Vessel

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“HOUSTON, THIS IS Acting Commander Catherine Wells of Sagittarius. Do you read?” Catherine leaned over the comm panel, watching the swirling colors of nothingness outside the ship.

“Mom, they can’t hear you.” Aimee sat on the edge of the console, twisting the end of her long braid around her index finger. She was wearing the PROPERTY OF NASA shirt David had bought Catherine the Christmas before she left.

She was right, of course. But any moment now, the blurry colors of the wormhole outside her window should resolve into normal space, meaning that she’d arrived back in her own solar system. Back within radio contact. Finally.

The ship’s chronometer told her she had been traveling for at least six years now. It felt much longer. She wasn’t sure she trusted the reading, but at this point, her mind was even more untrustworthy than the chronometer.

When she looked at Aimee again, her daughter had gone from being an eight-year-old in an oversize shirt to a five-year-old holding a stuffed stegosaurus. She fidgeted in her chair. “I’m tired of waiting. Are you going to be home soon, Mommy?”

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