The next morning, insofar as the word "morning" has any kind of meaning in a metal box floating through space, Nick awoke refreshed and, partly to convince himself that this wasn’t all a dream, ready to explore. 

The hallway outside his room was empty, and Nick decided to continue the half-circle he had begun with Fleith the night before. He walked clockwise through the ship, passing another door identical to his own before he came to an intersection. At the opposite end of the ship from the exit and the engine room doors, two double doors faced each other. Nick remembered something Fleith said and chose the inner door first.

Inside the door was a half-circle room. The wall to Nick’s right had a counter with a small sink and several cupboards. The counter top was dark green, and the cupboards were a dark brown wood, though the diagonal criss-cross pattern of the grain hinted it might not come from an earthly tree. It looked like nothing else on the ship and, combined with the large, poorly plastered gap between the unit and the wall, made Nick think the counters had been added sometime after the ship was made. Next to the foreign countertops, along half of the back wall, some type of machine grew out of the wall. It had a million buttons and at least a dozen doors or drawers that Nick couldn’t make heads or tails of. The left half of the room was carpeted, with several plush chairs and a battered couch, a twin to one Nick remembered from his grandparents’ basement, facing a black, glass square on the wall that Nick comfortably assumed was a TV.

On the right side, next to the countertop and the mystery machine, was a long table, bolted to the floor with metal chairs arranged around it, one of which was occupied by a figure surrounded by blocks of machinery.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Nick said. “I didn’t know anyone was in here.

The figure at the table looked up. It was clearly a robot, black metal casing with screws along the edges, one hand stuck into the almost-laptop on the table while another had a finger inserted into the top of one of the metal blocks nearby. 

“You must be RX-9.” Nick remembered the name from the night before.

“I am,” a machine voice said. “And you are?” 

RX-9 had no mouth, just a polished black mannequin head with two glowing white lights where the eyes should be. She would have been around Nick’s height, if she were standing, but her barrel chest was larger than any humans, and her legs were thin. She had more arms than Fleith, two large ones, slightly longer than a human’s, sprouting from her shoulders, connected one each to the aforementioned laptop and random block, and two smaller, three fingered arms coming from her midsection. Two twigs sprouted from the base of her neck with small cylinders on the end. One of them was trained on Nick while the other looked at her screen. 

“I-I’m Nick.” A pause. She didn’t react. “I’m Damian’s nephew… I’m joining the crew…”

“I was not told,” RX-9 said bluntly. Her head turned back to her screen, but her left twig-arm, with what Nick suspected was a camera, kept watching him. 

“What are you doing?” Nick asked.

“I am analyzing the theories of Dr. Rethla-nix and his colleagues regarding the origins and spread of Trinethan luck-rituals along the Veri route during the seventh century Imperium,” she said. “It is humorous.”

“It’s supposed to be funny?” Nick asked. Alien humor, maybe?

“No. He is wrong, and that is funny,” RX-9 said. “He has completely ignored the pressures from Imperial Brilli merchants’ early forays into the area.”

“Is that important?”

“Of course. Without accounting for the simultaneous adoption of Brilli customs and particularly their games of chance, one cannot gain a full picture of the situation.”

Nick nodded. “So, these… luck-rituals, are they important?”

“Not really,” RX-9 said. “They’re simple superstitions, largely extinct in the present day, common to one minor peoples along a single hyperspace route five centuries ago.”

“Oh,” Nick said. “So why bother studying them.”

“For the same reason one studies anything,” RX-9 said, pulling her hand out of the block on the counter. “To understand.”

There was an air of finality to her voice, and she clearly wanted to be left alone, so Nick didn’t respond. With a half-wave to RX-9, Nick backed out of the room and into the hallway, then crossed the hall to the other set of double doors. When he opened the door, he found the bridge. 

The command center of the Stargazer was twice as big as Nick’s room. Across from the door was a full wall of screens, the glow of which added to the dim light of the room. Two seats stood in front of a row of buttons and dials, like someone took three plane terminals and grafted them together. The side walls had screens of their own, now dark, with chairs in front of them. Between the side consoles and the door, were two chairs, tucked into the corner and facing the center of the room.

The two chairs turned away from the door were occupied. Nick could see the red tip of Triskar’s crest in one seat, and his uncle’s trench coat spilled out the sides of the other.

“Nick.” Damian spun his chair around and smiled. “How’d’you sleep?”

“Not bad,” Nick said. He looked around the room with a grin. “Is this it?”

“It’s cozy,” Damian admitted. “But will you get a load of this?”

Damian half-turned and pressed a few buttons on the console. The wall of screens shifted, filling with stars, bright pearls against the velvet backdrop of space. A dark ball, dead planet or asteroid of some kind, hung in the corner.

“Is that outside right now?” Nick asked.

Damian nodded. “Just outside. I’ll have to show you Earth from space sometime. It’s really something.”

“It sounds cool.”

“We’re near the jump point,” Triskar said coolly.

“Jump point?” Nick asked as Damian turned around and started pressing buttons. The starscape disappeared.

“A jump point to hyperspace," Damian explained. "Hyperspace is an alternate dimension that lets us travel faster than the speed of light. It’s also a terrifying hellscape where the laws of three dimensional space are twisted into a pretzel made of human guts and spatial recursions. Seeing it’s bad for your sanity and traveling through it is bad for your health. But it’s just so darn fast.”

“So you travel through it, anyway.”

“So we travel through it anyway,” Damian agreed. “But you can’t travel through hyperspace willy-nilly. You could get caught in a loop you'll never escape from, or get crushed into a marble, or explode, or you could come out halfway across the galaxy and fifty years have passed for everyone else, but you’re still the same.”

“Like in a fairy tale?” Nick asked.

“Somewhat, yes,” Damian said. “To avoid Rip Van Winkling ourselves, people traveling through hyperspace stick to strict paths. Hyperspace routes are charted by drones, and most of them have been used for centuries, so we know they’re safe. A jump point is the on-ramp to the hyperspace highway.”

“Cool,” Nick said.

“Preparing for jump,” Triskar said.

“Acknowledged.” Damian flipped a few switched. “Nick, you might want to sit down.” Damian nodded to one of the chairs by the door.

Nick sat down and grabbed the edge of his seat right as Damian activated the hyperdrive. The whole ship shuddered.