Major Thomas Thompson looked over the gauges and lights in his cockpit. He nodded that everything was in the green. He couldn't remember a smoother test flight.

Usually something happened, the lights turned red, and he had to punch out.

He wouldn't be able to do that in this situation. If anything happened, he would have to stick with the vehicle until someone smarter than him could figure out some way for him to get home.

Thompson looked out the porthole in front of him. Dark space bejeweled with stars looked back. He noted the shifting of constellations as he cut across the emptiness.

“Everything green,” Thompson reported into the radio and recorder. He had heard they had outfitted the black box with a beacon that would switch on in case of something happening. It would take months for Ground Control to launch another vehicle out where he was to find it. “No problems to report. Everything is handling smooth so far.”

The plan was to fly a slingshot to Jupiter and back. He was supposed to coast to a docking arrangement with the Williams Space Station at the end of the ride. If everything stayed as smooth as it was at the moment, the various agencies involved would build bigger craft with the same engine principles so they could send people to Mars faster than the last ten years.

From there, they wanted to head out to the outer Solar System and set up to use the Oort Cloud to launch to other solar systems. A four light year jump should be a breeze the way the engine handled acceleration.

He envisioned a network of stations launching ships to other stars as humanity started to grow beyond its home system. He wondered if they would finally meet aliens and how that first contact would go.

He hoped that he would live to see that day.

One of the gauges redlined. He tapped it with a finger. It stayed at the top of the dial.

Green lights turned red as he watched. He checked the board. He decided to cut everything off. He still had enough speed to reach his turnaround point and head back.

“It looks like we have a complete instrument failure,” he reported. “I'm going to try to reboot the system.”

Thompson cut everything off on the instrument panel. He would have to eyeball the space outside for some random piece of rock floating in his path while he tried to get everything back on track.

He listened to the dead quiet of the boat as he pulled the checklist for the restart from its holder. He was still okay as long as nothing punched through the spacecraft. He could coast to his turnaround and head back. He just wouldn't be able to stop. Hopefully by the time he got close to Williams, someone would have figured out some way to stop him from overshooting and heading out of the system and eventually dying.

Thompson worked his way through the checklist. Everything came on-line like he expected. The engine rumbled to life with a shake of the spacecraft's frame. He just had a momentary glitch. Control would be able to figure it out when he got back and docked.

A glow erupted in the porthole. He looked at it in concern. His speed made any collision a potentially deadly one. And then there was the fact that something was in his flight path, and he didn't know what it could be.

Thompson decided the best thing to do was steer around the glow. He didn't know what was giving off that light. If it belonged to another spacecraft, he was as good as dead if he hit it.

And if it was something natural, it was better to take pictures and let the Control people try to figure it out.

He triggered the camera so that it would take pictures while he was passing the glow. The shots would be sent back to Williams. The camera was supposed to mark spaces in Jupiter's orbit, but he felt they wouldn't mind taking a look at what he was seeing.

He wondered what the glow could be. He doubted it was another spacecraft. Maybe it was a comet, or a small asteroid, reflecting sunlight at his window. It had approached closer than he liked before he noticed it.

A vibration shook the spacecraft. Thompson looked around. He didn't see any leaks in the control area. Was the engine about to blow up? He had no way to eject it. If it went, he would go up in a ball of fire with it.

Part of the wall separated from the spacecraft as he watched. Everything not nailed down went with the section of hull.

The tear widened as he watched. He checked his harness and personal air supply. The radio turned to static as he reported what was going on.

The control board started losing rivets and buttons. Part of the surface peeled off and flew through the widening hole into space.

The straps holding Thompson to his pilot's seat pulled away from his body. He grabbed them as he floated toward the hole. He didn't want to fall through the hole into whatever was outside.

He fought the pull on his body, hugging his seat against it. The bolts came out of his seat's support column holding it to the floor. The whole thing flew through the ruptured side of the aircraft. He looked around as he fell into the glow pulling his vehicle apart.

Thompson squinted against the glow. It looked like a cartoon star to him. He must have lost his oxygen supply and passed out when the board started acting crazy. That was the only rational explanation for this.

He didn't have a better explanation for a five pointed star sitting in the middle of the solar system taking his spacecraft apart with a magnetic pull.

Thompson kept a grip on his seat as he fell into the star. His stomach told him that it was confused which direction it should be going. He didn't blame it. His eyes looked at flashing scenes of some civilization that couldn't be real as he spun end over end. He fell out of that weird space over a body of water. He let go of the chair as he dropped.

He splashed down beside his seat. It headed for the bottom as he struggled to the surface. He opened his helmet, sampling the air as he struggled to stay afloat.

He looked around for land. That was one of the things they taught you when you were about to crash and had to eject over water. You had to be able to keep your head and swim to the closest shore in the hopes of a rescue.

Thompson wondered if Control had received his messages. What were they thinking? Would they even see the star flaring into the existence and taking his spacecraft apart?

He couldn't worry about that right now. He had to survive where he was. Pain ran through his body as he took his helmet off. He put that down to hitting the water harder than he had thought. He didn't have an idea how high he had been when he appeared over the water.

Thompson struggled out of his suit. He didn't need it to swim, and it was dragging him down. Once he was unencumbered, swimming would be easier to do despite the pain stitching through him.

He struggled to slip the suit off over his boots. He couldn't do without the boots. Footwear might be the best protection he could have wherever he was.

Thompson spotted something green in the distance. He decided that was the best place to start looking for a place to carve out until someone figured out how to rescue him.

He didn't see how they were going to do that since he didn't know anything about the process that had stranded him. That star could have been temporary. He didn't see any way home if that was the case.

He pulled himself through the water toward the hint of land. Once he had something solid under his feet, he could take a minute to plan. He had to have food, water, and shelter if he wanted to keep living.

Once he had that out of the way, he could think about what dangers had to be on his new home.

He doubted he was the only living thing around. The thought that he might be swimming with sharks spurred him to the beach that drew closer as he swum toward the green strip on the ocean.

He pulled himself out of the water and lay where he collapsed for a long time before he considered moving. Pain shot through his arm, but it wasn't enough to get him moving on its own.

“Someone is here,” said a voice coming to him from beyond the beach. “I thought I was mistaken.”

Thompson shifted so he could look at the speaker. A lady with golden skin stood on the grass beyond the sandy beach. She wore a dress made of pink material. A star covered her upper arm. He wondered if the green hair was some kind of dye job.

A munchkin stood at her hip. An axe rested on his shoulder. He also wore pink, but his clothes were pants and shirt instead of a dress. He had a star tattooed on his forehead.

“How's it going?,” asked Thompson. Everything went black after that.