Flash Meridian sped through space like a bullet with nothing to mark the time. No day, no night, the sun imperceptibly brightening. He slept, waking to eat, to calculate, to sleep again.

As he slept, he dreamed. His mind took him back, it seemed, through every memory of his life. In sleep, he mentally returned to his parents’ home, where insignificant details presented themselves to him, begging to be noticed… explored… appreciated.

He reached out to touch the painted window sill, flooded by the full afternoon sun, beyond it was the view of the blue sky and green fields outside. What was common to him then had now become a distant and foreign planet. Domestic details, so unlike the clean, efficient, practical features of his ship, held a significance greater than themselves. Almost microscopically, Flash studied the simple function of a door hinge, the weave of carpet threads, the glazed pattern on china plates.

Time passed quickly while he dreamed. He returned to the day, as a child, that he buried a bird he found dead on the gravel driveway. He thought of the relationship between the decomposing body of the bird to the grass, the grass to the air, and how everything on Earth created an interdependent system.

Out here in space, his surroundings were so clinical, so sterile, so unnatural. Out here in space, he was completely alone, and he longed for that soft, rich world he once knew.

MEANWHILE…

Tension was building at the Lander camp. Krate was fully recovered from the sedative, and Wormhole never left the two men alone, though Krate and Ash tried to get time away from him to devise a plan.

For the most part, the camp was silent with suspicion.

MEANWHILE…

Back at the Space School, Crystal attended most of her classes, but she was clearly distracted. She lived in fear that a Federation officer would come looking for her in regard to her stealing. Never before had anyone at the school seen Crystal so subdued.

After a day of staring into space, of fiddling with things on her desk and doodling with pencil in her notebook, Crystal made her way back to her chamber to sleep. No dinner, she just wanted to go to bed. She punched in her access code, and the door slid silently open. Crystal only stared, shocked by what she saw.

The Nebula X was standing motionless in her chamber. A light flickered in its right eye sensor and the droid spoke. You have returned…