In space, over four hundred degrees Fahrenheit difference lay between shade and direct sunlight. When the ship passed by Boreas, a neighboring planet, sunbeams emerged from behind it and heated the rocket's nose. 

Boreas had tints of blues and chalky whites and was mainly covered by water with only a few islands subsisting at its northern pole. There, one rotation around its own axis lasted sixty-one times as long as those of Kepler.

Throughout the Winters, which raged for as long as half of its orbit around the sun, light hardly ever reached the highest mountain peaks, let alone the depths of the shores. This planet was the solar system's third-largest non-luminous body, and humans had settled even here. 

Snow tucked the villages like an ever-lasting, thick down blanket. Some homes resided on wooden stilts at the frozen coast, some dared to live in caves near the cliffs, and others were, up to their roofs, buried by the blizzards' remains.

Here, where the sun only rose and set, but never stayed, it was rare to see light dance on snow-capped surfaces. Only centuries of adapting enabled an acceptable life, and to the citizens who were familiar with the nature of their mighty planet, life on Boreas wasn't half bad.

The ship was now in the spotlight, and the unstoppable brightness woke Finn gently. He hadn't left his spot at the window, though his head and feet had switched positions. Only when he opened his eyes, he noticed that some of the crew members had been talking to each other through UNA. Subsequently, his field of attention stayed within the window frame. 

Nathan and Christopher's communication with Westlake continued their shared transmission through the device on Finn's right arm, yet persisted to be unheeded by Finn himself. He had never seen Boreas outside textbooks, projections or telescopes, and never in a comparable charm.

The sun at its edge emitted light far more vehemently than Finn's pupils could presently bare. A distracting movement near the window broke the profound bond Finn's eyes had with his view. It was his father in a spacesuit.

"Guys, guess who I just found," Finn heard his father say through Una, while Christopher friendly waved from the outside.

"Good morning sleepyhead," laughed Christopher on the other side.

If they didn't have their communication system, it would be impossible to hear each other, because the waves of sound are unable to travel through the vacuum.

"Why don't you meet me at the airlock?" suggested Christopher, "I'll be done here any minute."

The airlock was an airtight room with two entrances that allowed the astronauts to go on a spacewalk without letting oxygen escape from the shuttle. When Finn arrived at one of the entrances, he could see his father in the process of removing himself from the suit. Day was there as well, with excitement written on his face.

"My turn," demanded Day with the patience of a child.

When he wiggled himself into his spacesuit, his performance could have been mistaken with that of a caterpillar building its cocoon. 

Christopher entered the section Finn was in, before Day cranked the handle that unlocked the only barrier between them and the threatening lack of matter.

"Hungry?" asked Christopher on their way to the larder.

"Starving," replied Finn.

A cupboard had stocks of pureed food, contained in bags with openings similar to a lockable straw. Christopher held two options of meals in his hands, and Finn pointed at the one with the description of beef and potatoes.

"Nothing is more appetizing than sipping some mush out of a tube," claimed Finn with a pinch of sarcasm.

"You get used to it," affirmed Christopher.

They resolved to consume their food right at their spot. When Finn squeezed his meal out of the straw, a ball of liquid shot out of it and floated aimlessly above their heads. He stretched himself to slurp it out of the air.

As Finn swallowed his last bite, an alarm rang, which was a reminder Christopher had set for himself.

"What is that for?" Finn wanted to know.

"This is the definition of perfect timing," replied Christopher. "You'll want to see this, come with me."

They forced their way through compressed passages and dense tunnels to end up in a room at the belly of the rocket. It wasn't anything special, but it had a small window in its corner, where, when looked through, a moon was perceptible in nearly all its glory. It was in the phase of a waning gibbous, leaving only its edge in the dark.

"Wow!" said Finn amazed. "This is so—"

"Wait, here comes the best part."

They were close enough, that with the moving of the ship, the angle of the moon changed with it. Behind the rim of the moon, another, smaller moon turned up.

"A moonrise at a lunar horizon," established Christopher with a satisfied look on his face.

"I'm speechless," declared Finn astonished.

In his mind he was enchanted, but it only lasted for the breath of a second, until a devotion of melancholy hugged him with shadows and ice. He just couldn't help himself and began thinking about Nitha, and the untold likelihood that she could be as close as these moons, and would still drown in the calamitous sea of darkness.

It was more than unlikely, but if she were between the two moons, her position would last to be unseen, and despite a rocket passing close enough for rescue, their perceptions would have never met. If she were here alive, she would have been seen by nobody except doom.

Twelve days had elapsed and the crew prepared to land within the next few hours. Pluviam5A3 was already visible in the near distance; a planet with stripes of earthy colors, coated by murky clouds, which continuously lit up at undefined areas.

Hajo monitored the situation on Pluviam's surface.

"Looks like the storm hasn't calmed down yet," observed Nathan, who sat next to the commander.

The majority of astronauts were parted into two rooms; the cockpit, and the crew cabins, with a few exceptions.

"I'm done," said Andy to Finn. She had just returned from Day's health check-up, which was a standard routine before every launch or landing. "You're up."

Finn made his way to the adjacent room. The doctor attached a disk on Finn's chest, which monitored his heartbeat, and in addition, his blood pressure was measured.

"So far so good," said Day while reading the first results on the screen. "Nervous for landing?"

Finn's heartbeat was stable.

"Not at all," spoke his confidence.

"You'll feel weird when you're back in gravity," forewarned Day. "Like a worn-out pair of underwear."

"Like a—" Finn raised one eyebrow, "wait, what?"

"I'm saying your muscles will have to adjust to—"

An unusual sound occurred, followed by the crew holding its breath in dead silence. A lasting scratching was heard, coming from the core of the rocket. It increased in volume, then disappeared at once.

"What was that?" whispered Day anxious.

The zig-zagging line, representing Finn's heartbeat on the monitor, spilled Finn's otherwise hidden trepidation. 

An explosive sound occurred and Una turned on automatically. A map of the rocket's inside was represented on each member's right forearm, with an affected area in red. Words above the map said emergency in capital letters. 

Day rushed to the computer and began typing in codes. The hatches to the other areas locked, and Finn was trapped with a heartbeat of one hundred beats per minute.

"What's happening?" asked Finn as calmly as he could but still sounded panicked.

"I'm not sure," panted Day even more agitated than Finn. "Oh no."

"Oh no what?" Finn asked, all of a dither.

Day hesitated as if he feared the answer to Finn's question would introduce attributes that he could not bear to hear. "The oxygen tank imploded, it's a code red!"

The hatch opened, and Andy came through.

"You're going to give him a heart attack!" yelled Andy at Day, and marked an end to his prank.

"I was pretty convincing, wasn't I?" Day laughed hysterically. "Maybe I should rethink my career choice. I should have become an actor! Dae-Hyun Choe, the next global superstar! Talented and out of this world handsome!"

"You tricked me?" grasped Finn, shamefaced.

"Sorry buddy," apologized Day, still laughing. "It's a tradition with newcomers. Don't despise me!"

Christopher and Nathan joined together.

"It's alright Finn," comforted his father, "we all fell for it on our first flights, even Day. In fact, out of all of us, Day was the biggest wuss."

The doctor's laugh died with that statement.

"That's not true!" defended Day himself.

"I'll get you back for that," threatened Finn with a smile.

"Guys," interrupted Nathan with a face as serious as a royal guard. "We are preparing for landing."

"Right, right." Day removed Finn from all medical devices. "Your heart and blood pressure are fine." Once again he failed to compress his laugh.

Hajo, on the commander's seat, was the last person to secure his seatbelt. In the windows, Pluviam grew larger and the storm became even more daunting.

"Tempestas," called Andy the available communication of Pluviam's mission control, "this is Fortem, asking for permission to land."

It took half a minute until a response came through, unfortunately, the transmission of the voice was wrecked and incomplete, so that the information coming from the ground was as much of a blur as the wild clouds beneath the shuttle.

"You're coming in unclear, can you confirm that we have permission to land?" repeated Andy persistently.

Finn threw a worried look to his father, who kept calm. Astronauts were trained to remain collected no matter the magnitude of a situation. His father had taught Finn that there is no problem so bad that you can't make it worse. And so Finn remained as poised as the others.

"Fortem," spit the speaker obstreperously, "you have go for landing."

Andy sighed inconspicuously, "Roger that."

The rocket began to fall into gravity at a sixty-degree angle. The skin of steel glowed red from the heat it absorbed, the astronauts were pressed into their seats, and the ride was bumpy, tumultuous, and slightly painful when they penetrated the black cloud cover. 

Wings unfurled from the aircraft to create a drag that controlled the velocity. Outside the window, an incredibly bright, purple lightning struck by, and in the next moment, they had left the storm's battlefield. A city had become observable, or for what it looked like; its remains.

Hajo fired the engines, fierce wind lashed the ship's controls, but he triumphed to land the rocket. The vehicle was standing vertically on its feet, the crew had arrived uninjured, and with a map that UNA had displayed on everyone's screens, she drew attention to identified damaged areas of the vehicle.

The pilots unbuckled their seatbelts and began to take off their spacesuits once more. Meanwhile, a crew on the outside secured the rocket and prepared a ramp that would connect the door of the cockpit with the entrance of one of the decaying skyscrapers.

Walls and roofs, that could hardly be called buildings, were negligently stacked on top of each other. Rising higher than the rocket, the upper homes swayed consistently from heavy weather conditions.

Finn stepped out of his chair, his body mass felt too heavy to be carried by his muscles. Behind him laughed Day, who had witnessed Finn trip over his own feet, but when a man reached for Finn's arm and pulled him out of the rocket, he turned only to see Day trip himself. Finn laughed in response to Day's inconvenient fall, and they were even.

"Welcome to Tempestas, Pluviam's capital," said the man gloomily while placing a gas mask on Finn's face.