The huge starship, externally bearing the resemblance of a zeppelin, had been accelerating for four months, with great effort sped up to the velocity to break away from the Solar system’s gravity, and detached the first acceleration stage. Later on, it was picked up by a stream of the galactic aether which sucked it in like a speck of dust into its fast-flowing river of time, several times exceeding the speed of light. The giant ship merged into it just as a knife dropped into still water, and instantly disappeared into the endless space of the Universe, like a needle in the haystack.
The entire launch and interstellar flight was being vigilantly overseen by GAS; it was relentlessly and meticulously checking all of the parameters of the ship’s engines and systems’ operations, repeatedly calculating and re-calculating the variants of the burn rate of fuel necessary to slow down when approaching the intended destination, and was making adjustments to the possible maximum load for the return trip.
Trouble began on the ship right after blast-off, happening as early as the acceleration stage. The central air conditioning system on the ship started malfunctioning at once, and some cabins were cold and damp. Controlling the temperature and air humidity was impossible – this operation could only be done by GAS, which kept refusing to warm up the cold units on account of economy for the journey back. It was also supplying water to the lavatories for workers according to a strict schedule – for half hour in the morning and for two hours in the evening. And besides, the food for the personnel was meager in serving and tasted awful – no cook was hired for the flight to cut costs and resources, therefore GAS prepared the means using pre-stocked briquettes of frozen meat and fish as well as dried grain products. The uncomfortable accommodations and poor food quality created much hardship for the travelers. Given that the ship’s crew had been assembled at the last moment, it consisted of a ragtag group of individuals who were hard to manage. In addition to the recruits from the special barracks, there were twelve girls working as chambermaids, six guards for Valentin Valentinovich, and, finally, the crew of seven people.
At first, the recruits from the barracks were just complaining, “We didn’t join here to put up with cold and hunger – we’ve had this shit in the barracks in spades!” And then, a couple of months into the flight, those amongst the group who were stronger and cockier began switching up the living arrangements, kicking out the weaker and more timid members from their warmer cabins. This process got out of control, but the guards stayed out of it, having decided that everything would settle down somehow on its own, and being more preoccupied in fooling around with the chambermaids instead; even Valentin Valentinovich was indifferent to the infighting amongst the crew over the cabins, picking for himself the most curvaceous girl of the twelve helps, locking himself with her in his cabin and barely leaving it, entrusting GAS to entirely pilot the ship and manage the crew on its own. As for GAS, having economically considered with its silicon brain that having members of the high-stakes expedition engaged in promiscuous erotic escapades and physical altercations was an extravagant and excessive waste of air, water and food, ultimately decided to put all crew members into hibernation six months earlier than planned. So, on week ten of the voyage, it released the sleeping gas to all ship’s modules induce anabiosis, in the middle of the night time while everybody was already asleep. It also began injecting nutritional supplements into the atmosphere, to make sure that the travelers do not die from malnutrition before arriving to the destination.
