"I had the ambition to not only go farther than man had gone before, but to go as far as it was possible to go."

— Captain Cook

The murmur in the room had turned to a full blown clamour. Leo tried to regain the control, but to no avail. It was Nic who succeeded to quiet the assembly. Though a short and tiny female of the specie, she proved to possess a strong and powerful voice. She succeeded in shushing everyone for Leo to be able to calm the ambient incertitude.

"The rocket is down. This is a fact. There is no way we can send you to Europa either. However, there is another possibility of escape, if you want to see it this way..." Leo continued to explain how the scientists had orientated their research toward wormholes and shortcuts through the Universe. Since a decade now, such a phenomenon occurred on a regular basis at the periphery of the Kuiper Belt.

They already had experimented with sending small unmanned spacecrafts, though they fell short on material at some point, having to decide between cannibalizing the existing gatherers, small automated vessels used for harvesting bacteria and minerals in the surrounding of Neptune, its satellites and the iced objects of Kuiper. These elements made the base of their diet, as they were used to synthetize the food required on the space station.

Considering, the large number of mouths to feed, now that the stranded Earthians had settled in, they couldn't afford to use any more of these gatherers for their exploration through the wormhole wonder. The rocket engineer from earlier proposed a solution. As the thrust rocket that ending its journey on NOVA was now just a big pile of scrap material, they could recondition parts of it for the tryouts.

A plan of action was set in motion. Among the ten scientists up on the present rotation, two were helping Nic to register the newcomers, identifying their skills and recording any and all information, such as known medical condition, family background, cultural and religious information. Two other accompanied Vince, leading scavenger groups, raiding the rocket and inventorying their booty. Leo had the assistance of another specialist of space relativity in general and wormholes more particularly. The last two had been assigned to the organization of the daily life onboard the space station, seeing as the addition of two hundred new persons to feed, clothe and pacify made a change in the established routine of the scientific team.

Van and Gauguin had volunteered to the scavenger team. They were following Vince in and out of the thrust rocket, taking whichever part they were told to, without any questions. The two friends were used to System D, as they had had to do with only few resources and whatever Mother Nature gave them, when they were in their island; however, they knew really few about the technology, therefore, they employed their resourcefulness to find ways to rip of the spaceship without damaging the precious scrap.

The two had found a friend in the young old-scientist. They were still amazed thinking Vince was more than two hundred years old, yet he appeared to be in his mid-thirties. He had tried to explain the research in human cells regeneration in space and their application to cryogenic stages, though the younger men didn't understand much. They just concluded he was an old man that looked young, and that, as a future possibility, they would also live longer than the average lifespan back on Earth.

If Vince and Leo didn't mind being called old men, Nic didn't like the nickname. They were taking a break, scientists and islanders, eating some, when she made a scene. Van was playing with other nicknames to give their new friends when he inadvertently mentioned the fact that, looking as she did, she was the spitting image of a mad scientist. To his defense, she really looked the part, tired and untidy, and, obviously, she hadn't eaten much during the preceding days. The short woman was prone to theatrics as she demonstrated it when stomping out of the refectory following the exchange with Van. As she left, she didn't hear Leo's comment about how, with the long lifespan, the emaciated look and the blood spots on her lab coat she looked like the vampire in the tales. The others just laughed at the joke and continued their meal talking about the progress on the researches on the wormhole.

Nic's strong reaction was symptomatic of the ambient stress raining aboard the space station. The transition from a small ten person team to a two hundred overbooked second-rate-no-star hotel wasn't easy. The proximity in the closed space had led to a series of similar altercations and dispute.

The mood changed, however, with the announcement of some positive outcome from the wormhole observation. Since they increased their attention focus on it few days ago, they could conclude that the passage was stable. Leo presented their results to everyone, expecting to liven the atmosphere. He obtained the expected reaction as the stress of the past days transformed in excitation, laughs and accolades.

Leo's work had been solely dedicated to the analysis and the prediction of the geothermal storms, as the later were in direct correlation with the opening of the wormhole itself. They found that the time laps of the opening was related to the wavelength of the related sun flare. With this point in mind, he calculated the probability for the apparition of a new opening of the hole in space and its duration. On the three occurrences he predicted, he didn't make any mistake about the time-frame.

The other reason for rejoicing had been the confirmation that the duration of the wormhole opening was following an incremental pattern. It was then decided that they would soon start to send probes through the passage to analyze its structure and stability.

The plan was executed with great enthusiasm. The future was looking brighter to the people on NOVA. The construction of the probes was going its merry way, accompanied with its lot of hiccups. The objective of the small spacecraft being to record data, it required a series of instruments used for reading and analyzing various parameters during the flight and in the part of the Universes at the other side of the passage.

Nic had identified a number of skilled people to contribute to the probe building. They were able to assemble three small ships, however part of the instruments had been missing. To supply to the demand, it was decided to decommission some of the cryogenic chambers that were not in used. The choice had been made after a deliberation between the ten scientists on rotation and the newcomers identified as specialist in the medical and other scientific fields. They agreed that there would be some pods remaining as spare parts for the others in case of any issues, although the more pressing matter was to build and send the probes. If the exploration proved successful, they wouldn't need the cryogenic chambers for a long time.

As scientists of all horizons were working on the machines, Van and Gauguin were learning to move in space. They had been chosen among few others, young and healthy, to prepare and direct the probes near the wormhole. This would avoid any damage during the transport until they would reach the mouth of the passage and reduce the energy consumption.

For the two friends, moving in space reminded them of the ocean. It had been a central part their whole life, they had known the freedom of swimming in the blue waters. The only difference in space was the suit they had to wear for protection, though the feeling was similar, the turquoise surrounding replaced by an expense of darkness.

It had been but a week since the thrust rocket from Hainan had found its way to NOVA. In seven days, they went from despair to hope, the possibility of escaping the Solar system and finding a new home pumping adrenaline in the space station inhabitants, raising the level of endorphin. Everyone was high on hope and expectation...