“Helen? What are you doing?” Thom asked through the airlock door. “Let me out of here so we can talk.”

 

“NOT Helen! It’s Captain Psarkis to you!” Helen screamed back. “I know what you did, Thom. I know it was you who sabotaged the main engine.”

 

“What? No, that was a malfunction. And I helped you repair it. Remember?”

 

“You’re lying, Thom. I read the bio-stasis logs. You hacked your anabiosis pod to wake you just after launch when everyone else onboard was still sub-animated. It was at the exact same time the QED engine went to full acceleration and got stuck there.”

 

Thom hung his head for a second, then looked directly through the thick porthole of the airlock door. Even in anger, the captain was enormously attractive. She was older than Thom and her Ph.D. in Quantum ElectroDynamics meant she understood more than Thom did about the inner workings of the Cassini II — this colony ship bound for Enceladus with a thousand souls onboard. But Thom was young and clever, perhaps the cleverest of all the technicians aboard.

 

And he had a special relationship with the captain.

 

“I did it for us, Helen. I did it so we could have some time alone, together.”

 

“I’m a married woman, Thom!” she shouted. “I have a husband and teenage daughter back on Earth. What happened between us before the launch was a huge mistake. We were exhausted and overworked. It shouldn’t have happened.”

 

“But it did, Helen.” Thom said calmly. “I understand the situation is not ideal, but I have feelings for you. And I think you might share those. I just wanted to buy us some time to talk it through before we arrive at Jupiter.”

 

“Oh, my god!” Helen replied, incredulous. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”

 

“I understand the ship has probably overshot our target by a little bit. How long were we stuck on full throttle? And where are we now?” Thom asked with a cocky grin. He was a little proud of his successful tampering with the QED drive.

 

“A little bit?” Helen asked rhetorically. “A LITTLE BIT!? We are nearing Proxima Centauri right now. Before I woke you from stasis, the ship’s velocity was nearly light-speed — .99995c to be exact. Do you know what that means, Thom?”

 

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve repaired the engine. We’ll be turned around soon and headed back to the solar system. And it’ll be just you and me until we get there — alone together in this big ship. How long will we have, my love? A week or two? A few months perhaps? Whatever it is, it won’t be long enough for me. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I know that can’t happen because you love your husband and you have responsibilities back home. But you love me too, Helen. Admit it.”

 

Helen’s eyes filled with tears and her shoulders slumped as she realized the true extent of Thom’s ignorance regarding his reckless actions. Her voice was almost a whimper when she said, “You’ve killed them, Thom. My husband, my daughter, they’re all gone.”

 

“What?” Thom was now completely baffled. “What are you saying? Your family, they’re still back on Earth. I didn’t touch them. I couldn’t have.”

 

Helen wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and tried to explain. “It’s called time dilation, Thom. At that velocity, the Lorentz factor must be —"

 

“I don’t understand you,” Thom interrupted.

 

Patiently, she explained, “This alone time you’ve planned, it may be only a few extra months for us, but back home, a hundred years will have passed. They’re all dead, Thom. Everybody I loved on Earth. Everybody you loved. The friends and family of everyone on board the Cassini. You’ve killed them all.”

 

As he began to comprehend what he had done, Thom watched Helen remove a safety cover from the big red button just outside the airlock door, her tears still streaming. He murmured, almost to himself, “I only wanted to spend some time with you, Helen. I loved you.”

 

“And now you’re a mass murderer, Thom. As the captain of this ship, I cannot allow you to exist.”

 

Capt. Helen Psarkis slammed the red button to open the outer airlock and Thom was immediately pushed out into interstellar space where he would float, alone for all time.