment for Hansol to realize that it must be the voice of Moonstar’s captain. “There’s nothing we can do but try to fix it. Which we will. Jihoon has already volunteered to try to go out onto the sail and investigate. We have all the tools on the ship available to repair. We’ll just have to do what we can.”
“What do you mean?” Soonyoung shouts out. “But Jihoon doesn’t have the kind of training to do extravehicular repairs.”
“Right. None of us do,” Jeonghan responds. “But what else can we do?”
“We have some training manuals here for the tools and gears involved,” Jihoon adds. “I’ll take a look at them.”
“Maybe one of Hansol or I can walk you through it,” Chan speaks up suddenly. “It—should be possible with guidance. Maybe—maybe it can work.”
“No.” Despite how soft Jeonghan’s voice is, there’s a decisiveness to the words that shocks Hansol. “Based on the current travel trajectory, it’ll only be twenty-four more hours before Hikaru-II travels out of range for communications with Moonstar-I. That’s too soon to prepare for this mission by. You need to continue on the mission. Our crew—we’ll take care of handling the issue on our end.”
“What is this?” Soonyoung’s voice is shaking. “You’re saying you’ll fix the issue, you’ll say you’ll handle it, but will you? Why does this just sound like giving up?”
“Soonyoung,” Seungcheol warns. His words sound firm, but they’re betrayed by how pale his face looks.
There’s a long silence before anyone else speaks.
Finally, Jeonghan’s voice comes filtering back through the system. “There’s no other way. If Jihoon can’t complete the mission, then we’ll wake up frozen crew members until someone can.”
“If Jihoon can’t complete the mission?” Soonyoung bangs his fist on the cockpit. “What—what are you implying?”
“Soonyoung,” Seungcheol says again. “Break it off. Jeonghan, I think we need more consideration here before committing to this decision. I also need to consult with my crew. Let’s take a breather here and then reconvene.”
“Alright,” Jeonghan replies. “Let’s pick up in an hour?”
“Let’s.”
*
Afterwards, Seungcheol calls Minghao, Soonyoung and Chan to have a strategy meeting in the captain’s quarters, leaving the rest of the crew to entertain themselves according to their own devices.
Hansol spends some of the time pacing around the halls near the command deck.
He can’t help but feel restless. The whole incident had happened so suddenly.
Of course, like Soonyoung, he understands the implications of Jeonghan’s plan. It should be obvious to anyone with spacecraft experience that repairing solar sail damage extensive enough to impede navigation—that wouldn’t be an easy task at all, even for someone with years of training and experience. For someone like Jihoon, who doesn’t even have that… well, the odds of success seemed slim enough that they were barely worth bringing up.
And if Jihoon can’t fix it, what then?
Suddenly, Hansol is struck with the stark image of the Moonstar-I, drifting off into space. Without the sail intact, there really isn’t any conceivable way for them to finish their journey to Pomona. The crew members, the remaining frozen passengers, Seungkwan—sure, the ship might have enough supplies to support themselves, but still. Their lives would be forfeit.
A shiver runs down Hansol’s spine.
The first thing he thinks about is Seungkwan.
Seungkwan—
For some reason, it starts to feel like maybe there’s no point thinking about the question more without talking to Seungkwan. He needs—he needs to consult Seungkwan.
Before he knows it, Hansol finds himself pacing back into the command deck and walking all the way up to the comms system.
There’s no one else in the command deck.
It’s a long shot, Hansol thinks, but whatever. He flips the comms system back on.
“Uh, hello? Hikaru-II. Ship mechanic Chwe Hansol speaking.”
“Ah, um, hello there.” The voice that responds is loud and shaky. “I don’t think we’ve met, but I’m Lee Seokmin. Um. The captain and Jihoon aren’t here right now, they’re busy—”
“That’s okay. Is Boo Seungkwan there?”
Some shuffling sounds. “Yes. He’s right here.”
“He’s not busy, is he?”
“I’m not.” This time, it’s Seungkwan’s voice that answers. “What is it?”
“Oh, it’s—” Suddenly, something about his desire to talk to Seungkwan starts to feel a bit embarrassing. Hansol swallows but tries to proceed regardless. “It’s nothing. I guess I just wanted to check how you’re doing.”
“Oh. Okay,” Seungkwan says. “Actually, that’s—that’s kind of funny, isn’t it. I was kind of actually thinking it might be nice to talk to you right now. Ha ha, isn’t that weird? I—”
It’s a bit of a shock hearing Seungkwan like this, sounding so different from his professional and confident tone just moments ago. “Seungkwan. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. Ah, don’t worry, I’m okay.” Despite his words, Seungkwan sounds notably shakier than Hansol’s ever heard him before. “I’m really fine. Just give me a moment to catch my breath.”
“Okay.”
“It’s pretty crazy, right?”
“Yeah. How are you all holding up over there?”
“We’re—um. We’re holding up. We’re as okay as we can be, given the circumstances. It’s just—Jeonghan and Jihoon seem really firm on having Jihoon go out to fix the problem, which—I don’t know. I don’t know what we’re going to do. I wish there was something the rest of us could do to help. I just really hate how useless I feel right now. That’s all.”
Something about those words causes Hansol’s chest to hurt. “No. You’re not useless.”
“Hah. Are you really gonna say that? We’re on the brink of exiting out of the mission and you’re still going to say that?”
The bitterness in Seungkwan’s voice surprises Hansol. Still, he decides to persist. “You’re not useless. You found out the reason why the sail got damaged.”
“Yeah, but is that going to fix anything, though? What’s the point of knowing anything if you can’t do anything about it?”
Hansol swallows. He’s not sure how to properly retort against that.
“Despite everything, I can’t help but wonder,” Seungkwan continues. “What if instead of me, they put another mechanic on the ship? What if instead of taking out one of the mechanics on board, the electrical failure took out my pod instead. No matter how you put it, that would have been better for everyone, right?”
Hansol can feel his brow furrowing. He shakes his head. It doesn’t matter that no one’s there to see it. “Seungkwan, no. You don’t mean that.”
“I—” Seungkwan pauses, then gives a sigh. “Sorry. Sorry. I shouldn’t be lashing out at you. But it’s true though, right? I mean, you saw my tape. I’m just a PhD student. I don’t even have any real job experience.”
“Um,” Hansol says.
“Like, if you were the Astra Project board, why would you have chosen me? Shouldn’t it have been obvious from the interview that there isn’t much for me to contribute?”
“Uh.” Hansol says again. He can feel the sweat pooling on his neck. This is actually really, really bad. He debates for a moment about if he should try to lie and make something up, then figures that Seungkwan would probably be able to see through it anyways. He closes his eyes, readies himself and then says, “I—uh. The truth is that… I actually never watched your interview tape.”
There’s a long stretch of silence before Seungkwan responds. “What?”
“Um. I think it’s just… I thought you told me not to watch it. So I didn’t.”
“Chwe Hansol! Excuse me? Are you being serious?”
“Well—”
“You’re saying we’ve been talking for this long, and you still haven’t been interested enough in me to watch my interview tape? Oh my god. Oh my god, what’s the point anymore?”
In that moment, Hansol feels like sinking through the floor. He feels like disappearing forever.
How can Seungkwan call himself useless when Hansol is this level of stupid?
Hansol’s mouth feels so dry. Still, he tries to force himself to speak. “Did you watch my tape, then?”
“Yeah! Obviously! Like, literally right after the first time we met.”
“Oh.”
“Oh my god, I can’t—I can’t do this. I’m going to sit down for a bit, Hansol. I’m—”
With that, the comms cut out, leaving Hansol standing there in silence.
*
Hansol feels his face heating up as he paces out of the command deck.
He messed up. It was such a critical time, and Seungkwan had been… depending on him and yet, he still messed it all up.
He walks down the hallway as fast as he can before breaking into a run. He tries his best to ignore all of the meaningless thoughts and the churning sensation in his stomach and the way the skin on his back tingles with sweat. Outside the windows of the spaceship, Caelum hovers. It looks large and blue and brilliant. Hansol tries his best to focus on it, to let the beauty of the sight sink in and wipe away all of the stressful feelings.
It’s okay, he tells himself. He can fix this. He’s always been good at fixing things.
Before he knows it, he arrives back in this room. He spares only the quickest glance at the sunset outside his artificial window, before reaching into his topmost drawer to fish out his tablet.
He takes a deep breath, then navigates to Boo Seungkwan’s interview video.
The video pops up immediately. Hansol peers carefully at the image of Seungkwan, the same one that he had looked at back when he first met the man. In it, Seungkwan looks so bright and carefree with his chestnut coloured hair, in his smart blazer and big, round glasses. For some reason, something about it evokes a different feeling than the one Hansol had when he first watched it. Hansol reaches out a finger and touches the screen, brushing his finger against the side of Seungkwan’s face.
He wishes—there’s a lot of things that he wishes for.
He shakes his head. None of that matters now. What matters is watching the video.
He presses play. Immediately, the Seungkwan on the screen starts to move.
Hansol’s first impression of the video is that it feels both strange and familiar all at the same time. The way Seungkwan sits, the expressions on his face, the way he gestures when he talks—all of those are new. At the same time, when he starts to speak, the cadence of his voice feels as recognizable as the back of Hansol’s hand.
As the video starts, a woman’s voice comes in from off-screen. “Please state your name, age and occupation.”
Seungkwan on the screen nods, over-eager, eyes opening just a little wider as he speaks. “My name is Boo Seungkwan. Age 32. I’m currently a PhD student at Seoul National University, studying astronomy and planetary science.”
“I see.” The sound of a pen scribbling on a noteboard. “What inspired your interest in astronomy?”
Seungkwan shifts a little from side to side, then a small smile spreads out on his face. “It’s just—it’s always been my passion. When I was a kid, I used to play around a lot with my dad’s telescope, looking out at the planets, looking out at the stars. Back then, I used to think that it was so magical that there were these huge and mystical bodies out there, so far away that they were impossible for anyone to see or touch or understand.” An exhale. “But then, I discovered that there were these people whose whole jobs were to look through telescopes and try to touch and understand the stars. Astronomers, basically! So, that’s why…”
“I see.” More scribbling.
Hansol watches closely as Seungkwan answers the questions. Through the interview, Seungkwan’s expression shifts, from pleasant nods when discussing his colleagues at SNU to an intense look of concentration when considering an intense technical question. Whenever it comes to discussing astronomy itself, Seungkwan’s demeanor lights up with excitement in a way that never fails to cause Hansol’s chest to tighten.
The way that Seungkwan looks, the way that he talks—none of it is necessarily what Hansol would have expected, but all of it feels so suiting for him.
Suddenly, Hansol can’t help but feel conscious of an empty feeling inside of him.
If the sail remained broken—if the Hikaru were to continue on its trajectory without the Moonstar, then what would that mean for the both of them?
Hansol can’t stand lingering on the thought of it.
The interview continues.
“Interesting,” says the woman’s voice. “Next question. Why would you like to volunteer for the Astra Project?”
“That’s—” Seungkwan looks down for a moment, then snaps back up to attention. “I think for me, it’s all about hope. It’s—everything is really scary right now, with all the news, and the meteor. It really does feel like the world is going to end, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.” He pauses for a moment, biting his lip, lost in thought. “Maybe it’s true. But I guess, for me, I can’t help but think—it’s worth it to try. It’s worth it to hope.”
Hansol blinks, staring carefully at the screen. There’s something magnetic about Seungkwan’s presence in the moment, something about how bright his eyes look and how straight he sits in his chair. For some reason, Hansol just can’t look away.
“There’s always a chance,” Seungkwan continues. “There’s always a chance. And for me, I believe the Astra Project will be humanity’s best chance.”
“Huh,” says the woman. “Wow.”
There’s still twenty minutes left in the interview, but Hansol decides to pause the video to give himself some time to think. He ends up lying in bed, on top of his crumpled mass of blankets and sheets. He takes a deep breath.
After watching the clip, it feels so, so clear to him why Seungkwan was chosen for the mission.
He thinks about the latch to the escape pods in the airlock; about the feeling of being up in space on the mast of the solar sail; of Caelum shining brilliantly blue, looming so large and so commanding over the dashboard of the cockpit.
At that moment, Hansol feels sure of it.
He can hold onto hope. He can create that chance. He can try.
None of these things were out of his reach.
*
When Hansol returns to the command deck, it’s just a little before the original planned time to reconvene.
When he enters, he sees that Seungcheol and his group had already returned, gathering by the front of the deck. Seungcheol sits on a stool by the cockpit with a hand on his forehead. Soonyoung stands on the completely opposite side of the cockpit, far enough from Seungcheol that it looks like a deliberate decision. He doesn’t look angry anymore though, just stressed. Closer to the entrance, Chan looks engaged in conversation with Minghao, the two of them hunched over a large pamphlet with a schematic of what looks like Hikaru-II’s solar sail.
Standing there on the periphery of it all, Hansol can feel the sweat forming on his palms.
He can do it, he whispers to himself. He whispers it over and over again.
A few minutes later, Junhui enters the command deck, using his arms to support a pointedly pale-looking Mingyu. Purely by accident, Hansol makes direct eye contact with Junhui. Then, for some reason, Junhui flashes a weirdly tentative looking thumbs-up.
Hansol returns the gesture.
After that, it’s time for the meeting to start. Seungcheol stands up and makes his way to the comms unit, turning it on.
“Incoming. Captain Choi Seungcheol from Hikaru-II speaking.”
The comms unit hums, bursting with static. “Received. Captain Yoon Jeonghan from Moonstar-I here. How were the discussions?”
“Productive,” Seungcheol says firmly. Hansol thinks that he looks tall and confident. There isn’t any trace of the doubt that he had seen in Seungcheol even moments before the call started. “I discussed the options with my crew. I would like to propose delaying Hikaru-II’s voyage for as long as necessary so that our mechanic on board, Chan, can provide assistance while your crew members attempt to repair the sail.”
“Absolutely not.” Jeonghan’s response comes immediately.
Seungcheol’s frowns. “Jeonghan. It’s our best possible chance for success.”
After that, Jeonghan speaks up again, responding to that with more argumentation. Hansol’s pretty sure that’s what happens, at least. It’s not one hundred percent certainty anymore since he’s kind of stopped paying attention to the exchange, instead focusing attention on himself and the feeling of his heart, jackhammering in his chest.
He needs to speak up.
“Um,” he forces himself to say. “May I have permission to interject?”
Everyone in the room swerves their heads to look at him. Seungcheol’s face is slightly flushed, but there’s a certain sort of gentleness in that he glances at Hansol. “Permission granted.”
Hansol swallows. “I wonder. Maybe there’s another option. It might be possible for me to go to the Moonstar. After all, I’m a mechanic. If I can make it over, then I really believe that I’d be well equipped to help with the issue.”
After that, there’s a brief moment of silence.
Finally, Hansol hears the muffled sound of hushed conversation come through the comms speaker, soft and indistinct enough that he needs to focus his mind in order to decipher it at all.
“Wait, is it bad for me to ask? Who’s that speaking?” It takes Hansol a moment to identify the speaker as Seokmin—Moonstar’s botanist.
“It’s Chwe Hansol.” Hansol feels his body jerk. It’s Seungkwan’s voice. “Their new mechanic on board. You know, the one from KARI.”
“Oh, you mean the one that you said was really handso—ah!” A smacking sound rings out.
There’s more silence after that, this time noticeably more awkward.
The first person to break the silence is Seungcheol. He furrows his brow as he speaks. “I think we need more information about this suggestion. How do you propose traveling to the Moonstar?”
Hansol bites his lip. This would have been much better if he had a real plan but he doesn’t. Still, he thinks it’s worth it to at least bring up the possibility. “It’s not that I have a proposal or anything but—I think it could be possible. I’ve been looking into how to do it using one of the escape pods in the airlock.”
“That’s—” Seungcheol puts a hand against his temple. “Is that really possible?”
Jihoon’s voice speaks up from comms device. “We don’t have a lot of options at the moment. This seems worth considering, at least.”
“Hansol, What kind of investigation have you been doing?” Seungcheol asks.
“Well, I think as long as we can do it at the right angle, it should be possible to eject the escape pod in a way that gets into the vicinity of the Moonstar. Then at that point, I can use rocket thrusters to guide my way to the exterior of the ship.”
“Interesting. That does sound plausible.”
“Right,” Hansol continues. “There’s a big problem though. I’ve been doing some tinkering on the engineer and the fuel tank but given how it is, there’s a limit on the velocity that the pod will reach. Which means, if we just use the pods as is, it’ll take a really long time for me to finally reach the Moonstar.”
Seungcheol is looking at him with an intent expression. “Do we have an estimate for how long the journey will take?”
“Currently? Less than three years.” Hansol bites his lip. He can’t help looking down at the ground. “I’ve been trying to think of a way to speed it up, but—I don’t know. If we can’t think of one, maybe it’s still worth giving it a try. If we bring enough food and water in the pod, maybe—”
“That—” Jeonghan’s lilting voice comes floating out of the comms system. “That’s inspiring. I’m inspired by your dedication to trying to help. Chwe Hansol, I don’t think we’ve met before but as the captain of Moonstar-I, I’m pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Hansol says.
“Here’s the thing, Chwe Hansol. For all of us here on the Moonstar, our lives are already at risk. But that’s not true for you. If you stay on the Hikaru, you’ll be okay but if you go through with this plan, there’s really no guarantee what will happen. That’s why, as captain, I can’t approve.”
“But there’s hundreds of people on your ship,” Hansol says. “Even if it takes three years, even if it’s risky—maybe it’s worth it.”
“Jeonghan, I do think it’s worth considering,” Seungcheol interjects.
“Is it?” Jeonghan fires back. “It’s obviously a longshot.”
In that moment, there’s a sharp and muffled sound that filters through the comms speaker. It’s the sound of someone clearing their throat.
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be a longshot?”
With a start, Hansol realizes that it’s Seungkwan’s voice speaking.
“Maybe it doesn’t have to take three years. Maybe it can take a lot shorter time than that.”
“What do you mean?” Seungcheol asks.
“It’s just—I have an idea.”
“What’s your idea, Seungkwan?” Hansol asks.
“Alright. Let me explain, then. Right now, the trajectory of the ships happen to be passing very close to Caelum—um, I mean, this blue planet that we all see here. What I was thinking is that, if we fly close enough, we can enter the planet’s gravitational field. I need to do some calculations to get the exact timing but—as long as we position the two ships properly, we should be able to use that field to significantly increase the acceleration of the escape pod.”
“Hm. Is that possible at the moment?” Jeonghan asks. “We can hardly navigate the Moonstar if our solar sail is torn.”
“It’ll be challenging.” Jihoon’s voice interjects. “But there’s still some reserve fuel available. It’ll take some precision but I may be able to handle it. There’s another problem, though. If I remember correctly, the escape pods only eject in a single direction. Which means that we’ll also needaprecision in terms of positioning the Hikaru-II for you to get anywhere in the vicinity of our ship.”
At that, Soonyoung jerks to attention, then paces directly to the counter with the comms system and grabs the mic. “Hm, are you saying that you doubt my skills, Jihoon? That kind of thing isn’t a problem at all for a badass star pilot.”
“Touché,” Jihoon’s reply comes immediately. “Of course not. Alright, let’s do it then.”
“I see,” Jeonghan says. “So, it sounds like this plan could actually be plausible, then? Any other opinions… Minghao?”
“It sounds plausible to me,” Minghao says.
“Same here,” Soonyoung follows up.
“Well, what do you know,” Seungcheol says. “It sounds like this could very well be our best bet.”
*
“Alright,” Jeonghan says. “Guess we’re all set then. Is everyone ready?”
When Hansol glances at the time on the cockpit display, it shows that a whole hour has passed. Despite that, it felt to him that things proceeded in the blink of an eye, given how bustling and fast-paced the rest of the discussion had been.
“We’re ready,” Seungcheol says, standing beside him in the cockpit.
“Sounds good. We’ll get back in contact once the preparations are ready. Hansol?”
“Yes!” Hansol stands at attention.
“Looking forward to seeing you soon. Good luck.”
Hansol nods. Something about the words feel surreal to him. On one side of the command deck, Minghao has wheeled in a big whiteboard from somewhere or another, starting to draw some diagrams, interspersed with incomprehensible looking equations. Slowly, Soonyoung drifts over. Hansol watches as the two exchange words, their conversation soft enough that he can’t really make it out.
When Hansol looks at the other side of the deck, he sees Mingyu walking straight towards him, with Jun following behind him.
Mingyu’s face is still a shade paler than usual and Hansol swears that his eyes look just a little red. Still, standing there beside Hansol, the man looks confident and proud.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” he says. “I mean, it’s good you are, it’s just—wow. We’re cheering for you.”
“Thanks.” Hansol bows his head, a little sheepish.
“No matter what happens, you’re a hero,” Jun adds.
“Thanks,” Hansol says again. It occurs to him that maybe he should say something else too, to avoid sounding like a broken record. “I had a good time working with you both,” he says. “I really did.”
Mingyu reaches to clasp Hansol on the shoulder. “Yeah. Same. We’ll miss you.”
*
After that, Hansol makes his way around the command deck, saying his goodbyes to the rest of the crew.
He’s not so surprised when Soonyoung ends up pulling him into a huge, full-body hug, but he is when Seungcheol does the same. Afterwards, Mingyu comes running up, apparently regretful that he didn’t get in on the hugging action earlier, and then the three of them kind of end up in a piled-on group hug. Afterwards, Minghao gives him a warmhearted but polite nod and Jun sends him off with a pat on the back.
All the time, Chan hovers in the periphery, waiting.
It’s only after all of the farewells are done that he finally speaks up. “Hey, hyung. Let me walk you to the airlock. You’ll need some help with putting the suit on, won’t you?”
“Yeah,” Hansol says. Something inside of him feels thankful but poignant.
The two of them walk through the spaceship hallways in silence before getting to the airlock.
After they get in, it’s time for Hansol to suit up. He puts on the underlayers by himself, then lets Chan help him get into the suit. Working carefully, the two of them attach and check all of the necessary suit components.
“Testing,” Hansol says into his communications radio, once it’s clipped in, then nods in relief when he hears the audio crackle out through Chan’s own radio.
“Alright,” Chan says, once all of it is complete. “It’s been a good one.”
“Yeah,” says Hansol. “It’s been good getting to see you again.”
He doesn’t quite know what else to say. He’ll miss Chan when it’s over, he thinks.
Chan leans over to rest his hand on Hansol’s arm. There’s a warm look in Chan’s eyes. “Don’t look so down, okay? We’ll still be able to talk whenever, once you’re on the other side.”
“Right. That’s true. We’ll still talk.”
“We will.”
Chan pulls him into a hug. Once it’s over, he gives Hansol a final pat on the arm and with that, it’s time for him to leave the airlock.
Hansol sighs. Finally, he’s all alone. He straps himself onto the panel by the controls—mostly because why not?—then reaches over to pull the lever to disengage gravity and begin decompression.
For the first part of the decompression, Hansol finds himself left to his own devices, lying there in silence as the disorientating feelings wash over him. Then, after maybe thirty minutes or so, Hansol’s comms device lets out a big burst of static, before Seungkwan’s voice comes ringing out, loud and clear.
“Hansol! Ah, how are you? Are you doing okay?”
“I’m—yes. I’m good,” Hansol responds. “Just, y’know, decompressing.”
“Okay. So, my crew and I were talking about it beforehand and we decided that I should be the one to manage comms with you during this mission. Uh—I just wanted to make sure that that’s all okay with you?”
Despite everything, Hansol can’t stop himself from chuckling. In what world would it not be okay? “Of course. I mean, I wouldn’t have anyone else do it.”
“Uh. What does that mean, Chwe Hansol?”
“You know,” Hansol says, before pausing. For some reason, his face feels hot.
Seungkwan clears his throat. There’s something a little hesitant about the delivery of it. Hansol finds himself wondering what kind of expression could be on his face. “Anyways, in that case, let me get you up to date with the current status of the mission. Minghao and I were able to calculate the best positions for the two ships, now we’re just waiting for Jihoon and Soonyoung to maneuver the ships into place. It looks like the Hikaru is getting pretty close to the target location, but, well, due to the issues with the sail, on Moonstar’s end, we’re having a bit more trouble maneuvering. I’ll keep you updated when it’s ready.”
“Cool. Sounds good.” Then, after a bit—”Wow. Feeling formal today, right?”
“Oh my god. Look, it was so awkward last time we talked. I’m just—I’m just trying to deal with my embarrassment, okay?”
“It’s okay. I don’t mind it if you’re formal.”
“Ugh.”
“By the way,” Hansol brings up. “I watched your interview tape. Right between our meetings, I watched it.”
“Oh…” Seungkwan’s voice seems to recede inside itself. “Ugh, you know what? Can we just forget about me asking you that? Sorry, I was just… in a weird headspace.”
“Oh, okay. I guess I’ll just say this. I’m glad they put you on this mission. I think they absolutely made the right call.”
Seungkwan makes a weird sound from the back of his throat. “Thanks.”
After that, it takes a bit longer for the airlock to fully finish decompressing. Once it does, Hansol unstraps himself. Floating in the air, he uses the walls to make his way to the escape pods. He yanks open the latch and, for the first time, lets himself in. The pod is small and cramped, really only a tiny padded seat and control panel encased in layers of metal. There’s barely enough space for him to fully lie down. Hansol sucks it up and makes himself comfortable.
“How is the positioning going?” He asks.
“We’re getting close. Soon,” Seungkwan responds.
Sitting there in the pod with nothing else to do, it feels like time is stretching out, long and endless. Hansol can barely keep track of how much more time passes until he hears Seungkwan’s voice filtering again through the speakers.
“Alright. We’re in position. Prepare to eject.”
“Understood.”
Hansol reaches over to the control panel and presses the correct button and then, in a moment, he’s hurdling out into the void.
*
After that, Hansol finds himself all alone in space.
Outside the windows of his pod, all he can see is that familiar empty darkness and then the endless lattice of stars, drifting slowly around him. Out in the distance, he can see Caelum, its size so large that it eclipses everything else in sight.
Suddenly, the gravity of everything he’s doing hits him all at once.
He’s really out there in space. It’s really true that he’ll likely never be able to return to Hikaru again. If he isn’t able to do his job and fix the Moonstar’s sail, then everything will really be over for him.
Suddenly, it almost feels like the weight of it is too much for him to bear.
“Seungkwan,” he says suddenly. “Are you still there?”
“Yeah,” Seungkwan’s voice comes in through his receiver. Hansol is struck by how warm and familiar it feels. “I’m here.”
“Can you… tell me something about yourself?” Hansol says. “I don’t know. Maybe a story or something like that?”
Seungkwan exhales. There’s a fondness to it. “Yeah, of course! Um… let me think of a good one…”
He launches into a recounting of a story in childhood of going to the beach with his family. Both of his sisters had been stronger swimmers and Seungkwan found himself struggling with all his might to catch up to them. Hansol doesn’t say anything during the whole exchange, happy just to listen, to let the words wash over him.
Once the story is over, Seungkwan pauses for a moment before starting another one, then another. There’s one about his uncle, visiting his family for the first time in years and Seungkwan mistaking him for a stranger. One about him and his friends during their undergraduate days, sneaking out of the student dorms past curfew in order to catch the sunset.
There are so many stories. Hansol’s not sure how many hours pass, but he’s sure it must be a lot. It must be hard for Seungkwan, he thinks, to talk non-stop for so long, but if it is, Seungkwan makes no indication of it. Hansol listens and watches slowly as the distant black dot grows bigger and bigger and starts to reveal all sorts of details—ridges and boosters and of course, the massive golden solar sail.
Finally, the ship grows large enough that only a fraction of it is visible behind the window. That’s when Seungkwan stops mid-story and takes a deep breath.
“Hansol,” he says. “You’re getting really close to the Moonstar. Our measurements indicate that collision will occur within the hour, so you need to make sure to eject before then.”
Hansol takes a deep breath in. “Okay.”
“Um. I’ll still be on the line the whole time but I just wanted to say. Good luck. I’ll… be seeing you?”
“Yeah,” Hansol says. “I’ll see you soon.”
*
Right before it’s time for Hansol to eject himself from the pod, he takes some time to center himself and think. He closes his eyes and tries to really visualize it—his mom, the sunlight filtering through her hair in his morning as she packed his school lunches; his sister and his dad and his grandma, laughing and bantering at the kitchen table; his crew back at KARI, all of them suiting up together in the space station in anticipation of a mission.
Those were the people that he had in mind when he first signed up for the Astra Project. He thinks that he’ll do this mission for them.
Then, he takes a moment to think about all the people he knows aboard the Moonstar. He thinks of Jeonghan, his voice soft yet commanding; Jihoon, his directness and his firm manner of speaking; even Seokmin, though Hansol’s only heard him speak a couple of times. There must be some other crew members that he still hasn’t met yet, as well as the five hundred and twenty eight passengers who still remained frozen.
He thinks about Seungkwan. The only real image of him he has is of the man in the interview tape—the chestnut coloured hair, the round glasses, the warm smile.
That’s right, he thinks. After he completes the mission, he can finally meet Seungkwan for real.
For some reason, his mind seems clear and sharp. Every sensory detail seems vivid, fully in focus. He feels abruptly aware of the cold sensation of metal—the sensation of the control panel beneath his fingertips. His chest and torso feel so hot and stuffy into the suit and yet his face feels so cool. Though most of the view out of the window is taken up by the commanding exterior of the Moonstar, at the very edge of the view, there’s the slight sliver of Caelum’s deep blue through.
Hansol takes a deep breath in. Then, he ejects himself.
Before he knows it, he’s careening through space, miles away from the exterior of the Moonstar. The first thing he does is to scan its solar sail in case there are signs of damage visible even from his distance. It doesn’t work. As far as he can tell, the sail looks pretty much the same as the Hikaru’s.
With a start, he realizes that he doesn’t remember the last time he performed a mission without a tether. It might have never happened before. No matter, he tells himself, he doesn’t need it.
He engages his thrusters, shaking a little as they turn on. There’s some stellar wind radiating out from the direction of the Caelum, and Hansol finds himself wobbling against its impact. Carefully, he maneuvers himself in a way that avoids the brunt of it, making his way towards the Moonstar.
It takes a while before he finally arrives at the mast of the ship. He grabs firmly onto a notch in the mast. He feels acutely aware of the possibility of slipping.
“Seungkwan, are you still there?”
“Of course. How are you doing out there?”
“I’ve made contact with the ship.”
“That’s great. Hansol, you’re really doing great.”
Hansol slowly makes his way down the mast towards the payload bay—the journey taking about an hour or so. He opens the latch, reaches for the tether and clips himself in.
Already, he can feel the fatigue starting to settle in. His muscles feel sore and aching from hours of sitting, crammed in the escape pod, and then from the ordeal of navigating to the bay. He shakes all of it off. The mission has barely started. He can’t stop now.
He whispers those words to himself as he climbs up the ship back up to the mast of the solar sail.
“Alright,” he says. “I’m all set. Now, I’m going to begin diagnosis.”
With that, he engages his thrusters again. The diagnosis process feels strikingly similar to how maintenance work had proceeded on the Hikaru. He skims over the surface of the sail, trying his best to keep his eyes open despite the wave of exhaustion coming over him. The problem is that he really can’t see anything wrong. There’s microtears and damage and even small lesions scattered all over the sail, but Hansol can’t find any issue large enough that it could completely shut down the ship’s ability to navigate.
Still, Hansol keeps trying to focus.
As the next segment of the sail comes into view, he finally spots it. There’s a huge hole in the sail, long and sharp, the haphazard edges along the tear flapping back and forth in the stellar wind.
“I see it,” he reports into his device. “It looks like your theory was right, Seungkwan. There’s a massive hole here.”
“Wow. Got it. Do you… think you’ll be able to repair it?”
Hansol swallows. The tear looks larger than anything he’s ever handled before. It’s hard for him to guess just by looking how long it’ll take to fully patch it in.
“I guess I’ve got to,” he responds to Seungkwan, which is the most honest response he can think of.
After that, he gets set to work. He starts by positioning himself at the bottom edge of the tear—the side of the tear closest to him. He reaches into his toolkit and pulls out the roll of bandages. Attaching one end of the roll to the edge of the tear, he relies on using his thrusters to fly along the contours of the tear, stretching the bandage roll across the length of it. Once it’s all attached, he pulls out his flashlight, using the ultraviolet beam to set it all in place.
Good, he thinks, once that’s done. All in all, the tiny strip of bandage patched up close to one-sixteenth of the size of the hole itself.
The hole is large enough that repairing it is more a test of endurance than anything else. Hansol repeats the same action over and over and over again.
After around the third pass, he finds that his hands are shaking.
Never in his life has Hansol ever performed a mission this time-intensive. How many hours has it been since he first landed on the Moonstar? Eight hours? Ten? For some reason, he’s completely lost track of time.
Still, he needs to persevere. He continues to work.
The act of preparing the bandage, placing it and then setting it isn’t easy, from a technical point of view. Doing it correctly requires precision, strength and concentration. Still, Hansol notices that after a while, the motion becomes repetitive enough that his mind starts to space out a bit. Soon, he finds his attention drifting above the sail, towards the image of Caelum floating so far above the stars. There are so many of them, all of them twinkling so faintly and prettily that it looks almost like a scene out of a painting.
“It’s pretty,” he finds himself saying, a little deliriously.
“Hansol, what do you mean?”
“The stars. They’re pretty.”
From the other side of the line, he can hear the sound of Seungkwan humming. “Yeah. You’re right,” Seungkwan says. “They really are pretty, huh?”
Hansol thinks that maybe he can listen to the sound of his voice forever. He keeps his mind focused on the task in front of him and the sight of the stars and the anticipation, running through his veins, of finally making it inside of the Moonstar and finally being able to greet Seungkwan in person.
With all that in mind, he places the last bandage.
“Okay, okay,” he breathes out. “I can’t believe it. But I’m done, I think. How’s the pressure on the sail looking?”
“Give me a moment,” Seungkwan responds. A pause. Then—”Good news so far. It looks like the pressure readout is increasing.”
A jolt of relief runs all throughout Hansol’s body. “Good. I’m so glad to hear that.”
“Are you… ready to head back now?”
“I mean, I’m already out here. Might as well wait for the pressure to go back to normal.”
“Okay. Got it.”
Hansol waits for a lot longer, lowering himself to rest gently against the surface of the sail, before finally. Seungkwan’s voice comes filtering out of his comms radio again. “Good news, looks like the pressure reading has returned within the normal range. Hansol, please, come on home.”
As soon as Hansol hears the words, it feels like the life force has gotten sucked out of him. He’s done, he thinks. Suddenly, his whole body feels tired, sluggish, and heavy. There’s a sharp, throbbing sensation radiating out from the back of his hurt. He feels acutely aware of how painful it is even for him to think.
But no. He needs to make his way back to the Moonstar. Back to Seungkwan.
“I will,” Hansol murmurs into his coms device. “I’m coming home, I will.”
Even though it should be easy, Hansol finds himself struggling to balance enough to use his thrusters to maneuver back to the mast. He keeps faltering and floundering, threatening at times to fall back into the sail. Finally, after what seems like a millenia, he makes his way back to the huge, metal mast. The solid feeling of it feels like an anchor.
His hands and arms are shaking so much that it takes all his concentration just to grab the mast securely enough to make his way back to the ship and then to the payload bay. With heavy breaths, he swings open the latch to the payload bay and then slips inside.
“I’m here,” he pushes the words out. “Seungkwan, I’m here.”
For some reason, Seungkwan doesn’t respond.
In any case, it’s just a little bit further for Hansol to finally be safe. He calls upon all the exertion he has left to push himself out of the payload bay and into the airlock.
As soon as Hansol gets his whole body in there, every last scrap of energy leaves his body.
He ends up just floating there in place. His body feels like a log.
“I’m here,” he repeats one last time.
Suddenly, from the other end of the line, Hansol hears a strange sound—kind of like someone taking deep and sharp breaths while also maybe getting punched. It starts so soft that it’s barely perceptible before getting louder and louder.
“Seungkwan?” Hansol asks.
“You—you idiot.” Seungkwan’s voice is all weird and shaky. It finally hits Hansol that the sound he had been hearing all this time was that of Seungkwan crying. “Making me feel so worried. Gosh, I didn’t know what was going to happen but—I can’t believe you actually did it. I can’t believe the mission worked. Hansol—”
Wow, Hansol thinks. He really did do it.
That’s the last thing he thinks before his consciousness cuts out.
*
When Hansol wakes up, the first thing he notices is a man’s face, peering down at him. It takes Hansol a few moments to register the man’s face as unfamiliar, though there’s a gentleness to his frame and a kindness in his eyes that instantly makes Hansol trust him. The man is holding a clipboard in one hand and a pen in another.
“Ah, Chwe Hansol,” the man says. “We were all waiting for you to wake up.”
There’s a faint aching in Hansol’s brain and every muscle of his body feels sore and tender, but at same time, there’s a strange sense of lightness buzzing through his veins. When he tries to speak, he finds that his throat feels parched. Immediately, the man turns around and hands him a glass of water. Hansol drinks it.
He looks at his surroundings a bit more. He’s in a small bed inside an infirmary room, one that looks strikingly similar to the infirmary back on the Hikaru.
A shock runs through his body. It's all very deja vu.
“Oh, before I forget, let me introduce myself. My name is Joshua Hong. I’m the attending physician on board the Moonstar.”
“The Moonstar!” Hansol says, then winces when his voice comes out weird and strained. “So, I made it, then? I’m on the Moonstar?”
A smile rises on Joshua’s face. “Yeah. You made it.”
“How—how long has it been? Since the mission, I mean.”
“Well,” Joshua takes a moment to glance at his watch. “It’s been almost twenty-four hours. Anyways, I wanted to say—be careful. The best thing you can do right now is rest. Back when you were performing the mission, you spent more than thirty-six consecutive hours in space. That’s the kind of thing that can really take a toll on your body if you’re not careful.”
“I will,” Hansol says, but there’s something else on his mind. “So, is the rest of the crew around?”
“Of course. Everyone’s waiting to meet you. It’s just… your body is still in recovery mode. I told everyone to give you some space until you’re okay.”
“Okay.” Hansol bites the inside of his cheek. “The only thing is… um…”
Joshua looks at him for a long time, then sighs. “Let me guess. There’s someone you want to see?”
Hansol can feel his face warm up. There’s something undoubtedly embarrassing about Joshua being able to completely read his mind like this but whatever, Hansol thinks. He’ll let it pass. It’s the truth, after all.
After gauging Hansol’s reaction, Joshua chuckles then clicks his tongue. “Alright, alright. I kind of understand the situation. To be honest, there’s someone on this ship who’s been really looking forward to seeing you too. Actually, I’ve kind of had to restrain this certain someone from barging in here himself. Like, physically restrain him.”
An image flashes through Hansol’s mind of the mild-mannered man in front of him physically restraining anyone. The vision strikes him as mildly ridiculous—so much that Hansol has to purposefully stop himself from smiling.
“Can I see him?” He asks, instead. “I’ll try not to exert myself. I promise.”
Joshua hums a little, tapping his pen against his clipboard. “Fine. I’ll make an exception for you, just this once. Let me go ahead and get him. Just—remember to take it easy, alright?”
Hansol nods. He watches Joshua stand up and slip out of the infirmary. Something inside of him feels warm.
*
Maybe it’s fitting, given the circumstances. In the end, the first time they meet in person, Hansol hears Seungkwan before he sees him.
He’s lying on his side in the hospital bed, pretty much spacing out who-knows-how-long since Joshua left, when he’s struck by the sound of the door creaking open behind him.
Then—”Chwe Hansol!”
It’s shocking how kind and familiar the voice sounds. Hansol whips his whole body around as quickly as he can—which is not that quick at all, given how dead every part of him feels. As soon as he does, he immediately spots a man standing in the doorway.
In that moment, his breath hitches in his throat.
There are obvious differences between the man standing in the doorway and the way that Seungkwan looked in his video tape. For one, the man in the doorway has black hair that has grown noticeably longer. He’s dressed in comfortable-looking overalls and not wearing any glasses. Still, as soon as he makes eye contact with Hansol, his face lights up into a brilliant smile and that—well, that expression undoubtably strikes Hansol as familiar.
“Seungkwan? Is that you?”
“What? I’m offended that you even need to ask.”
Hansol can’t help but smile.
After that, Seungkwan comes up to take a seat by Hansol’s bed. It feels a bit like a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because of how close Seungkwan is. For some reason, it feels impossible to look away from the man. There’s some innate, primordial need inside of him to take in every detail of Seungkwan’s face—the shape of his eyes, the curve of his cheek, the fine lines of his jawbone. They were all things that should have become second-nature by now, had the two of them met in any more normal way, but now, despite everything, still feel strange and unfamiliar. Hansol finds himself needing to take all of it in all at once, to quickly bridge the distance that had been created from all of the conversations they had without ever seeing the other’s face.
It’s a curse because—well, Seungkwan is so close. Hansol has never felt so aware of how intensely his heart was beating before. He doesn’t want to look so closely at Seungkwan that it comes off as weird.
Between the two of them, Seungkwan is the one to speak up first. “Um. So. It’s good—it’s good to finally see you in person.”
There’s something so bashful about his demeanor, it makes Hansol smile. He kind of gets it himself. Something about the situation is definitely awkward—how in some ways, he’s meeting Seungkwan for the first time even despite the fact that Seungkwan has long become someone irreplaceable to him.
The thing is, Hansol doesn’t want things to be awkward. He thinks about if there’s anything he can do to lighten up the mood. In the end, he really isn’t able to come up with anything quirky or funny—that’s really been more of Seugkwan’s wheelhouse anyways—so he decides instead to just be honest.
What he does is reach out a shaky hand and place it on top of Seungkwan’s.
Seungkwan’s hands feel so smooth and soft.
“I’m happy to see you,” Hansol says. “I’m so, so happy.”
Seungkwan squirms a little, but doesn’t remove his hand from Hansol’s. Hansol swears that he can see the other man’s face flush. “Hey, don’t overdo it too much or else I might get the wrong impression, okay?”
“Oh? What kind of impression?”
Seungkwan shakes his head wildly. “Don’t—don’t you dare make me say it. Not after you already gave me, like, ten heart attacks in a row. All of this has been terrible for my skin, you know.”
“Ah. Okay. You don’t have to say it, then.”
Seungkwan looks at him for a moment, before his face contorts into a scowl. Talk about mixed messages.
But it’s fine, Hansol thinks. He decides to change the topic. “So, is everything okay then? With the sail and the navigation and—”
At that, Seungkwan gives a firm nod. “Yeah. The navigation is up and running, at least. We’re back on track for our planned trajectory. There’s, uh, still some minor mechanical issues ongoing and the sail still needs maintenance, obviously. But at least we’re out of the emergency territory for now.”
“Well, I guess I’m going to be pretty busy in the future, huh?”
Seungkwan peers down at him with a weird sort of fondness. “Maybe. But don’t worry about it for now, okay? All of it is stuff that the rest of us can take care of for now. Right now, the most helpful thing you can do is rest.”
Something about seeing Seungkwan so obviously concerned for him makes Hansol’s heart twist. “Okay,” he says. “Yeah. I’ll rest.”
“Yeah,” Seungkwan repeats. He squirms a bit more in his seat, and then sighs. He flips his palm up, so that his palm is pressing into Hansol’s. “There’s something I want to say to you,” he says.
He clears his throat. He reaches over with his other hand, so that both of his hands are clasped around Hansol’s. Then, he moves Hansol’s hand against his face, obscuring most of his expression. Hansol feels Seungkwan blink, feels the sensation of his eyelashes brushing against his palm and then feels the suction as the man inhales. “Thank you,” Seungkwan says, after a beat. “Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for fixing the sail. I’m glad you’re here. I really never thought it would happen, but it… feels like a dream, seeing you here in person.”
There’s something so soft about the way that Seungkwan says it.
Hansol gently removes his hand from Seungkwan’s grasp, then moves it to rest against Seungkwan’s cheek.
“Of course,” he says. “Me too. For me, it feels like a dream to see you too.”
At that, Seungkwan takes a deep, sharp breath and then falls silent. Neither of them speaks up for a while after that.
Hansol thinks that it’s nice, basking in the quiet.
*
It’s about a week later when Hansol finally gets to meet the rest of the crew. By then, he isn’t exactly fully recovered, but he’s good enough that Joshua finally allows everyone else to come in and visit.
Jeonghan is poised and well-mannered, standing tall with a kind of elegance that Hansol finds incredibly suited for him, given everything he saw during the mission. Hansol kind of expects him to talk in a formal, managerial way and finds it surprising when Jeonghan ends up patting his shoulder and teasing him for his hairstyle. Seokmin is energetic and efficacious when it comes to thanking Hansol for his service, shaking his hand with a surprising vigour. His welcome stands out in contrast to Jihoon’s, whose words of gratitude are gruff yet heartfelt. Finally, for the first time, Hansol meets Wonwoo. Wonwoo’s greetings are short and sweet, which Hansol finds that he appreciates too, in a way.
By that point, Joshua’s recommendation is for Hansol to do some light walking three times a way, but otherwise to stay in bed in order to best recuperate. Hansol ends up taking some of his walks alone, but also many of them accompanied by Seungkwan.
They’re on one of these walks today, pacing through the vast network of hallways in the ship. What Hansol finds is that while the ship is similar in size and function to the Hikaru, its actual layout is quite different. Seungkwan is enthusiastic when it comes to giving Hansol the tour, showing him all the essentials—the cafeteria, the crew member quarters, the bio-garden, the engine room.
After about twenty minutes, the two of them stop by a strip of hallway bordered by gigantic windows spanning the whole wall.
“Look at that,” Seungkwan says, gesturing out of the window.
Hansol looks. The first thing he spots is Caelum. Though the planet is still easily the largest visible body in the sky, its size has shrunk noticeably, now retracting to the size of a golf ball. It won’t be long, Hansol thinks, before the planet will barely be visible at all. Scattered all around the planet, the stars are shining and twinkling and dancing.
“You know, no matter how many times I see them,” Seungkwan says. “I still think it’s pretty. Maybe I’ll never get tired of it.”
Hansol thinks that he understands deeply what Seungkwan means.
“Yeah,” he breathes. He keeps looking out there for a long time.
When he’s done with that, he turns back around to face Seungkwan. He finds, with a start, that Seungkwan is also looking back at him.
Something about the scene—about Seungkwan, framed so delicately by the endlessly abundant panorama of space—strikes him as indescribably beautiful.
What a gift, he thinks.
With that, he reaches out and draws Seungkwan into an embrace.