I bite back a bitter smile. That seems to be what I always do: break the perfect order Eldest worked so hard to make.

“This Newton, he came up with some laws of motion. It seems frexing obvious, this stuff he wrote about, but…” I shake my head, still somewhat shocked by how simple his laws of motion were. Why had it never occurred to me before? To Eldest? How was it that while Eldest taught me the basics of all the sciences, somehow Newton and the laws of motion never came up? Did he just not know about them, or did he want to keep that information from me too?

“It’s the bit about inertia that caught my attention,” I say. I start pacing — a habit I’ve picked up from Amy. I’ve picked up a lot of things from Amy, including the way she questions everything. Everything.

Right at the top of my questions is a fear I’ve been too terrified to voice. Until now. Until I stand in front of the Shippers with the limping engine churning behind my back.

I shut my eyes a moment, and in the blackness behind my eyelids, I see my best friend, Harley. I see the hollow emptiness of space as the hatch door opened and his body flew out. I see the hint of a smile on his lips. Just before he died.

“There are no external forces in space,” I say, my voice barely louder than the whirr-churn-whirr of the engine.

There was no force that could stop Harley from going out that hatch door three months ago. And now that he’s in space, there’s no force to stop him from floating forever through the stars.

The Shippers stare at me, waiting. Marae’s eyes are narrowed. She won’t give this to me. She’s going to make me pull the truth from her.

I continue, “Eldest told me that the engine was losing efficiency. That we were hundreds of years behind schedule. That we had to fix the engine or risk never reaching Centauri-Earth.”