• Blardan never really knew his father.
  • But the day his father died was etched in his memory.
  • And the fireball that streaked across the sky.

It should have been a good day, Blardan had been watching Konossus 5 return from an expedition.

‘Every time you see a shooting star, think of your father’, his mother had said.

Now. The thing about time is. It passes.

And the thing about space exploration is, it takes you away from home.

‘Look, the third planet is blue, I told you’, whispered Blardan.

The Navigator whistled, ‘so we are close.’

‘Whisht’, hissed Blardan, ‘say nothing to the chief, but I’ve altered our course.’

It took eight days for the course change to be noticed, and repercussions to begin:

‘What have you done Blardan?’

‘Something I should have done the minute we left Earth chief, I’m bringing us home.’

‘You’ve gone mad.’

‘No chief, it’s the wisest thing I’ve ever done. All my life I’ve been blindly following my father’s footsteps. You know what madness is, leaving a newborn child behind for this. Pure selfish madness. ‘Space travel is in your blood’, they said. ‘Just like your father’, they said. Well. Maybe I’m not like him. Maybe fate had us traverse our home star. Maybe the universe sent me a sign. A chance for redemption. And I’m taking it.’

‘This is crazy, you can’t.’

‘I have. We’ll enter the atmosphere any second. And you can’t do anything to stop us chief.’

‘Blardan you idiot, we can’t just drop out of a galactic traverse like that, the ship will burn up on re-ertry.’

At that same moment.

Far below.

Little fingers gripped a mother’s hand, and looked up.

‘A shooting star, is that daddy?’

‘No, but the universe has sent something to remind us of him.’