There's no sound in space – meaning that the tether was silent as it soared. The click Airomem waited for was purely imagined, and she had no way of knowing whether the connection was successful. But she could see the hook lodged into place, and at her belt, the wire started to spool away from her, the umbilical cord back to the ship and her sole chance of survival.

Further and further, she travelled, too scared to move and dislodge the hook, her form rigid as it waited for the wire to run out, her hip bone registering a slight vibration with each full revolution of the spindle. And in that moment, her rotation carried her around to face the planet, now slightly larger than the last time she had looked at it. The planet where she would lead her people – the Lear and the Nectians. The planet that was the culmination of Dandelion 14, that she and countless others had spent their entire lives tending to the power room to reach.

At that moment, she knew that if the tether connection broke away, she would become a slave to the planet's gravity, pulled in until she crashed down long after her death. Inferior to its will.

So she squared her shoulders, glaring down her nose at the new world. The new world that belonged to her. And she raised her chin, just as the tether caught and whipped her into a spin, the breath nearly knocked out of her by the jerking motion. Then, at her belt, she felt the vibration again as the tether started to retract.

Click, one revolution of the spindle, drawing her closer to the ship.

Click came the second rotation, followed by a third, then a fourth, the frequency increasing with each vibration as she accelerated. She stretched out her hands, releasing a small sigh of relief just as they made contact with the metal, her fingers clutching around a handhold, the tether at her belt still pulling with a slight tension. Breathing hard as she realized she had made it to the other side, and step one was complete.

She blinked, looking left and right down the row of windows, her toes extending just over the glass of one below her. And, consulting her memory, she tried to determine where the nearest collection of apartments would be. Most likely left, she realized, though there would be some on the right as well, though about twice as far away.

Leaving her tether in place, she crawled downwards until the window was eye level, and looked inside.

Directly in front of her were farms, farms that were disturbingly empty. A few figures walked in the distance, but there on the left, just as she had predicted, was a hallway that led a row of apartments branching away from the end of the farms. Taking care to ensure at least one of her hands always firmly grasped part of the ship, she started scuttling over the outer edge, watching as the hallway approached with each passing window. Then she breached the internal wall, and there was a stretch twice as long before the next window began.

In moments, she was in front of it, one hand against the glass, squinting to look through, a triumphant smile flashing across her face as she recognized the structure of some of the ship's smaller style of apartments characterized by the wall-mounted bed, receded shelving, and sliding door closet.

And in this one, there was even an occupant – a child whose eyes bugged out as he stared at her, held frozen in place, strands of his dark hair sticking up in the back as if they too were astonished. She raised her hand in a wave, and slack-jawed, he slowly raised his own, opening and closing his fingers as if he couldn't remember how they worked. Then she moved to the next window, peering inside to see the door closed and the room vacant.

Thinking back to a short time before, she recalled what the procedures book had said, in the Emergency Boarding Procedures section.

Upon designing the ship, special precaution was taken to limit the points at which people and objects could enter and exit. These points form a natural weakness in the hull, as well as a general opportunity for problems to arrive, and as such were limited to two – one on each end of the ship.

However, this design possesses faults: it does not consider emergencies that may occur to maintenance workers on distant areas of the ship, the potential for the exits to become inoperable, and other unforeseeable circumstances. As such, the following section is provided as a guide in absolute emergencies, and should be used only as the very last resort in the most dire of situations. For this method to even be considered, no fewer than three hundred lives should be at risk, and the full council must make a unanimous emergency vote.

This certainly qualified as the most dire of situations, Airomem decided, and she began checking the room inside for the aspects denoted by the next section of the procedures.

First, the target room should be small and must have a closed door. Clutter within should be kept to a minimum, and there should be no occupants present. The window must not be damaged, and there should be no objects of high value in the room, including any sort of ship controls. Water vessels should not be present if possible, nor any sealed containers.

Continuing to scan the contents, Airomem nodded and moved on to the next section.

When designing windows for the ship, layers of ultra-strong plastic were interlaid between the transparent ceramic compounds, allowing for a barrier to retain the pressure of the ship even if the window should shatter. As you prepare to make your incision, be sure to puncture these internal layers, and prepare for the event of shattered glass. Make the incision short, keep tight hold of your cutting tool, and ensure your body is clear of potential fractures and pressurized gas. Utmost caution is to be used, and remember – this method is not simply a last resort due to the damage to the ship, but at the high potential for injury or death of the technician.

Swallowing, Airomem's hand fell to her tool belt where she had stored the Omni-cutter, and she held it as far as possible away from her, inching along the side of the ship until only its tip brushed the corner of the window. Pulling the trigger, she watched as the white spark danced at the edges of the prongs, and her finger hovered over a second button on the side of the tool. The button, as she had read in the procedures, would force the arc outwards in a short parabola, stripping away anything in its path.

She paused, her grip growing tighter on both the tool and her handhold, her teeth clenched, her second tether secured moments before to a point just a few yards away. And with a sharp breath, her finger danced forward, pushing the button inward as the arc leapt away from the prongs and rushed into the waiting glass.