I closed the clasps around my helmet as the last step in putting on my vac-suit. After checking that it was properly sealed, I could slowly hear the suit over-pressurizing to 1.2 bar. It felt weird at first, especially in my ears, but after going through the motions my mom taught me, it didn't bother me anymore. This wasn't my first time wearing a suit. It would be my first time wearing it without going up to the orbital platform, however.

"You ready?" My mom asked from the door. She was also wearing a suit, though hers was from her job. Alina worked as a mechanic and sometimes had to take a sky hopper to inspect or repair some automated mine like she had to today. At first, her boss had been vehemently against me accompanying her on the trip, but she somehow managed to convince him, as long as I wouldn't touch anything important.

"Yeah, I'm -" I started, and to my embarrassment, quickly realized that my microphone wasn't turned on.

"Y-Yeah, I'm ready," I repeated a moment later, my face probably a shade redder.

"Okay, here we go then," Alina said and started the airlock cycle. "We're headed for bay 5, first one on the right."

As the door slid open, I could see that the other side wasn't any more interesting than the grey-on-grey corridor I had seen on my way up here. The only colour came from a blue-glowing light strip near the bottom and the arrows pointing to the left and right. The one towards the right had the words 'Bay 5 - 8' written beneath it.

My mom said little more and made her way over to the first bay on the right. The sky hopper inside looked just like the ones I had seen on the local news. They were small rigid-hull blimps with internal compartments that could be partially or completely evacuated. I could also see the big extendable wind turbines for power and propellers for thrust folded up against the vessel's sides. At the back, there also was a ladder/bridge extended all the way to the ground at a shallow angle.

"Now, normally I just skip this step, but protocol demands that we clip in on the ladder." As Alina said that, she took one of the hooks from her belt and attached it to the safety line running parallel to the handrail. I wordlessly followed her example and went up after her. This was the first time I would actually travel on a sky hopper and, to be honest, I was getting a bit excited.

The blimp had an airlock on the back where we were currently located, so we unhooked ourselves again and entered the small room. It was probably designed with no more than one or two occupants in mind and we had to huddle pretty close together. In the end, we did manage to cycle with both of us inside though.

My mom first removed her own helmet and helped me get out of mine. The rest of our suits, however, stayed on. Making our way into the interior of the blimp, I saw a few doors labelled as a sleeping area, toilet, and storage closet, before being led into a more open room. "Well kiddo, make yourself at home. The flight over should take about 2 to 3 hours depending on the weather. We'll lift off in a few moments." My mom explained as she made her way over to the steering console. Most of the actual flight would be taken over by the autopilot, but a captain was still required on the controls during take-off and landing.

I quickly threw my little backpack onto the couch and positioned myself behind Alina. It may not have been a spaceship, but getting to see the controls of the blimp was the next best thing. Sadly, most of them were just touchscreens. No big thrust levers or panels filled to the brim with buttons like you saw in some old Sci-Fi movies. There was, however, a small control stick and two pedals I could see beneath the console.

"Now, hold your horses. Most of the pre-flight checks haven't even started yet," my mom said with a smirk as she booted up the computer. "This might take a moment, you know, and as much as I love you watching over my shoulder, it isn't all that interesting to watch."

"Fine, fine. I'll have a look around, I guess." With that, I removed myself from the backrest of the seat and did just that. One side of the open area was taken up by the before-mentioned couch with a small projector above it pointing at an empty area of the walls. The outside walls of the blimp had a lot of window space, and, looking outside, I could see one of the four propellers extending in front of me.

The engine was mounted on a steel frame a few meters away from the main body and the rotor blades were slowly unfolding themselves. At the moment, there were also some thick cables running from the hangar bay into the blimp wall, but, just as I was looking at them, they were released with a loud thunk that reverberated through the ship. After that, the cables were quickly pulled out of my field of view. Then, I could hear a louder clunk meaning the docking clamps had released the blimp itself, and I saw the motors finally spooling up. Without the clamps holding us in place, however, we were already lifting off the ground and a few seconds later had cleared the building.

"And we're off! Next stop: Mine 12-J-6... Hmm, that sounded a bit better in my head." Alina declared with an outstretched hand, pointing forward.

I gave a small chuckle at my mom's antics and made my way away from the window. Alina was just standing up from her own seat and looked in my direction. When she noticed me looking back, she gave a smug grin: "I bet my job is already the most exciting, right?"

I just rolled my eyes and went over to the couch. "Zoe actually allowed me to hack one of her clients, so I would say about even."

"Well, just wait for what's in store for you! Oh, I know! Why don't you take a seat over here instead?" she said just as I was about to sit down on the couch. Following where she was pointing, I saw the captain's chair.

"Huh? Seriously? Don't I need like a license for that?" I asked after my brain realized what she was suggesting.

Alina just shrugged. "Technically not. You only need it when the autopilot is disabled, but not when it's only partially engaged."

Okay, maybe Alina would take first place, after all. I rushed over to her and unsuccessfully tried to hide my excitement. Whenever Alina was out on the job, she would call back home and make it seem like the most boring place to be on a sky hopper, but the first time being in control of one was somewhat of a dream come true for me. Unfortunately, you only really got access to one if you worked for the mining company that actually owned them. You couldn't just rent them for a joy ride.

Once in the seat, I first tried to move the stick in front of me, but nothing much happened. "That only controls the propellers. They are still spinning up so not really much you can do with that, but the pedals control the rudders at the back so you can turn left or right."

Ahh... that was disappointing, I guess, but nothing I could do about it. So, instead, I stretched my legs down towards the pedals. Thankfully, it wasn't difficult for me to reach them, and soon enough, I started putting pressure on them. First, the one on the left. After a few seconds, I could see, through the front windows, that we were indeed turning. Then full rudder to the right and we were heading mostly the way we were before.

"Hopper-05, we just detected you drifting. Everything okay up there?" The radio call was coming out of the speakers in front of me and instinctively caused me to pull my legs back. Alina was already talking into her phone though.

"This is 05. We just hit an unexpected gust of wind, that's all," she said while looking at me with a smirk I recognized. It usually meant she just got away with something.

"Roger that, 05." I didn't think the man actually believed that, but apparently that was the signal for my mom to chuckle to herself. I also had a little smile on my face.

In the end, however, steering the blimp turned out to be rather boring. We weren't going all that fast and, with only two movement axes, I pretty quickly went through all the aerial maneuvers I could think of.

Instead, my mom and I eventually sat down on the couch. I was looking out of the window, but most of the surface below us was just barren rock, sometimes obstructed by some clouds or dust. As it turned out, I didn't miss much of a view by living underground for most of my life. What I found fascinating, however, was the sunset I could see on the starboard side. The windows had automatically been shaded, despite the distance of New Melbourne to the star, and it honestly looked less like daytime and more like one star in the night sky was just especially bright. But the view of the other stars and what I assumed were planets was entrancing enough on its own. I had always been fascinated by space and even during my few trips on a proper spaceship, I more often than not put my screens as the outside camera feed.

"I definitely have first place in view, though, right?" Alina suddenly asked from beside me. She had a self-assured smirk on her face.

With a mischievous grin of my own, however, I replied: "I don't know. Maybe I like the gloomy inside of a bar more."

"Okay, now you got me curious. The others never talk about their adventures with you, so now you have to spill the beans!" My mom said, this time with a fake serious expression. I knew Alina well enough, though, to realize she was just jealous that my other moms had excluded her from the talks over the last few days.

"I don't really think that's how it works, you know." I tried, but I knew she wouldn't give up that easily. So, after a few more minutes of deflecting her questions, I reluctantly agreed to share some of my previous adventures.

This entire ordeal had actually been started by Alina. About two weeks ago, she mentioned that my school internship should be coming up the next school year. Back in her own teenage days, she had apparently completed a few of those to get real work experience early on. However, it turned out my school didn't actually have those. Mainly because the mining industry New Melbourne relied on was deemed too dangerous for a bunch of teenagers and kids. That only really left the service industry and perhaps orbital dock jobs to choose from, so the idea never really took off.

Three-fourths of my parents had been satisfied with that, but Alina had still insisted I should get some hands-on experience for my future. I wasn't totally against the idea, but the end of my vacation had been coming up at the time and I thought she would shelf that idea for the future. Alina, however, had surprised everyone - except maybe Zoe - by convincing my mom's bosses to allow a bring-your-child-to-work kind of deal. Most of my moms worked rather harmless jobs, so it hadn't been a huge problem to arrange.

The first on the list had been Addy, who worked in the colonial bureaucracy. Her job had probably been the most boring of the four, not that I had expected differently. The two of us had actually used the day to look for potential university courses or other plans for my future. It wasn't a bad day or anything, just something we could have easily done at home.

Next up had been Viktoria, and her boss had offered worryingly little resistance to the idea. The night I had worked there had been pretty slow and so Vicky had spent most of her time either serving drinks to her guests or having me make puppy eyes at her to try and get a drink from my own mom. To her credit, she didn't budge, and eventually, I had fallen asleep. Next thing I knew, I had woken up in her boss' office.

Before today, Zoe's work had actually been the most interesting. Back before moving to New Melbourne, my mom had actually worked as a hacker and still had a lot of her tools from that time. Nowadays, she mainly works as a freelance programmer. As her own boss, she had, unsurprisingly, been the easiest to convince. Working on the computer had also come pretty easily to me, even if a lot of her work had been too high-level for me.

And last but not least, was Alina. As I said, her boss had taken the longest to convince. Alina's work as a mechanic consisted mainly of her flying out to automated mining equipment and inspecting them for damage. Sometimes she also has to climb down the mining shaft, if a machine broke down.

After I described the days with my other moms, Alina went and got some snacks and drinks from the little kitchen area. Although calling it that was a bit of an exaggeration. It only had a few cupboards, a sink, two induction stove plates, and a microwave. We spent the next two hours looking up some photos and videos on the projector. Most of them were just Alina at work. You could see how she personalized her work vac-suit over the years with stickers and small sewn-in patches. At one point, my other moms also called and asked how our trip was going.

Soon enough, we were approaching our destination, however. Mine 12-J-6 was one of the few outposts directly powered by the city. The mining operations further away often had separate wind and solar farms for energy. From what I could see through the windows, most of the structure was taken up by the landing pad we were slowly descending toward. Only some small round houses throwing up dust clouds hinted at the underground excavation going on.

Eventually, I could hear the docking clamps holding us in place and Alina got up from the captain's seat and made her way to the small airlock. "Alright, here we are. Today is just a routine check-up."

I followed her into the cramped room and thankfully we only had to put our helmets back on. As my HUD slowly rebooted, I saw Alina looking in the small mirror behind me, to check if my helmet was secured before she turned around and I did the same for her. Having finished our preparations, she pulled a small box out of one of the wall compartments. Probably some work equipment.

At the airlock controls, she turned around one last time and once more asked if I was ready. I just nodded, and she initiated the cycle. Due to the atmospheric pressure outside, the airlock first had to pump out the air we had just been breathing back into the living room of the sky hopper before allowing the outside air into the room. It took a lot longer than it would have with a hard vacuum outside and I watched the pressure gauge gradually increase. The outside door opened once it had reached just above 1.6 bar. Safety norms dictated that a suit should over-pressurize in case of a breach, so my suit automatically released a bit more air into my helmet.

Stepping out of the airlock, I saw that we were in a pretty hilly area. The thrown-up dust also blocked most of the view of the sky, so it was pretty dark outside. The ladder of the sky hopper was already extending, although at a steeper angle, than when we boarded.

"That's the main mining shaft," my mom pointed toward a cluster of structures about 100 meters away. "It goes down for a few kilometres, but the drill that dug it has already been moved to another mining site. These small huts are actually just the filters that separate the metals from the dirt. Thankfully, we won't have to go down today."

We reached the end of the ladder, and my mom walked off, heading toward the filters. I, however, hesitated, even if just for a moment. This was technically my first time setting foot on the surface of my own Homeworld. Well, setting vac-suit boots, but you know what I meant. In old stories, landing on a new world was often portrayed as some monumental achievement, but I didn't really know how to describe the emotions filling me at that point. Maybe a feeling of excitement at visiting new places - although I had already been further away from my home whenever we left the planet - mixed with a bit of gloominess. Even this rather insignificant rock floating in space wouldn’t really be affected by anything I did here and these boot imprints would, eventually, be washed away by the winds as well.

Giving one last glance at my footprints, I hurried after Alina. "What do we have to do then?", I asked, just as we reached the first structure. "Well, I will have to run the diagnostics for the machines and maybe check the dust filters for any clogging. You, technically, aren't allowed to do much more than watch me, but I'm sure I can find something interesting for you."

With that, Alina flipped up the cover for a small screen built into the side of the machine and I could see that she started the self-diagnostics program. In response, the clattering winded down and the dust coming out of the filters stopped until I could only hear a rhythmic clanking noise and see a progress bar appear on the display.

Unfortunately, we couldn't really do much more than wait for the program to finish for now. The most likely case would also be that no fault would be found, so my mom quickly searched for something for us to do. After a moment lost in thought, however, Alina turned back towards me and simply asked if I wanted to see 'something cool'.

Leading me around the machines, my mom pulled out a glow stick and bent it. Instantly, the small rod started to glow in a dim blue light. Before it could reach its maximum brightness, Alina nonchalantly tossed it with an underhand throw into the black abyss that had suddenly opened up before us. On the way down, the glow stick hit the wall once, then twice before it ultimately vanished into the hole, never to be seen again.

"Pretty cool, right?", my mom's casual tone got me to turn my head away from the abyss bit by bit. I knew we were perfectly safe on the platform, but some animalistic part of my brain just thought: Deep hole equals scary and didn't want me to look away, just in case the hole didn't appreciate the gift we had just offered it.

"I-I guess..." My tone most likely betrayed how I felt, but I didn't know if Alina noticed, as she picked up a hook from her utility belt and motioned to the handrail. "So. Wanna head down?"

"NO! No, I'm good..." Thankfully, my mom didn't move closer to the edge and instead sighed a bit as she went over to where I was standing. "Okay, party pooper." I could see the smirk on her face, but also noticed genuine worry, probably due to the uneasiness my own face must be showing.

Once she reached me, my mom held out one of her arms and my hand instinctively went to grab hers. "I thought you weren't scared of heights?" Alina asked as she squeezed my hand a bit tighter.

"I thought so, too." I had never felt real fear while going up the space elevator or when in orbit, but this somehow felt different. "Maybe it's the lighting." That was the only explanation I could come up with, even if I had never been all that scared of the dark, either.

"Perhaps," is all Alina said in response. "But this means we're all done here. Let's head back, shall we?" I just held onto her hand and let myself be guided away.

About an hour later, the diagnostics reported the all-clear and we had already lifted off again. Unfortunately, the mine was today's only destination, so our next stop would be back in the city. As we flew back, however, I noticed a small detail off in the distance. The sky hopper didn't have any rear-facing windows, except the small one in the airlock, so I hadn't noticed it on the first leg of the trip.

All the way back in the city, with the periodic lights on the cable pointing the way, one could actually see the space elevator cable even from this distance. I knew the orbital anchor of New Melbourne was floating directly above my home, but the actual station was unfortunately too high as the blimp's hull blocked the view. Even if I had a good angle, though, I doubted I would have seen much. The anchor point had been built in orbit thousands of kilometres up, so it would have simply looked like one bigger glowing speck amongst the stars.

"You know, there is still something else I wanted to show you," my mom eventually said, and I turned my head away from the window to look back at her. "But we're gonna have to put our helmets on for that."

"Eh, you don't mean... no way!" I didn't say what I hoped she meant, but Alina must have known exactly what I was thinking about. At this time of the month, there was one thing that instantly came to mind, after all.

When my mom just responded with "Maybe I do.", I may or may not have pulled her toward the airlock. Alina did remember to shut off the engines, though, before she let herself be dragged along by my sudden enthusiasm.

My poor helmet had to withstand me practically smashing it on and I almost missed securing the last clasp, but thankfully, my mom had been more observant than me at that moment. Even during the airlock cycle, I could barely contain my excitement. I had only seen the spectacle once with my naked eye before when I was lucky enough to be in orbit at the time. However, thanks to New Melbourne's highly elliptical orbit, it actually happened every 42 days.

As soon as the door opened, I rushed outside. The blimp was over 10 kilometres high, and I could see the ground a lot further than when we had been at the mine. Even if it was mostly barren wasteland, the view was still impressive at that altitude, but the land beneath me wasn't actually why I was so excited. Unfortunately, I had to wait for Alina to catch up with me, though, as I couldn't open the vessel's access hatch without her.

Just as I thought that, however, the maintenance hatch already started to slide away as a ladder was lowered towards me at an agonizingly slow pace. My mom had probably activated it with her suit, but even so, I didn't wait any longer and pulled myself up into the hull of the blimp before it was even fully extended. Inside the blimp, I could see the different evacuated compartments separated by the catwalk I was now standing on. Each smaller sphere had a display that showed its current status, but I ignored them all as I continued toward the ladder on the opposite side. The hatch to the roof was already open and looking up, I could see what I had been so excited about. Obviously, the view through the small hole wasn't all that much, so I practically jumped onto the ladder and started climbing without ever letting it out of view.

Far above me, floating millions of kilometers away, yet still taking up a bigger portion of the sky than the forgotten space elevator could ever dream of, was a sight that would leave anyone speechless.

Thinan-malkia was the official name of the sub-brown dwarf New Melbourne was orbiting. Two million years ago, it had been a rogue planet like any other before it flew too close to our star and got trapped in its gravity. As if to exact revenge, the planet then destabilized the orbit of a gas giant that is believed to have been in the system and caused it to be ejected as well as capturing New Melbourne in its eccentric orbit.

The sight above was more beautiful to me than anything I had ever seen. New Melbourne was currently approaching the planet from below the orbital plane and one-half of the gas giant was bathed in sunlight. The only light source on the other were occasional lightning bolts, which were actually orders of magnitude larger than the distance we had flown today. One spot that was clearly visible from this position was the huge aurora at the pole of the planet. Its ever-shifting shape was by far the most hypnotizing aspect, and that meant a lot coming from me.

Suddenly a red streak divided my view for just a moment and at first, I thought something happened to the behemoth of a planet before me. After another moment had passed, my mom spoke up. "Ohh, a shooting star! They're supposedly able to grant wishes, you know."

Alina had evidently made her way up here without me noticing, and she similarly had her helmet pointing upward. All of a sudden, another two meteoroids fell into the atmosphere and burned up in long streaks. "They are pretty common this time of the month. If we weren't in the way, they would most likely just burn up in the big boy up there."

The way she called the enormous sphere taking up a good portion of my vision a 'big boy', had me shaking my head and trying to hold in the laughter. "What? It's true, isn't it?" I could hear the smirk in my mom's voice, even without averting my eyes.

The planet might be classified as a sub-brown dwarf, but that only misled from the colourful bands of gases getting blown around by mind-bogglingly strong winds. As the fourth falling star entered my view, I actually closed my eyes and made a wish, even if I knew it was all superstition.

Eventually, our outside adventure had to come to an end, though. My suit could only carry so much oxygen, and the time on the ground had already eaten up a lot. I reluctantly informed Alina, after the 20-minute warning came up. I knew she had been monitoring my vitals as well, but I didn't mind that much. During outside work, it was actually customary for one person to monitor the status of everybody else. Before we went back though, I had asked her to take some pictures of me and the planet. At least one of my friends would be forever jealous of that. I had already taken some myself, but I wanted at least one where I was visible as well. My mom readily agreed and soon enough I was doing various poses, even if some of them seemed to confuse her a bit.

Getting back into the airlock was pretty quick, and I replaced my oxygen tank there. All tanks were thankfully built modularly in nature, so I didn't have to worry about any adapters or such. My old one would automatically be refilled when we dock at the city.

"So, what did you wish for?" The unexpected question stopped me in my tracks, just as I was walking through the inside door. I hadn't noticed that my mom had apparently seen me do it and got a bit embarrassed about it. I also knew you weren't supposed to just divulge that information though. "That's a secret," I simply said and ignored the curious look I got in return.

"Hmm, alright then. We should be back at the city in an hour. Wanna do anything to bridge the time?" Restarting the motors was pretty fast, as my mom just pressed a button on the console and the auto-pilot took care of the rest. I actually had something I wanted to do as quickly as possible, so I said that I needed to call someone and excused myself to the sleeping area in the back. It wasn't much, just a bunk bed and a small closet, but it would at least offer me some privacy. I fished out my phone out of the pocket I had stored it in and instantly started a call.

Before the call had even connected, I looked through the photos Alina had taken. Her privacy settings allowed me to easily copy them onto my own phone and I looked for the first good one to send.

"Hell, Mel. Do you know what time it is right now?" The gallery of my photos was squished onto the lower half of the screen as the video call suddenly took up the rest. "Uhh, 87:40 local time?" I asked innocently, only to get an eye roll in response.

"Exactly. So I thought I had at least another 30 hours of peaceful sleep ahead of me." I knew Thea was joking, but if her attire was anything to go by, my classmate had actually been asleep when I called her. However, I also knew that, outside of schooldays, she just slept whenever she felt like it, so I didn't feel too guilty about waking her.

I didn't say much more though and instead dragged the photos I wanted to send her from the lower half of the screen to the upper. They were automatically uploaded and a few seconds later, I could see Thea's eyes shift down. At first, she seemed a bit perplexed about what I sent her, before recognition became visible on her face, followed by what I interpreted as envy.

"No way! I mean, no effing way! How? What? When?" the questions were easily answerable by the metadata of the picture but I responded anyway: "Well in reverse order: about 10 minutes ago, me on a sky hopper, awesome-mom-privilege, and yes effing way." If I could be called fascinated by space, then Thea was outright obsessed with anything happening outside of our atmosphere. I mean, there wasn't a screen in her room not showing one orbital view or another, unless absolutely necessary. Both of her parents also worked up in the orbital docks, but Thea herself was rarely allowed anywhere near the outwards-facing windows, let alone the airlocks.

"Can I have your mom, please?" She suddenly asked while making puppy eyes at me, "Just for a day or two, I promise." I laughed a little at that. "Sure, if you can convince my mom to let her go for that long."

My friend only let out a small sigh at that. "You know that's never gonna happen." After that, she let out a huge yawn. One that almost got me as well. "I think I'm gonna go back to sleep again, though. I'm way too tired for any of this right now."

"Okay, sorry for waking you. Goodnight, Thea." I made a small wave to the camera and the girl in question responded the same way. "Night, night," and with that, the connection was dropped. In response, I plopped onto the bed I had been sitting on and started looking through the pictures again. One of them caught my eye because my mom had apparently captured the exact moment a meteoroid passed behind my head. I looked through the rest of the photos, but none of them seemed as good.

After looking at it for a few more moments, I set it as my profile picture on my usual social media platforms and sent Thea a few of the other good ones. She was in do-not-disturb mode and would only see them once she woke up, but I would've sent them to her, anyway. For some reason, I also felt pretty tired myself, so I sent a quick text to my mom and loosened my suit a bit. Falling asleep in a suit wasn't the most comfortable, but it was manageable. I couldn't really recall what I dreamt about, but I somehow knew that the background was usually dominated by one specific planet.

I woke up again to someone stroking my hair and whispering my name. I obviously knew who it was, but that didn't make waking up for me any easier. "Just five more minutes," I mumbled more to myself, but that got my mom to remove her hand from my head. For a moment, I missed the warmth it gave off, but soon enough, I was fully waking up. Alina was standing in front of my bed, with both of her gloves off and a faint smile on her lips. "We're home."

The walk back to the city's airlock was as exciting as when we had left. The only thing different were Zoe and Addy already waiting at the inside door. I waved at them through the door, and Addy at least waved back. Zoe, however, had a pretty stern look, and as usual for her, it was directed at Alina. As soon as the airlock had pressurized and the door opened, they both went in to meet us. Thankfully, the airlock was a lot bigger than those on the sky hoppers.

Addy went in and gave me a big hug, and I quickly threw my arms around her as well. I was a bit confused as to why it happened, but a hug from my moms was always good. The sweet family moment was suddenly interrupted, though, when I heard a loud slap reverberate through the room. Looking at my other two moms, I saw that Alina's head was angled off to one side. Had Zoe just slapped Alina? "I probably deserved that." Wait, she did?

"You big idiot." With that, Zoe actually went and hugged Alina as well. Was that how this usually went?

"And, how was your day?" Addy's question caused me to look up at her as my mind went through the day from the beginning. Eventually, one thought stuck out to me though. It had been the thing I wished for earlier, but somehow I felt now was the moment to say it.

"I wanna work in space." That got three raised eyebrows in response.