Time passed slowly in the pod, seconds and minutes moving like cold machine oil. Ralph had started up the terminal in front of him and set it to display the progress of the descent procedure.

De-spin was complete now. Anything not secured would now be floating in the deserted and quiet rooms and corridors of Hope.

Fat, red numbers in the corner of the screen were counting to zero. Then he felt, rather than heard, a rumble—the stirrings of the brake engines firing. The powerful solid-state boosters embedded in the ship's hull had laid dormant for decades, their sole purpose being to brake Hope from her final orbit and to provide a soft landing.

The engines fired for about a minute, and then they went silent again. Hope had started her final descent—a meteorite racing towards a planet to trace its fiery trail across the sky for any curious eyes looking up from the surface.

The passengers would be in their cots now, safe and secured—at least if they had followed Sophia's orders. Many of them would be frightened, fearfully awaiting the Ai's instructions, understanding little of what was going on. For them, Hope was their world, and Sophia its god.

So much knowledge had been lost along their way, information discarded or distorted while being passed from generation to generation. So many tales had been left untold.

But that did not matter. The knowledge they would need in their future was of a different nature. They wouldn't have to know about air scrubbers, ship engines, and computers. Planting crops would matter now, hunting, building shelters from wood, and lighting a fire.

Fires, the nightmare of anyone traveling on a spaceship. They would need them to stay alive.

All of that knowledge was in the records he had handed over to Claudio.

For the children to come, Hope and all the wisdom it embodied would become a temple; and later a legend, irrelevant.

The cramped interior of the pod reminded Ralph of a day years before, a day spent with his brother. He had always tried to get Pete interested in things technical. So, that day, he had talked Pete into a trip in one of these pods. They had left the dock, and Ralph had steered the pod away from Hope, playing its controls, flying loops and turns with ease. He had offered Pete the controls, encouraged him to fly the pod himself, but Pete had declined, his face pale and frightened. At this moment, Ralph had realized that he had failed, that he would never get Pete interested in the workings of the machines that kept Hope alive.

After that trip, Ralph had felt depressed for weeks.

The deceleration couch at his back started to vibrate.