Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.

— Inscription on Columbus' caravels

"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading."

— Lao Tzu

    The silence was broken by the opening of the hatch. Van was looking at the metallic door moving painfully, the hinges protesting loudly under the pressure. They arrived. Finally. Where?, was the question.

    He looked at his friend, Gauguin, strapped in the seat beside him. They had been stuck in the same position for some time now, probably days, after the explosion. Their spacecraft was supposed to have reach Europa, one of Jupiter's moon, a week ago. The Sun decided differently. One of the biggest flare completely messed with the navigational system and the ship entered in collision with some space debris.

    Following the shock, Van believed he would live his last moment in a shameful position, stuck in wires and metal, parts of the cabin that went free following the impact. However, he just blacked out for a moment before realizing, when regaining consciousness, that the suit he was wearing had absorbed most of the blow. It had been the case also for Gauguin and the other passengers sharing the space.

    The suit had also proved lifesaving during the followings days, sustaining him with the recycled fluids and nutrient injections. Although his body was sound and maintained, he still felt exhausted tired from the confinement. Few days of immobilization and he started to lose faith in their adventure. Yet, the noise from the hatch opening was restoring his hope.

    Two silhouettes appeared in the circle of light inside the hatch when as it finally opened. Van surveyed their progression through the confinement of the overturned cabin. They stopped near an old woman, visibly dead, her limbs not responding to their pocking and picking. Then, they moved on to Gauguin, his friend. He observed anxiously if he would respond to their stimuli. One of the after effect of the accident that happened few days earlier had blocked all communication between the passengers. The device embed on the spacesuit had been unresponsive since then. Van just hopped it was only due to malfunction, not that his friend had passed to the afterlife.

    Relief came when he realized Gauguin was moving and seemed to be answering to questions the two newcomers were asking him. They started to untangle the other man, set him on his feet, then directed him through the hatch. Would they be coming back for himself? Van hoped they wouldn't forget him. The doubt was short as he saw the two figures crossing again the opening. They repeated their dance, from one body to another, leaving some there for later retrieval, setting other free from their seats, until they reached him.

    "Can you hear me?" The muffled sound was coming from the taller one, his face hidden under the helmet covering the entirety of his head. "Nod if you can't talk."

    Van dipped his head slightly and moved his arms to signify he heard them. They removed the cables strapping him to his seat and helped him standing. He was wobbly on his feet after staying so long in the same position. The weakness in his legs could also be explained by the lack of food. His spacesuit provided him with the basic nutrients during the long hours of immobility, however, the function was supposed to maintain only the body's integrity, not to provide for nourishment of a healthy young adult; it was only supposed to sustain the person inside it until help came to them.

    Van followed the two through the hatch. On the other side, he found himself on a corridor under white neon lights. There were no windows. He wondered where he was, as there was a good chance they didn't landed on Europa as was the original flight plan. They had been in space longer than the time it shall have taken them to reach the Jovian satellite. Where could they be now? It was the question that kept rolling in his mind.

    Weak as he was, Van felt the walk through the corridors to last an eternity. With his two rescuers, he finally reached a space where all the other had been already set. He saw his friend and stepped into his direction, seating beside hm. On one side of the room, along the walls were aligned lockers and benches, similar to those Gauguin and himself were sat on. The other side had two doors, each with the universal signs identifying the gender. Through those doors, the newcomers would find showers and cleaning facilities, along with some change of clothes.

    Everyone in the room started to remove their suits. Van followed suite and put his on a pile already building. Obviously, others of his travel companions already removed theirs and went through the cleaning process. No much sound came from the weary travelers. Small words were ushered here and there, though nothing really understandable. Looking to the people around him, he could see they the common relief of having been finally safely removed from the rocket and feel the anticipation laced in fear and question for what would happen next.

    A petite woman clad in white came out of nowhere, or more likely from a side door Van didn't saw earlier. She looked tired. She sounded tired also when she welcomed them, as if he had repeated the same words over a good number of time before to saying those to them.

    "Welcome aboard, travelers. We will answer your questions later. For now, you just need to know that you are on NOVA. I am Nic, I'll give you a check-up after you'll have cleaned behind these doors. The two guys over there," she pointed to the two silhouettes that opened the hatch earlier, getting everyone efficiently out of the wandering rocket, "are Leo and Vince."

    After those few words, she went through the same side door she came in from and closed it. The room returned to the previous silence, people looking each other as to confirm they heard the same things. Leo and Vince, as they were presented, helped the weakest to finish removing their space suits and into the shower room.

    The two friends were the last ones to enter the male bathroom. Van had more difficulties than his friend to walk and move around. This would need to be checked after he would have washed and changed into clean clothes. He hoped he would regain the full flexibility in his legs and that it was just a temporary painful limitation due to the prolonged compression of his lower limbs during the few days after the accident.

    The shower wasn't of the watery type, rather, it would have had its place in a decontamination procedure plan. Van and Gauguin ended up being sprayed by chemicals, powdery stuff, acrid smelling. Nothing similar to dip in the blue lagoons as they used to enjoy back home. The two friends shared the same depressing thoughts. They had no choice but to leave Earth for good. Nothing remained there for them and, ultimately, for all humanity. They were among the fittest to try for the long journey. The others, older and frailer, decided to remain and to see the End of times. They resigned to their fate but wanted for the two young men to leave so they could perpetuate their traditions in the stars.

    The short woman they had seen earlier was waiting for the two friends when they entered the infirmary. She seemed tired and didn't talk much as she took blood samples and other fluid sample from the men. While she was attending to Gauguin, Van perused the room, letting his eyes take the full extend to the place. He approached to some diagrams on a wall when their situation. They weren't where they shall have been. The drawing was an emergency response plan showing the position of the evacuation pods. They were on a space station on Neptune's orbit, the Neptune Outpost Vanguard Astroresearch center. The collision few days earlier had sent them further at the end of the Solar system while they shall have been securely under a dome on Jupiter's moon.

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."

— Confucius

    The refectory of the space station was full with the newcomers. Two hundreds had been rescued from the rocket. Van didn't know how many had remained inside, lifeless bodies in space suit, nameless people reaching the afterlife with only strangers to cry them.

    Welcoming the two hundreds, there were ten women and men wearing white lab coat. Van, remembering his History lesson about the beginning of the space research, wasn't sure if the NOVA space station they apparently were in was the same as the one that had been build few centuries ago. If he remembered well, it had been dedicated to research of extraterrestrial life and space travel. Although, the space station was supposed to have been decommissioned at least fifty years ago. Obviously, it hadn't been the case.

    Leo and Vince, the two who had come through the hatch to end their long wait in the scrambled rocket, were among the ten. They looked young, probably in their mid-thirties. For some reasons, Van always thought of scientists as old, white-bearded men. Visibly, it wasn't the case here.

    The welcoming party translated in a rushed presentation of the place and assignation of quarters to the visitors. No one wanted really to think about the future. It all seemed bleak. After all, what would they be able to do from here? They were stranded in a supposedly decommissioned station with no mean to go back to Europa and hope to join in the generation ship expedition to Tau Ceti.

    Once all had been given direction to their living space, an extra set of clothes and the schedule for the meals, the room emptied. Van and Gauguin stayed a bit longer, they wanted to explore everything in their new home.

    "Nice tat!" Leo approached the two friends, pointing his finger to the dark lines covering the face and the arms of the young men. "Does it mean anything?"

    They looked up, as lost in each other's thoughts. The lines covered their full body. It had meanings, though the two tattooed men were not sure if they knew all of them.

    "It is our history. Our people." Gauguin tried to explain the reason for the lines on their skin. As they were the last of their tribe, the only two leaving Earth and attempting the journey to the stars, they had to carry their past, their culture and their people with them, so they wouldn't be forgotten.

    "Turtle, cross, sun... all have a meaning and represent our beliefs, our way of life." He showed the Enata, the symbol for the people. It was for the one they left back home, but also for them, the two travelers, and their future children. The Enata was surrounded by the sun, a double meaning. It showed leadership, as the two friends would lead the future generations, though the sun would also lead their people to the afterlife, not as a symbol of death but of rebirth. In a sense, as they wore the sun, Van and Gauguin would bring with them the future, thus keeping their memories alive in the eternal cycle.

    The tattoos on their body was a testimony to a past culture and a prayer for the future. The Turtle would grant them longevity, wellness and peace. The Marquesan cross, help them live in harmony. Finally, the Ocean was their destiny. Their people lived by the Ocean and returned to the Ocean once they fulfilled their lives. Van and Gauguin had to find their new Ocean in the stars. Many other lines and drawing with various meaning covered their full body. It retold past glory, remembered dear friends and family and wished for them a brighter future.

    Leo and Vince listened to the two friends talking about their people and their traditions, about their need to leave Earth. What they didn't understand was the reason for the rush, the leave, and why no other of the young one's family had followed.

    "The Earth is dead." This statement coming from Gauguin startled the two scientists.

    "What do you mean, dead?"

    "Everyone is leaving, or trying to. They organized transfers to Europa where generation ships will be launched to Tau Ceti. Everyone is dying on Earth. The radiation..." Van tried to explain the dire situation.

    "We knew the solar flares were getting more frequent, but not that it was at this critical point." Leo recalled all he knew and what he studied about the geomagnetic storms. Since the Carrington super-flare in 1859, the Sun activity just increased, irradiating the planets around it more and more.

    "Technology is not working anymore, so no machinery can help," Van confirmed. The Earth was really at its end. The increasing frequency of the solar flares were sending radiation in the atmosphere, disrupting communications and navigational systems. Few technology could be used. Satellites and power plants were down. For communication, the old semaphore system was used in most parts of the World. As for the energy, as the electrical grid wasn't working anymore, people had ended up consuming all the remaining fossil resources, thus aggravating the pollution of the atmosphere with all the resulting fumes.

    The picture wasn't pleasant. It was the end of a great adventure. Now, humankind was trying its luck within the stars.

    "How come, you look surprised?" As Van and Gauguin were recounting all they could about what was happening on Earth, Leo and Vince seemed to discover the reality of the situation.

    "Well," Vince searched for his words, "you see, we have been up here since so long, we didn't really catch up with what was happening back Home. And also, there had been no communication for the past fifty years or so..."

    Leo saw the incomprehension in the other's eyes. "Follow us. We will explain as we show you the place. You will understand..."

    The four men went from one deck to another, crossing corridors and entering various rooms, until they reached the destination the scientists had in mind. The hatch was sealed and required bio-metric identification. Van reflected about the availability of technology up there, on NOVA. Somehow, it didn't really set in his mind until now that, the same technology that was denied to them on Earth, wasn't affected the same way here. Could it be due to the Asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that was blocking most of the effects from the solar flares? Or it could be simply that, being so far from the Sun compared to Earth, the effects of geomagnetic storms were diminished by the distance.

    Leo pressed his hand on the pad near the hatch before it opened, the hinges crying painfully under the weight of the metal disc. Lights went on as soon as they put a foot on the other side. What the young men saw was not a simple room, rather a hangar with a high ceiling and storage containers lining the walls and creating alleys across the floor.

    Van watched his friend walking along the alleys, looking inside the containers through the little opening each had at the top of the front panel. He followed him in his footsteps and took a peak at the glassy surface. He took on the sight before turning to Vince.

    "How many?"

    "Only forty. We used to be ninety up here." The scientist started to explain how, from ninety people in the team, they lost more than half of them. The station had been up since two centuries. The scientific team also. The cryogenic chambers had worked perfectly for the first hundred years or so. The team had been organized so that fifteen would be up at a time and would work for ten years, then they would go back into stasis until their next rotation. One of the purpose of the space station was to study the long term exposition to the cryogenic gas in preparation for long exploratory journeys.

    They didn't know what really happened, but some of the containers started to malfunction. There had been a possibility of sabotage, but no proof of it. They lost thirty cryo-cells in a go at some point. After that, the situation had stabilized a bit. They had had their fair share of accidents and suicides, it had always been a risk on a space station. The shortened count of forty, Vince added, had been stable for the last fifty years.

    The current team had been active for the past three years, now. They had a lot of catch up to do with the situation on Earth and in space. The newcomers gave them the occasion to close the gap, though the situation was bleak. Another meeting had been organized with the current crew and the new passengers to bring more light to the recent events.

    Leo and Nic proceeded to ask the questions and compile all that had been discussed. The people from the rocket having settled a bit, the weariness of the journey washed off, they were able provide more useful information.

    The rocket had been launched from Hainan, southern China. All around the globe similar launchpad had been sending rockets of every type through space with as much people as they could. It appeared logical that most of the ones having ended up on NOVA had been a mix of Asian, Polynesian and Australian for the most.

    Leo had checked earlier in which quality all these people could help the work on the space station. It appeared that a couple of them had been rocket engineers. They had analyzed the spaceship and concluded it was damaged beyond repair. The verdict had rendered the room quiet for a moment, then murmur amplified. Groups of people were talking together, telling their fear and fright of being stranded on Neptune's orbit condemned to a slow death.