Arrival Minus One

The planet filled the forward ports — green, cloud-wrapped, lit at night by a scatter of lights that were not stars.

On the last night of the voyage, Ines sat with her patient in Bay Nine and asked what she remembered of the world below. “That they were kind,” the woman said. “That they asked us not to come. That we came anyway.”

Pip, who was eleven and fixed things nobody asked her to, had wired the ship's speakers into the bay so the patient could hear the docking chimes. Ines let her stay. It seemed like a mercy, and they were running short.