The Daedalus

Humanity's first interstellar colony ship, out of Earth in 2293, 4 years under way. The hull was divided into sections — the Central Command Tower, the Biology Section, the Forward Module, the Ring — all of it coordinated by the master AI Janus.

The observation deck of the Central Command Tower was a ring of glass panels, with the security officer's post dead centre at a semicircular console. The innermost part of the Biology Section was P4 containment, and every piece of engineering in that section assumed that whatever was inside it might kill. Protection levels ran P1 to P4 from the outside in: P1 was the entry for the Forward Module and EVA suits, P2 the buffer, P3 the second-highest-protection medical and work area, P4 the innermost. The Ring spun to make artificial gravity, and all 100,000 cryo-bays were in there.

Day and night aboard were held up by the light cycle. In the hour when the night cycle ran lowest, the nursing station had nothing but the glow of 2 screens on the desk; during the morning cycle, the overhead lights of Corridor P3-A simulated 10:00 sunlight on Earth, colour temperature 5500 K, three times the brightness of the evening cycle. The UV sterilization cycle beeped once when a pass finished. The CO2 scrubber hissed every 5 seconds, and that sound had not changed in 4 years.

Information aboard travelled by light panel. Janus spread itself into small interfaces that came up on the desks of every post, on wristwatches, under the sensor calibration ports along the corridor walls. The base colour of a light panel was normally blue; when it meant to stand behind a recommendation itself, the base colour shifted to violet, then dropped back to blue. In 4 years aboard, the security officer had seen it go violet few enough times to count on one hand.

The supply line could only turn out things that were serviceable. The coffee tasted of plastic, and so did the synthetic juice. The chairs in the conference rooms did not match — in the ordinary meeting room next to P4, only the one at the head of the table still had tight screws.

It was a complete micro-civilization: military security, engineering, medical, biology, and 100,000 colonists in cryogenic sleep. The ship also kept a 4.7-square-metre private duty room for the security officer, numbered 14B, holding one folding desk, one narrow chair, and one sealed wall of work interface. The continuation of the entire human species was staked on this one ship.

It was designed to arrive, to land, to take root. It was not designed to run.