Laura sat on the porch of her mother's house watching the fireflies dance through the night like a million tiny stars just for her. The night was always cool, just the right temperature, unlike the daytime, which was always brought sweltering heat. Her parents were arguing inside. Her mother wanted to leave Jordan, to head to America; she didn’t like the way the new political party was running things and feared something bad was on the horizon. Her father wanted to stay: this was his family's land—they had been here for generations—and he was not just going to give it up. Laura just stared into the night sky. She had always loved the concept of space. She was only eight but it was still her dream to be up there in the stars one day, away from Earth and her bickering parents and Jordan’s mean president.
Laura was once again shaken from her sleep only to face a mob of glaring crew members. She slowly sat up, wondering what she would be blamed for this time: a cut wire, a tripped alarm, or her favorite—a missing pen. They were only two months into the voyage and this was the fourth time this had happened so far. She lazily stared at her crew members, waiting for the accusations to begin. However, what came out of their mouths was not at all what she expected to hear.
“What happened to the rations,” her captain calmly asked her, but she could tell he wanted to yell.
“What do you mean rations?” Laura asked, sitting up straighter, now completely attentive. As annoyed as she was, this sounded serious.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know. More than half of the rations have gone missing. What did you do with them?”
Laura paled. That meant they wouldn’t have enough food to even make it to Mars. She hadn’t stolen anything, but whoever did was going to get away with it while they questioned her, meaning there was no chance of getting them back. Laura just denied it as passively as she could. She could endure it. It was only eleven months; she would not rock the boat.
There was nothing beyond the glass but an endless landscape of stars and unseen dark matter. The entire crew was sitting in the bow of the USS Horizon, staring at the endless void that threatened to consume them. There were eleven members on the crew in total, including Laura. It was more people than had been initially planned for, but at the last moment their designated botanist backed out and had to be replaced by a team of three people. Laura had her eyes fixed upon the headrest of the seat in front of her, avoiding the gaze of David. She had caught him staring at her a couple times before and was getting wary of him. She knew that they should stick together, as they were both from Jordan, which would mean they were pegged as Coalition spies, but something about him made her uneasy. He was one of the three that had replaced their original botanist, along with a tall, blonde American named Mark, and Almast, who was from Armenia, another Coalition state. She knew it was wrong to judge on looks, or in this case nationality, alone, but Laura had a feeling in her gut, and David wasn’t exactly making it easy to abandon suspicion. Her suspicion might just have been a combination of her hunger and boredom though. The rations were tight, and there really was nothing for her to do here except think up conspiracy theories as she didn’t like to exercise, couldn’t eat away her boredom, and had no close friends on board to talk to like all the others. She was a complete loner on this ship. No one to stick up for her when she was accused of stealing rations or cutting wires. She couldn’t wait for the last sixty days of the voyage to end so she would finally have something to do, even if it was just collecting rock samples.
Out of the corner of her eye Laura could see a little red light on the panels, but paid no heed to it, as she was “about as useful as a rover” and “any idiot can look at a rock so what does she know.” She knew there was a extreme amount of anti-Coalition sentiment, as the group of nations had become socialist not too long ago, and the threat of a second nuclear fallout was looming over them, but she had hoped that they would warm up to her. Sadly, even after nine months of shared living space they still did not trust her, David, or Almast, and the three of them were collectively blamed for everything that went wrong, whether it be misplacing a pen or the disappearance of most of the rations within the first three months of the voyage. Laura was shaken out of her thoughts by the panicked technician, who was declaring that the fuel tanks were completely empty.
“Isn’t there supposed to be a warning if the fuel tanks are leaking?” Mark asked, sitting up in his chair.
“Yes, but it didn’t go off! If it did I would have noticed,” the technician replied, getting more and more panicky. “We don’t have enough to even make it to Mars, much less back to Earth.”
As the technician finished his rant Laura felt the eyes slowly settle on herself, David and Almast. She didn’t do anything to the fuel or the warning systems—Laura was just as eager to get to Mars as anyone else on the spacecraft—but she had no proof that she did not, and without concrete evidence the blame would inevitably fall on her. Almast, who was in the seat right next to Laura, gave her a fearful and anxious look. Laura couldn’t tell whether it was for the fear of being blamed or the fear of being stranded in space. It was most likely both. She stood up and walked away, letting the more capable handle the crisis. She was not going to just sit still and be the scapegoat, even though getting up and leaving was just as suspicious as jumping to her own defense. She knew she was leaving David and Almast to take the heat, and felt the guilt well up inside her. While she did not care about David’s problems, Almast was a kind man, and was the closest thing to a friend that Laura had on this ship. Despite the guilt though, Laura kept walking away from the bow of the ship, away from the accusing glares, and away from her problems.
The individual quarters were small, as the ship had been streamlined to require less fuel and have a better chance of breaking through Earth’s atmosphere. Laura’s room was completely empty, no photos or posters or other personal items like the rest of the crew. The rest of her family and friends had been unable to escape Jordan with Laura and her mother before the Coalition had taken over, and now she had no way to connect with them, so pictures were out of the question, and any posters would be confiscated as Coalition propaganda. Laura imagined that the rooms of the others from Coalition countries looked exactly the same. Plain and dismal.
She was startled by the crackling noise of an intercom and nearly fell over, catching herself on the edge of the small desk, scattering papers and studies all over the floor.
The voice of her captain rang out. “Would Laura Bukhari please report to the bow of the ship immediately.”
“Here we go again.” Laura mumbled to herself bitterly, the thought of returning to the rest of the crew leaving a sour taste on her tongue.
Laura ambled her way back, savoring the time she had to herself. The thought of being alone in space would not be a comforting one for most people, but Laura lived for the few moments peace she could get. When she finally made her way back to the bow everyone was silent, there was no noise but the persistent buzzing of the little red light that happily informed them their days were numbered. Almast was cowering in his seat while David refused to make eye contact with anyone. Their American companion Mark sat to the side looking nonchalant, as if he wasn’t particularly worried about their impending doom and absorption into the dark matter.
“Would you mind explaining this, Laura?” the captain asked her, his face strained into a glowering smile. “Don’t hesitate to speak up either, David, Almast.”
“Sir,” Laura began, trying her hardest to not step out of line and attack her captain. But she never even got the chance to try, as a small blip from the radar took all the eyes off of her. All eleven members of the crew stared at the radar for what seemed like hours, but in reality it was only the few seconds in between each blip on the screen. The next blip came, ominous and glowing red. The little dots proceeded to get closer and closer, and it appeared as if a red glowing orb was hurtling its way toward them, about to collide at any second. While the dot appeared close they all knew that it was still thousands of kilometers away. They had at least half an hour, maybe a little more, before whatever was beeping arrived at their location.
The dot was not a mystery for long. It only took a couple seconds before everyone figured out exactly what was happening. They had been told there was another spacecraft not too far behind them before they left Earth. It was why they had to rush to depart, why their schedule had been moved up an entire week. Why Laura did not get the chance to say goodbye to her mother. The empty fuel tank, cut wires, and missing rations made a lot more sense now. Someone didn’t want the USS Horizon to make it to Mars. Most of the crew looked at Laura, Laura looked at David.
“It is imperative that whoever is responsible comes forward now.” The captain finally broke the silence. Laura could see the veins on his forehead, see the anger and hostility, but she could also see the fear swirling in his eyes. It was hidden well, but it was still there. “I don’t think you grasp the situation we are in,” he tried again. “We are drifting through space, we are low on rations, and completely out of fuel. We have no means of escape, and no way of being rescued. If whoever is responsible doesn’t fix this now we are all going to die.”
He didn’t use names, but Laura knew who that speech was directed to. Somehow, during the captain’s rant, she, David, and Almast had been backed into a wall, with the others forming a semicircle, as if they were still in high school deciding who was on which dodgeball team. Laura could see the anger in their faces. The anger was a funny thing to Laura. She could tell they were not so much angry as afraid, terrified even, but instead of coming up with a solution that would benefit them all, they turned to hostility. She also knew they thought it was one of them, and while she could not vouch for David or Almast, Laura had not done it, and she refused to take the fall.
“With ALL due respect sir,” Laura started. Almast gave her a ‘please don’t make this worse’ look, but she continued on. “I find it unreasonable for you to assume it was one of us. There are eleven people on board and it could be any one of them. For you to assume it was me means you are letting the real culprit easily get away with this, and putting the entire crew in danger.”
The captain looked at her like she had grown a third head, and his face began to go red, not only with anger at Laura, but with embarrassment at being called out like that. But despite the rising tensions, Laura refused to back down. She had thought that she could endure it until they landed on Mars, but this was just too much. Almast and David seemed to have the same idea, as they both stood tall next to her, refusing to back down either. Everything was silent as the standoff continued; no one dared make a noise. The crew members that stood with their captain glared, but they didn’t speak, as no one could deny Laura had made a good point and that scared them. They had never thought that the saboteur could be one of them, one of their friends.
“They made me do it.” A whisper came from somewhere in the midst of the mob. “I had no choice—they took my daughter.”
The crowd parted and the whisperer was given the spotlight. It was the technician. Laura couldn’t even remember his name, or recall any situation in which they had had a conversation within the nine months they had been on board together. He was the quiet type, the type of person who didn’t rock the boat. The rest of the crew were too shocked to respond as well; they all just stared. Laura knew that she had said to look beyond herself, Almast, and David, but she was still surprised when she was right.
Finally someone spoke up. “What do you mean?” Mark stepped forward. “Did you empty the fuel tanks?”
Laura was surprised that Mark had stepped forward like that. As one of the replacements he was just as suspicious as David, and though Laura did not like to point fingers, she had deep down always thought that he was the culprit. He just seemed too perfect, like he had something to hide.
“You realize we are all going to die, right?” Mark continued when he got no answer. “We are drifting off into space, and we will starve long before anyone comes to get us.”
Mark was cut off by the large shadow of the coalition ship being cast over them. They all stopped for a moment to look out the glass that surrounded the bow, and watched as the large body of the spacecraft passed right over them. While watching this unfold, one thought stuck with Laura, a thought that preceded all of her other concerns.
“I never got to say goodbye to my mother,” Laura said, barely above a whisper, but everyone else was too distracted to hear or care.