I awake in a small room, covered by a thin blanket and a substantial space suit. My breath is loud in the helmet as I try to control a rising panic. I climb out of the bed as best I can in the unfamiliar suit, and stand in the centre of the room. It’s very small, I can almost touch both side walls without moving, and sparse. There is a strange vibration coming through the floor, as if a huge machine is turning somewhere close by. As I stand trying to calm myself I realise I have no memory of my life before today, although I know what a space suit is, what a helmet does, how to stop myself panicking. And I can read the glowing letters on the control panel that opens the small door. After several seconds I manage to recall a name, Steeborg. Whether this is my surname or first name, or indeed a nick-name, I don’t know. It takes a few seconds to look around the room, there isn’t much to see. There’s no mirror, although I’m not sure I’m ready to look myself in the eye yet. So I touch the pad and the door slides open, the mechanism grating as if badly maintained or just over-used. A corridor runs left to right in front of me, other similar doors in both directions. The door closes rapidly, as if impatient at my hesitation, and cuts off the view. I open it again and this time I step out. The door slams shut behind me and the panel now says it’s locked. Looks like I’m not going back in there. Choosing at random, I turn left and look around. I am, apparently, at Port Olisar in something called an EZHab. I freeze as a figure runs towards me. He, I think, is dressed exactly the same, and just emerged from another identical door. This person seems to know where to go, so I follow as he runs down some stairs. The figure goes through another door and into a large room, with me close behind. A disembodied voice welcomes us. The man is now standing in front of a small screen, tapping it with a gloved hand. There are other screens nearby, so I do the same. Some kind of recognition software must be running, because the system seems to know who I am. It appears I own a ship, although I have no memory of ever buying one. A few seconds later the screen informs me my ship has been delivered to landing pad D08. Intrigued, I look around, and spot a sign on the wall directing me to the right place. I walk slowly towards the pad as the people around me dash and scurry on tasks of their own, no one speaking or interacting with any other. As I get closer, my mind begins to supply images of huge, sleek spaceships crewed by humans and humanoid aliens. My disappointment is swift and total. Standing on landing pad D08 is a tiny ship, not much bigger than a family car. I walk over to it, hoping I’m on the wrong pad. But no, this is D08, and this is my ship. It takes me a while to work out how to open the hatch, but finally it swings free and down comes a ladder. Inside, it’s not a lot bigger than the bed I recently woke up in. I take the only seat and look around the simple dashboard. There’s a switch that reads ‘flight ready’, and I cautiously press it. The ship starts to hum and holographic screens appear. It seems to be ready to go, just like that. I’m not sure how, maybe some residue from my former life, but I have a basic knowledge of how to fly the ship. It’s as if some mysterious guiding hand is helping me along. So I take off and zoom out into the dark of space, the dock rapidly receding to a point of light just like all the others. What now? I think to myself. I see some comms arrays and some other ships, and a planet. Maybe someone there can help me find out who I am. With more trial and error I’m soon jumping towards a place called Yela. In my mine it sounds like yellow, I have no idea if that's right or wrong. As I arrive in orbit I’m still none the wiser, as Yela looks a uniform dirty white. There are several points on my navicom, so I pick one at random. It’s says it’s some kind of emergency shelter, so perhaps someone there can help me, I have a kind of emergency after all. I fire up the after-burner, and slowly, so slowly, the ship enters the thin atmosphere and descends towards the rocky surface. This isn’t the fastest of ships, and it takes a long time to reach the planet. Finally my altimeter is counting down to zero and I reduce speed ready to land. What happened next I’m not sure. Whether it was pilot error, a fault in the ship, or the fault of the guiding hand, I don’t know. One minute I was coming in to land, the next I'd slammed into the rocks upside down and on fire. There’s obviously some kind of artificial gravity in the ship, because I was able to exit normally, then tumble onto the belly of the ship. Although I was uninjured, the ship was a total wreck, with bits of the landing gear missing and the flight controls dead. From my position on the wreckage I looked around in the light of the rapidly setting sun. As far as I could see, which was a fair way, there was nothing but rocks and dust. No people, no creatures or plants, no buildings or distant lights. No roads, tracks or trails, no foot prints. Nothing alive but me and my finite supply of oxygen. I went back inside the ship to try and contact someone, but the whole panel was dead. By the time I was back outside it was truly dark, a small spot of light from my helmet was all the illumination I had. As I saw it, I could either wait with my ship for rescue, which would give some protection and might have retained it’s air supply, or set off across the planet and try to reach the emergency shelter I was heading towards. If my ship had come down in the same orientation it was flying, all I had to do was follow the direction my nose cone was pointing and I’d find it eventually, hopefully before my oxygen gave out. So I set off, running across the relatively flat terrain at a pace I felt I could sustain. I ran on, faster and faster, up and over some low hills, around some rocks, kicking up dust. I ran for the thrill of running, my heart thundering in my chest, my breath rasping and fogging up the helmet glass. I ran for several kilometres until my suit started to flash a red warning as my pulse rate soared. At the top of the next rise I stopped, dropping to my knees in the dust and breathing deeply to recover. On a whim, I turned off my helmet light and was immediately engulfed by an almost physical darkness. Then I looked up and saw the stars. I gasped in awe. Thousands of stars were revealed, covering space from one horizon to the other. Most, if not all, had their own planets, and each planet had moons. Many of those balls of rock held life in one form or another, each a point of warmth in a cold, cold universe. And beyond those were others stars, other galaxies, untold wonders waiting to be discovered. I reached up my hand as if to grab one of them. For a moment I let the light of a single sun shine between the finger and thumb of my glove, as if I was some vast galactic being holding a grain of sand. My suit beeped, bringing me down with a bump. It took me a few minutes to recover my sense of being, of place, and by that time my pulse was back to normal. I reached up to switch on my helmet light, and that’s when I saw it. Off to one side, on the horizon, was a hazy blue light. I blinked a few times, but the light remained. It was to the left of my current heading, and there was nothing to be seen in that direction. I turned towards the light and ran on, this time keeping to a manageable pace. The light was further away than I thought, around six or seven kilometres. Eventually, it became clearer, several lights shining from buildings and pylons. I passed some kind of perimeter and ran on across the levelled ground, approaching what looked like a mining rig and the building next to it. When I pressed the pad the door opened and I stepped into an air lock. Once through the inner door I found myself inside a control station, with consoles monitoring the mining operation. There wasn’t another person in sight. Looking out of a window I saw another building, this one slightly different. I headed over and once again went through an air lock, and into a habitation unit. This place was as deserted as the last, not a single human, or sign of a human anywhere. There were beds unslept in, empty wardrobes and storage lockers, none of the stuff humans like to surround themselves with. It was as if the place had just been delivered from the factory and no one had yet moved in. It had been a long day, so I decided to have a nap on one of the bunk beds. The suit and helmet came off with some trial and error, and I was soon under a warm blanket, alone but not lonely. Sleep came easily, my mind shutting down, memories of the day fading… I awake in a small room, covered by a thin blanket and a substantial space suit. My breath is loud in the helmet as I try to control a rising panic. I climb out of the bed as best I can in the unfamiliar suit, and stand in the centre of the room. It’s very small, I can almost touch both side walls without moving, and sparse. There is a strange vibration coming through the floor, as if a huge machine is turning somewhere close by. As I stand trying to calm myself, I realise I have no memory of my life before today… except a brief but clear image of a single star, shining just for me.