There was a stowaway aboard.

She'd read a story like this once, a story so old that the original had been on paper, not wafer. All Space Force Cadets read the story--it had even been viddied a few times, but nothing could compare with the starkness of words on a bare screen. In her Academy days, they'd all stayed up late marvelling at the prescience of that pre-spaceflight author, who had described it all so well.

Now it wasn't a story.

"All right, you can come out now," she said in the direction of the supply locker. "Your free ride is over." At the same time she fingered her laser knife, holding it ready in case the stowaway gave her trouble. She'd never faced one before, not in all her eleven years in the Force ... but you heard stories from other pilots. Some stowaways fought, some threatened, some pleaded, some even tried to bribe you--but in the end, according to the inexorable laws of physics, all of them died.

It was sad, she supposed, in some abstract way. But Space didn't care about simple human concerns like life and death. Space was cold, and all it knew was the bottom line of its cold equations.

Self-defense, she thought. The minute her unwanted guest decided to stow away, he had sealed his fate. It was him or her. And she wasn't going to let it be her.

"Show yourself right now," she said through clenched teeth, "Or I swear, I'll shoot."

The locker door opened, and a timid voice said, "Don't shoot. I'm coming out." Then the stowaway stepped into view.

It was a boy.