Secrets in The Stars

by CommissarVulpin

3 - One Giant Leap

Sleep.

Spring Bloom is floating, weightless. Around her are countless billions of stars, as if some powerful being had thrown a hoof-full of sand across a dark blanket. It is utterly silent. She turns around and sees the blue-green orb of the planet below her. It is nighttime on its surface, and millions of ponies are asleep, dreaming peacefully.

She feels herself being pulled back from the planet. She reaches out, but there is nothing to grab. She looks behind her and sees an immense black void, a hole in the fabric of space, pulling her in. She screams, but there is nothing to hear. Its gravity distorts the very light around it, consuming everything. Her limbs flail uselessly as she accelerates towards that gaping maw, speeding towards oblivion. She screws her eyes shut and wonders if it would hurt.

“Don’t be scared. I’m here now.”

Spring Bloom opens her eyes. She is looking directly into the face of someone she thought she’d lost. His face blurs as tears fill her eyes. He is holding her tightly, and they are floating in the void of space together. The black hole is no longer pulling her in, replaced with the glowing white orb of the moon.

She reaches out a hoof to touch his face. “S-Starshine?”

Starshine smiles. “My little flower. How I’ve missed you.”

“B-But how can this be? How can –”

“Shh,” he interrupts. “In time. But not yet. First, I must send you somewhere safe.”

Spring Bloom came to with a gasp and greedily gulped in several lungfuls of air. The air she was breathing seemed stale and ancient, but at that moment she didn’t care. She’d just been suffocating and did not want to experience that again.

And that dream…she had been floating in space, and seen her husband again. She was certain it was a dream, but it was the most vivid one she’d ever had. She opened and closed her eyes a few times before realizing she was in near-total darkness. Am I dead? She thought. Is this what death is like?

If it was, then death felt quite real. She was laying on something cold and smooth. She got to her hooves and realized she wasn’t wearing her spacesuit anymore. A soft glow from her horn cast a weak light from which she could just barely see the room she was in. The walls, floor, and ceiling were made of an opaque white crystal that reflected her horn’s light from its facets. She paced the edges of the small room, trying to find some exit or even a feature besides plain crystal, but she found nothing.

Suddenly she heard a soft voice. I seemed to come from everywhere at once, reverberating off the walls.

“Do not be afraid, my little pony.”

Spring spun around, but there was nopony in here besides her.

“Who are you? Where are you?”

“It is I, Princess Luna. I am projecting my voice to you from the royal palace.”

“What happened? Where am I? How did I get here?”

Princess Luna did not seem bothered by her endless barrage of questions, and answered them patiently.

“I do not know how you ended up there, but you are in the moon, in the same prison that my sister banished me to when the darkness took hold of me.”

“You were… in this cave for a thousand years!?”

“The prison my sister created with the power of the Elements of Harmony is not a physical place. It is a pocket dimension, an extension of Limbo, adjacent to the moon. Time flows differently there; that is to say, not at all. I did not experience much of my thousand-year imprisonment.”

Spring felt her heart turn to ice as realization swept over her. “How long have I been here?” She asked shakily.

“I…do not know for certain. What is your name, my little pony?”

“S-Spring Bloom,” she responded. Then, remembering her manners, “…Your Highness.”

Princess Luna was quiet for a time.

“Princess?”

“Do not be afraid, little one. I will summon my sister, and she will be able to pull you out.”

“Princess Luna, please, answer my question,” she pleaded. “How long have I been here!?”

She then heard another voice: a gentle, motherly voice that she recognized.

“I know you must be afraid, my little pony, but I will keep you safe.”

“P-Princess Celestia?”

“Yes. It breaks my heart that another pony has fallen into this prison, and I do not know how you came to be there; but can pull you from it.”

Spring Bloom was immensely relieved at that, but she couldn’t shake the panic nagging at her mind from what Luna had said.

“Please, Princess. Luna said time has no meaning here. How…how long have I been in this place?”

Again, there was an agonizing silence. “You were involved in an accident on the moon, yes?” Princess Celestia spoke again, her voice immeasurably gentle, like a parent who was about to explain to their child that they were getting a divorce.

“Yes…”

“Then you have been here…for approximately one hundred and fifty years.”

Spring felt as if the floor dropped out from under her. She suddenly felt weak, and collapsed to her knees.

“A…hundred…and fifty…” She whispered.

“I am so sorry,” Princess Celestia said, and it seemed to Spring that the Princess was almost as distraught as she was.

“But your time here has come to an end,” the Princess continued. “You will soon be free of this place.”

“Where will I—” Spring Bloom began to say, but was interrupted as she collapsed in agony. Her lungs were on fire, her head pounded, and her eyes were teary with blood. She was in a spacesuit again, and she could see that she was lying on a metal deck through the cracked visor. All she could do was sob through labored breaths.

She heard a door hiss open somewhere behind her and heard two ponies talking.

“—wants to play the lottery so he can buy his own—oh sweet Celestia!”

Then she passed out.

***

Dr. Needle Prick tapped idly at his tablet, reviewing triage procedures for the umpteenth time. As the current doctor on duty, Dr. Needle was required to remain ready and on-call for any medical emergency. And his services had been needed on occasion, so he didn’t disagree with the requirements per se; it was just that with such stringent safety procedures aboard the Maulwurf, there were many days where his services weren’t needed at all. Today was shaping up to be one of those days. So he tapped and swiped at his medical tablet, paging through endless documentation while fighting to stay awake.

Suddenly a high-priority alert popped up. He tapped it and a flood of coded messages started populating the screen. Needle Prick’s trained medical mind translated them in real-time: unidentified unicorn mare; unconscious; vacuum exposure (!)…

He read all he needed to read before loading up a gurney with the required supplies and dashing down the hallway, pushing it in front of him with his magic. Everyone stood out of his way as soon as they spotted him. ‘A doctor in full sprint outranks everyone,’ as the saying went. A few more turns and an elevator later, Dr. Needle Prick arrived at Airlock C1, where a small group of ponies was gathered around an unconscious spacesuit-clad form sprawled on the deck.

“Out of the way!” Needle Prick bellowed, and the crowd scattered to make room. He knelt down to take a look and see what he was working with. The spacesuit was covered in a thin layer of moon dust, and he put on a mask to avoid breathing in the particles. He could see the mare’s chest rising and falling – a very good sign, especially in vacuum exposure cases. He moved to her head. He could see the face of what would normally be a pretty unicorn mare behind the cracked and punctured visor. Her face was swollen, bloody tears ran down her cheeks, and her hair was stringy with sweat. He went to remove the helmet, but found that he didn’t know how. This was a model of spacesuit he hadn’t been trained on.

Needle turned to one of the ponies next to him. “Do you…know how to remove this helmet?”

The stallion seemed just as confused as he was. “I’ve been trying to figure that out myself. I don’t know what kind of suit that is, but it’s definitely not LMC standard. It’s so bulky too – almost looks like a museum piece!”

One of the other crew members was tapping at her wrist tablet. “Wait…I think I found it. There should be a latch at the nape of her neck. Flip that, and you should be able to rotate the neck ring a quarter-turn.”

Needle Prick did as instructed, and the joint between the helmet and the rest of the suit clicked open. He gently pulled the helmet off and set about taking her pulse and performing other checks; her eyes were bloodshot, the capillaries having ruptured in vacuum. The mare was alive and breathing, so he carefully wrapped her in a field of magic and lifted her onto the gurney. He heard the crew members talking beside him.

“How did you know the suit model?”

“Look there, on the suit’s flank.”

“Is that – a Griffin Galactic logo!? I thought they went out of business over a hundred years ago!”

“They did. Somehow this mare got ahold of one of their suits – the helmet latching mechanism hasn’t been used in decades. And the life support equipment is ancient. Either it was built from old schematics, or it’s still working after a hundred years. I don’t know which is more unbelievable.”

***

Spring Bloom awoke on a bed, no longer in her spacesuit. She could tell right away that she was in a hospital from the smell, even before she felt the IV and blood pressure monitor attached to her foreleg or heard the machines that beeped and clicked quietly. Her body ached, but mercifully she could breathe again, even if her lungs burned if she breathed too deeply. She lay there for several minutes until a doctor happened by.

“Oh, you’re awake.”

“What happened? Where am I?” Spring Bloom asked for what felt like the third time today.

“You’re in the medical section on board the Maulwurf. I was hoping you would be able to tell us what happened. We found you in an airlock, suffering from vacuum exposure and nearly dead.”

“Maulwurf?”

The doctor cocked an eyebrow. “You know, the LMC’s largest mobile mining platform? You must have known where you were going before you collapsed in the airlock. Honestly you’re lucky you made it there in time. A few more seconds in hard vacuum and you wouldn’t be here.”

Spring Bloom’s brain struggled to keep up, both from the barrage of new information and the weakened state her body was in. “LMC?”

The doctor looked confused, and answered slowly. “The…Lunar Mining Commission. The only company with mining rights for a thousand kilometers in any direction. There’s nothing else out here, which begs the question of how you ended up out there. You’re not an LMC employee or executive, and I’m told you were wearing a space suit almost a hundred and fifty years out of date.”

The words ‘hundred and fifty years’ jogged something in Spring Bloom’s memory, and she suddenly remembered the recent turn of events. The accident, the strange dream, the cave, the princesses…everything flooded back to her.

“What…year is it?”

The doctor seemed taken aback by the question.

“It’s, uh, 1833. March 9^th, to be exact.”

The figure he gave was right in line with Celestia’s estimate – about one hundred and fifty years from the day she arrived at the Luna Hotel. She had no desire to do the math in her head to find the exact number.

For the second time in less than an hour, Spring felt the world drop out from underneath her. Everypony she’d ever known, all of her friends and family, her home…all gone. Dead and buried.

“It’s all gone,” she whimpered, eyes brimming with tears.

The doctor looked even more confused.

“Um…well…you should get some rest. You’ve had a stressful day, I’m sure.”

She suddenly realized that the doctor was right: she was exhausted. She let her head drop back onto the pillow, and her sobs faded away as she fell into a fitful sleep.

***

Dr. Needle Prick downloaded the medical monitors’ readouts onto his tablet and reviewed them as he walked back to his office. Everything was normal – well, not normal, but as expected. Given the circumstances, she was in good shape, and would most likely make a full recovery. She just needed a few days in bed. Despite hundreds of years of medical advancements, there really was no substitute for good old-fashioned bed rest. Psychological issues, unfortunately, were outside of his expertise. He had a reputation for being blunt, and he knew his bedside manner could be better. But he usually left the convalescence care to the nurses; patients under general anesthesia weren’t too chatty.

This mystery mare, on the other hoof…even though his duty was done, he wanted to personally keep an eye on her, if for nothing else than to satisfy his own curiosity. When he got to his office, Dr. Needle pulled up a datanet browser on his tablet. The Maulwurf didn’t have real-time access to the datanet – bandwidth was reserved for much more valuable uses such as telemetry and communications – but it would receive occasional data dumps of the more commonly used netpages when traffic was low. He pulled up a popular encyclopedia page and began his search.

He started by mentally collecting everything he knew. The mare had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, wearing a pressure suit a hundred and fifty years out of date, branded by a company that went out of business a century ago. In addition, she had sobbed ‘It’s all gone,’ before falling back asleep. The evidence was leading him to a conclusion that was unbelievable, but he could think of no other alternative. He searched for missing ponies reports, limited to about a hundred and fifty years ago. That in itself would have been a monumental pile of results to sift through, but the fact that she was wearing a suit designed for lunar EVA gave him a criterion that he hoped would narrow his search down.

Upon initiating the search, there was one result.

It was a tourist who had gone missing a hundred and fifty years ago, and the picture in the corner was a perfect match.

Spring Bloom was an Equestrian tourist who went missing on August 12, 1681 while on vacation at the Luna Hotel on the surface of the moon. She was aboard the Griffin Galactic sightseeing vehicle which famously exploded on the lunar surface, killing four ponies and injuring several more. She was wearing a Griffin Galactic pressure suit, required for all passengers. The last contact from her suit’s transponder was an automatic distress signal, triggered by low oxygen pressure. Shortly after, both the transponder and the suit’s locator beacon disappeared from sensors. Despite an extensive search by ground teams and orbital scanners, her body was never found.

Everything lined up, but it couldn’t be possible. This mare, lying in his medical center, was looking more and more like the very same one which disappeared a hundred and fifty years ago. The only thing Needle Prick could think of was time travel, but that was…not impossible, but highly improbable. Time-manipulation magic did exist, but it was tightly controlled and kept under high security in Canterlot. Most of the highest-skilled unicorns in the world didn’t even know those spells. He doubted that the middle-aged mare was capable of such a feat. And yet…here she was. There must be an explanation.

***

After a longer period of rest, Spring Bloom felt well enough to eat something. The food was bland, carrying the distinct taste – or lack thereof – of something that had been preserved for a while. The doctor from before (Needle Prick, he had introduced himself) sat beside her, patiently answering her questions. He seemed much less confused this time around, even if his attention was divided between her and that strange black rectangle he was constantly poking at.

“So where am I, again?” She asked between bites of what she assumed was mashed potatoes.

“You’re on board the Maulwurf. It’s a mobile mining and refinery station. It mines the lunar surface and refines it into oxygen, water, helium-3, aluminum…all sorts of things.”

Spring suddenly had a thought. She picked up a salt packet with her magic and dropped it back onto her tray. It fell quickly, not the way she had grown accustomed to things falling on the moon. Needle Prick regarded her quizzically.

“The gravity is different. This doesn’t feel like moon gravity.”

Needle Prick smirked and tapped the floor with his hoof. “Gravity plating. It generates an artificial gravity field. Makes living on the moon for long periods of time healthier and more comfortable.”

Spring nodded slowly. She understood just enough physics to get the gist of what he was saying; she figured Starshine would have had a field day here with all the new technology.

“What’s the…Lunar Mining…Company…?”

“Lunar Mining Commission. It’s one of the mining companies that have mineral rights on the moon, and the largest. Everything that isn’t used in the lunar factories gets shipped planetside and sold. That’s how we stay in business.”

“There are factories on the moon!?”

“Oh yeah! Huge, sprawling complexes making everything from advanced composites to entire spaceships. Turns out there’s a whole lot of neat stuff you can do in one-sixth gee, but that’s not my area of expertise.”

“What about Griffin Galactic?”

“Those sleazeballs? They went out of business over a hundred years ago. Even if they pioneered private spaceflight, as soon as competitors cropped up they started cutting corners to reduce costs. Got a lot of ponies killed before they finally went under.”

The nonchalant way that Dr. Needle was answering her questions suddenly inspired another question. “Do you…know who I am?”

Needle paused for a moment. “I have a pretty good idea.” He floated the black rectangle over to her; behind a small pane of glass, she could see a block of encyclopedia-like text, as crisp as if she were reading it from a book. “Is this you?”

Spring couldn’t suppress a gasp as she read the page. It read like an obituary, describing the exact circumstances of her disappearance, and the search efforts to find her. She wished they’d used a better picture, though – it was the same one that had been taken for her employee badge, dorky smile and all. She hated that photo.

She felt her hooves start to shake as panic took hold, but she suppressed it with a gulp.

“Yeah…that’s me.”

“So if you don’t mind, I have a question for you.”

Spring just nodded, still in shock.

“What happened after the accident? Obviously you didn’t die, but you simply disappeared without a trace. Then you show up in the middle of nowhere, a hundred and fifty years later.”

Spring took a moment to collect her thoughts, then told him everything she remembered. Well, almost everything. She left out the strange dream, but she told him everything else.

“So yeah. Now I’m in the future, and everypony I’ve ever known is gone.” She expected to become distraught again, maybe burst into tears, but she just felt empty.

When she was done, Needle Prick was deep in thought for a few seconds, then smiled and let out a quiet chuckle.

“What’s so funny?”

“Sorry, it’s just that some of my coworkers have had discussions about Nightmare Moon. Saying things like ‘oh, she couldn’t have survived even five minutes on the surface, let alone a thousand years!’ And I just want to grab them and shout, ‘Have you read the story!? She wasn’t imprisoned on the moon, she was imprisoned in the moon, in like a wishy-washy magical way.’ And it seems like I was right, so…yeah…sorry.”

Spring couldn’t suppress a giggle. “Oh, I remember several ponies having that same discussion just before the first mission to the moon. Everyone was wondering what they’d find up there, despite Princess Luna saying there’d be nothing, because, like you said, she wasn’t on the moon, she was in the moon. My husband would joke that there’d be a bunch of snowponies made from moon dust because Princess Luna got so lonely!”

She started to laugh, but it quickly turned into a wheezing cough as she doubled over in pain.

“Woah, careful,” Needle Prick said with concern. “Your lungs aren’t in the best shape after being exposed to hard vacuum.”

Spring eventually recovered after a few minutes of taking short, quick breaths. She fell back onto her pillow and asked another question.

“So I hate to ask for a history lesson, but…what happened over the last 150 years that I might want to know about?”

Needle Prick thought for a moment. “Well, I’m not much of a teacher, but I’ll give you something that will help you learn about anything you want. I can tell you about one thing that springs to mind, though, and that’s the war.”

Spring felt the blood drain from her face. “W-war?”

“Yeah…a civil war, the worst in recent history.”

“I knew there were occasional gangs and other violent ponies that the royal guard had to be sent out for, but a civil war? What happened?”

“Well, about thirty years ago now, a cult popped up that called themselves the ‘Children of the Night’. They worshipped Princess Luna as a goddess, but not the one in Canterlot, you see. When Nightmare Moon returned and was destroyed by the Elements of Harmony way back when, they believed it was all an act. All faked by Princess Celestia and the bearers of the Elements. They believed that the Luna who was sitting on the throne was a…fake, I guess? A puppet, created and controlled by Celestia.”

“That’s insane! Why would Celestia do that?”

“I have no idea, and I haven’t bothered to look into whatever contorted logic they used to come up with that idea. Anyway, the Children of the Night were small and quiet at first, and nopony paid them much attention. But gradually, they started growing, using the datanet to attract more followers. They started spreading propaganda, stating that Celestia was a tyrant who unfairly banished her own sister, and that the real Luna would return someday and reward the faithful.”

“Sorry to interrupt, but what’s the datanet?”

“Oh, right… It’s a little difficult to explain, but the datanet is a…a huge network linking every computer in the world together. It allows ponies to instantly communicate with each other, among other things. It’s had profound effects on society and culture since it was invented.”

Spring nodded. “I think I get it. They had a big maneframe in my office building, with a bunch of terminals everywhere that all connected to it.”

“Eh, kind of. Now imagine if all the maneframes around the world were connected to each other.”

Spring’s eyebrows disappeared into her mane as she realized the implications.

“Anyway, one day Luna herself went on public record denouncing their claims and condemning the group and their beliefs. I guess that riled them up, because not long after, somepony drove a van full of explosives into a crowd in Vanhoover and killed over two dozen ponies. Celestia didn’t like that one bit. She managed to find the location of their hideout, and led a contingent of royal guards to raid it. Turned the place into a glassy crater.

“But that only made the problem worse. Celestia had just played right into their hoof, seemingly legitimizing their claims that she was a brutal dictator. The cult only grew, and they moved their operation to a swath of desert near Appleloosa, and declared themselves a sovereign state called Selenia. It was some weird theocracy, led by cult members who were now calling themselves ‘The Church of the Holy Moon’.

“Celestia had had enough. She and Luna led the entire royal guard, plus the night guard, to take them out. But they had some powerful spellcasters, and were able to hold off the attack. In retaliation, the cult invaded and destroyed Appleloosa. The buffalo, whose land the cult had taken, as well as the griffins and hippogriffs, pledged their support to Equestria. Together, they attacked the cult again. The two sides fought for years in a stalemate, but eventually the Equestrian forces took over. Most of those lunatics never surrendered; they fought to the death. It was…bad. The leaders were found cowering in their bunkers, and they’re rotting in prison for treason right now.”

***

“Hm…” Tap tap tap.

“No, that’s not…” Tap. Tap.

“What!?” Taptaptaptap.

“How in the name of…!” TAP. TAP.

“Sister!” Luna cried in alarm. “Don’t tap so hard, you’ll crack the screen!”

“Argh, confound this…infernal device!” Celestia grumbled as she fiddled with the tablet held in a golden aura in front of her. The stylus hovered above it, angrily jabbing at the screen. “How do you use these things? I can never get them to behave how I want!”

Luna held out a hoof. “Here, let me—”

Celestia made a frustrated noise and passed the tablet to her sister. The magical glow wreathing the device changed from gold to navy as Luna took it and the stylus.

“Now, what are you trying to do?”

“All I wanted was to read up on this… Maulwurf before we got to the spaceport!”

“Okay, so you tap on the datanet browser…”

“Yes, I did that.”

“Wait for it to load…then tap on the search bar…”

“What? Let me see that.” Celestia leaned over to look at the screen. “How did you get there? That’s not what I was seeing before.”

Luna tapped on the screen and pulled up a gallery of all the programs that were currently open. “Which one were you looking at?”

Celestia squinted at the screen and pointed to one of the windows with her hoof. “That one.”

“Tia, dear, that’s your email.”

“Oh. Well, they all look the same. And so hard to read on that tiny screen, too.”

Luna expertly tapped at the screen and passed the tablet back. “There. I’ve pulled up an encyclopedia article on the Maulwurf.” She couldn’t suppress a giggle as Celestia took the tablet back with a grumbled ‘thank you.’

Everyone seemed to be surprised with how easily Luna understood modern technology. She couldn’t explain it, it just made sense to her. Celestia, on the other hoof, was constantly flustered by it all, giving every excuse to avoid interacting with anything more complicated than a light switch. Steam power, indoor plumbing, even electricity had all been received just fine, but Luna suspected that her sister’s issue with the electronics revolution was that it had all happened so fast. In less than sixty years, Equestria had gone from maneframes the size of small houses, to compact devices small enough to fit in a pocket that could access the total of all pony knowledge. But the datanet and touchscreens had been a part of daily life for the better part of a century now; if anything, Luna was more surprised that Celestia hadn’t picked up on it.

Not to mention the political minefield that was social media. Luna was the only one between them who was allowed access to their Chirper account, after several blunders by Celestia that culminated in a hilariously nonsensical and misspelt message. It was still the butt of many jokes on forum netpages and comment threads.

With her sister placated, Luna turned to look out the window to her left. Their private VTOL aircraft was currently blasting over the Equestrian countryside at several hundred kilometers per hour. While certainly faster and more efficient than chariot travel, Luna had to admit there was a certain nostalgic charm to that older mode of transportation. She and Celestia both tried to use their chariot whenever they could take a more leisurely outing, when there was little need for haste. This, however, was not one of those trips.

Luna thought back to when she had first discovered Spring Bloom in the very same prison her sister had banished her to, feeling a fresh pang of guilt. That poor mare… it was only happenstance that Luna even found her at all. After a particularly lavish party, and perhaps one too many cocktails, Luna found herself idly wondering if the moon could have dreams. Snickering at the thought, her rosy-faced sister – who was also similarly inebriated – egged her to try. She cast her dreamwalking spell on the moon, dodging the sleeping ponies living on the moon’s surface, to touch the moon itself. Unsurprisingly, the moon was not dreaming. But somepony in the moon was! She probed deeper, and found that there was a pony trapped in the prison that she herself had occupied so long ago.

Luna had reached out and spoken to the pony. She soothed her fears as best as she could, and immediately consulted her sister. Celestia was able to pluck her from her prison with ease; unfortunately, Celestia had no way of knowing where she’d ended up. Her spell should have placed her close to the nearest other pony, but there was no way to be sure, and Luna couldn’t find her in the dream realm; which was either good or very, very bad.

Celestia had made urgent calls to the facilities on the moon’s surface, asking desperately if a pony had suddenly appeared in their midst. For a time, there was nothing. Then, a response came from a remote mining facility. A mare had stumbled in, nearly dead from vacuum exposure, but she was being cared for and would make a full recovery. Their relief immeasurable, the sisters immediately made plans to travel to the moon and visit Spring Bloom themselves.

The royal princesses usually didn’t partake in space travel. Not that they didn’t like it; Celestia loved being able to see the entirety of the planet at once, and Luna found it enjoyable – strange, but enjoyable – being so close to the moon. Unfortunately, they were both far too busy most days to find an excuse to make the trip, even if Twilight’s device could remove their celestial obligations. Their trips to the moon usually involved ceremonies or christenings or other official functions. Luna had attended the opening of the first hotel on the moon, bearing her namesake, and they both had been present for the opening of the first lunar city: Starshine City, named for one of the first ponies to be lost in space. Twilight, Cadance, and Flurry Heart had also been there. Cadance and Flurry had absolutely loved flying in space, and floating around in zero-gee, but poor Twilight had been sick until her hooves touched the lunar surface.

Less than an hour of flight time later, the princess’ VTOL landed at the Manehattan Metropolitan Spaceport, the largest spaceport in Equestria. They were quickly escorted across the tarmac, contingent of guards in tow, to a waiting shuttle that would take them into orbit and onwards to the moon.

Luna caught her sister’s sigh and looked over to see her absently staring out the shuttle’s window. She knew that sigh; something was bothering her.

“Tia? What’s the matter?”

Celestia turned to face her sister. “I just hope Spring Bloom is all right. Poor thing. What happened to her must have been awful.”

Luna patted Celestia’s shoulder with a reassuring hoof. “I know. The fault is mine for not noticing her there sooner. A hundred and fifty years…”

“Don’t try to saddle this on yourself, Lulu. The fault is mine just as much. I should have dispelled that place as soon as you left it.”

“I was actually thinking about that, Tia. I think… I think that prison may have saved her.”

Celestia furrowed her brow in curiosity. “How do you mean?”

“Remember the circumstances of her disappearance? She was involved in that sightseeing vehicle accident.”

“Yes, I recall.”

“She was quickly running out of air, so her suit must have been damaged.”

Celestia didn’t respond, waiting for Luna to finish working her way through her logic.

“There’s no way she would have survived before help could come. I think…I think falling into that prison saved her life.”

“That makes sense,” Celestia mused, “but it begs the question – how did she end up there in the first place? Nopony can simply stumble into that place, someone has to send them there. But who could have done that? And why?”

Their conversation was interrupted by the shuttle pilot urging them to strap themselves in for takeoff. Luna and Celestia both remembered when the ascent to orbit was an intense experience. Celestia had always found it exciting, but Luna much preferred fewer gees rather than more. Not long after its invention, the same technology behind gravity plating had been applied to spacecraft, damping accelerations and making spaceflight much more comfortable. The system couldn’t keep up with sudden jolts from turbulence and the like, so passengers were still required to wear safety belts. It was an odd sensation, being able to see the ground quickly receding and the clouds flying past without having any sensation of movement.

Once they were clear of the atmosphere – or at least at an altitude where the pressure was negligible – Luna felt the intense magical aura of the teleportation crystal energizing. Somewhere beyond the bulkhead behind her lay a massive spell matrix crystal, etched with an extremely powerful teleportation spell.

With a crackle and flash of light, the planet below them disappeared and was replaced by the grey surface of the moon. Somewhere relatively nearby was a beacon, providing a safe arrival point for the ship in high lunar orbit. Teleporting such a vast distance at once could leave them as much as several hundred kilometers away from their planned arrival point; which was not a problem in open space.

The view outside shifted as the pilot swung the ship around and fired the engines to keep the ship in a stable orbit. Through various physics reasons that Luna didn’t quite understand, the ship’s speed and direction remained constant from one end of the teleport to the other. Since orbital velocity for the moon was much lower than that of Equus, the ship had to do some course corrections to avoid slamming into the surface or being flung out into deep space.

She overheard the pilot getting clearance to transfer to a lower orbit and make a direct route to the Maulwurf.

***

Control Section was a fairly dull place, even high up in Maulwurf’s space traffic control tower. Piper sat behind her desk, idly swinging her swivel chair from side to side. The vast majority of traffic that ever came to the Maulwurf, or left it, were cargo haulers, either taking refined materials to the lunar factories or delivering supplies for the station and her crew. Piper’s job was to monitor the flyspace around the station and make sure none of the ships approached too close to each other, and assign landing pads. But the ships came and left so infrequently that she never had to divert any of them, and all of the landing pads were always available. So she sat there with her cheek supported by one hoof, and the other swiping through the volumetric display. She was coming frighteningly close to falling asleep lately. If the chirps from the proximity sensors didn’t keep her awake, the fear of dozing off definitely did. If Rosette ever caught her asleep on the job, that would be the end of her career in space.

She looked down at the station through the large windows of the control tower, and could see a cargo hauler currently on the only occupied landing pad. In a few minutes, it would request takeoff and departure, and Piper would give it clearance to fly away with nothing in its path but endless moonscape.

Suddenly her console gave a happy chirp, and an orange dot popped up at the edge of her volumetric display; a ship was nearing Maulwurf’s flyspace, and its tag denoted it as a passenger shuttle. Passenger flights to and from the station weren’t uncommon, with new crew members arriving or current ones departing on leave. Piper let out a small squeak as she read the flight number: ESA001. ‘Equestrian Space Administration One’ was a flight number reserved for any vessel that a princess was currently aboard. She turned to the monitor next to her, which held a list of all registered flight plans to and from the station. Mixed in with all the cargo flights was a single passenger flight, matching the flight number of the blip on her volumetric display: ESA001. Piper knew from its position that it would still be under the command of ‘Moon Surface Control’, a general control station that handled any ship in orbit, or otherwise outside the flyspace of anything else. Soon, though, they would pass the ship’s pilot to her control tower.

Right on cue, Piper’s headset crackled with an incoming transmission.

“Maulwurf tower, ESA One, out five-thousand at two-point-five, requesting vectors for VTOL and direct course.”

With practiced ease, Piper responded smoothly to the pilot’s request.

“ESA One, pad four, descend to one-point-five, maintain present heading.”

The pilot’s response came just as smoothly.

“ESA One, cleared to one-five, present heading.”

The exchange was a series of efficient phraseology, designed to impart the maximum amount of information with the minimum amount of words, or chance of misinterpretation. The pilot had begun by identifying his distance to the station and altitude, and requesting directions for a vertical landing at the station. He had also requested a desire for a direct approach, not to be diverted; a request Piper was all too happy to grant, given the vessel’s current passenger.

Her headset crackled again with another transmission.

“Maulwurf control, LMC one-four-four at pad seven, requesting VTOL departure.”

This transmission had come from the cargo shuttle, which had finished loading and had requested takeoff. Piper had two options at this point: force the shuttle to wait until the passenger shuttle had landed, or let the cargo ship take off and divert it so that its course would not interfere with ESA One. Piper had gone so long without needing to direct two ships at the same time, so she went with the latter option.

“LMC one-four-four, clear for takeoff from pad seven, climb to point-five and turn right to heading one-eight-zero on departure.”

“LMC one-four-four clear for takeoff, point-five and heading one-eight-zero.”

“LMC one-four-four readback correct.”

Piper peered out the window to see the cargo shuttle light its VTOL engines and slowly ascend from the pad. Per her instructions, it slowly rose to five hundred meters in altitude before swiveling around to point south, then gliding away. She turned back toward her volumetric display, where she could see the orange dot of the cargo shuttle floating away to the south, while ESA One continued its approach from the east. Plenty of room. The cargo shuttle’s flight plan had it headed east toward Starshine City; she would have to redirect it once it was clear of the station. Her attention turned back toward the passenger ship.

“ESA One, descend to point-five, cleared direct to pad four and ILS.”

“ESA One, cleared to point-five, direct to four and ILS.”

While ESA One was continuing its approach, she tuned the radio back to the cargo shuttle. It was far enough away from the station that there was no risk of it resuming its flight plan.

“LMC one-four-four, climb to two-point-five-thousand, clear direct to Starshine.”

“LMC one-four-four, cleared for two-point-five, direct Starshine.”

Piper was practically giddy. This was the busiest the station had been in months, not to mention the arrival of a princess! She savored her joy for a few precious minutes before ESA One came into view as a blue dot in the windows. She watched as it steadily grew larger, slowing on approach to the station. Its automated landing system guided the pilot to bring it to a hover five hundred meters above landing pad four, and it slowly began to descend. When it touched down, a final transmission came from its pilot.

“ESA One, VTOL touchdown on pad four.”

“ESA One, contact pad control on one-one-eight-zero.”

“ESA One, switching to pad.”

And that was it. ESA One was out of her hooves now. The ship would remain under pad four’s control until it was time to depart. There was one more thing to take care of, though. The cargo shuttle was approaching the edge of Maulwurf’s flyspace.

“LMC one-four-four, contact moon surface control on one-three-five-decimal-five.”

“LMC one-four-four, switching to Surface Control. Have a good day.”

And with that, Piper’s domain was empty once again. She sighed and went back to spinning the volumetric display, bored.

***

After a day of bed rest, Spring Bloom was feeling well enough to take short walks around the area she now knew was called Medical Section. Her legs felt wobbly, but Needle Prick always walked beside her in case she fell. She was able to take deeper breaths too, and the very act of breathing no longer caused pain.

“So I was wondering,” she asked Needle Prick during one of her walks, “what does the Maulwurf look like? I’ve only ever seen it from the inside.”

Needle Prick smiled and started tapping at the black rectangle he always seemed to carry with him. “Ah, yes. She’s quite the sight. Here.”

He turned it to show her that a movie was now playing on the screen. It had been recorded from a spacecraft as it flew slow orbits around the station.

There was no good reference to get an accurate sense of scale, but the Maulwurf looked massive. It appeared to be about the size and shape of several hippogriff frigates welded together, slowly crawling along the surface on huge caterpillar tracks. Spring Bloom could make out what appeared to be landing pads and a tall windowed tower at the front. At the back of the station, nestled amongst a tangle of structures and machinery, a trio of gargantuan wheels rimmed with excavator buckets turned slowly. In its wake, the Maulwurf left a gaping trench in the regolith, along with a cloud of dust stretching to the horizon that the camera shuttle took efforts to avoid.

As Spring watched the video, Needle Prick gave commentary. “She scoots along at about two kilometers an hour, chewing up the surface with those big bucket wheels. Any waste materials from the refining process get thrown back in the trench. Cargo shipments come in and out from those landing pads. Oh, and that dust cloud? It stretches back for over a hundred kilometers. Takes weeks to settle, and ships can’t fly through it.”

“Are we… is it moving right now?”

“Yep! Bet you can’t even feel it, can you?”

The only thing Spring could feel was a slight vibration through her hooves, but that was easy to ignore. She hadn’t seen any windows yet, so there had been no reference from which to see the station’s movement.

“Since she was first fired up about ten years ago, she’s only been stopped a couple times for maintenance. She’s headed east right now, towards Starshine City. Once we get close enough, she’ll get turned around and start heading back the other way.”

“Wait. Did you say…Starshine City?”

“Yeah, it was the first settlement on the moon, and the largest. Named for one of the first ponies to be killed in space.”

Spring Bloom felt a warmth blossoming in her heart. She stumbled and had to lean against the wall for support.

“Woah – Spring, are you all right?”

She felt a tear form in her eye. “Yeah, I’m…fine.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, it’s just… Starshine was my husband.”

Needle Prick said nothing, just stared in shocked silence.

“I miss him so much, and you have no idea how much it means to me that he’s still remembered after all this time.”

Soon Spring had reached the limit of her endurance, and Needle Prick led her back through the corridors to her hospital room. On the way back, she noticed several ponies – station staff, judging by their uniforms – rushing the other way. Even the doctor seemed confused.

“That corridor leads toward the landing pads, but I’ve never seen ponies in such a hurry to get there,” he said. “Usually it’s just supply shipments or crew changes.”

Soon they reached her room, and Spring got settled back into bed. Needle Prick began busying himself with hooking her back up to the monitors, when an orderly entered the room and whispered something in his ear. Spring saw his eyebrows elevate briefly, then furrow in thought.

“What was that about?” Spring asked.

“It seems you have a couple visitors,” he replied, and stood clear of the door as it opened.

“Who –” she began to say, but found herself cut short by the figures she saw standing in the doorway: the royal sisters, Princesses Celestia and Luna. They ducked under the lintel and sat down at the foot of her bed, smiles never leaving their faces. Princess Celestia’s smile was wide, bright, and radiant, and Spring swore she could see beams of sunlight streaming from her face. Princess Luna’s smile was more subdued, but no less happy.

Princess Luna spoke first. “I am so very glad to see that you are safe and sound.”

“Th-thank you, Princess,” Spring managed to respond.

“Spring Bloom,” Princess Celestia spoke up next. “I believe we’ve met before.” Her smile turned mischievous. “It’s been over a hundred and fifty years, but it feels like only yesterday!”

Spring only gulped at that, unsure of what to say. The joke had made her feel even more uncomfortable about her current situation, but she wasn’t about to tell the Princess that.

She hardly began putting her thoughts in order before Princess Luna gasped and actually punched her sister in the shoulder.

“Sister!” She hissed. “That was hardly appropriate. Look at the poor thing!”

Spring saw Princess Celestia’s face take on an expression she’d never seen from the monarch before: shame.

“I am sorry about that, my dear. My penchant for jokes is sometimes…in poor taste. Forgive me.”

Before Spring could stammer a response, Needle Prick spoke up. “Your Highnesses, to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?”

“How much did Miss Bloom tell you about her…situation?” Princess Celestia asked.

“Well, she told me that she became trapped in the moon after an accident, in the same prison that Luna was in during her exile. And that you found her there, a hundred and fifty years later, and placed her on my doorstep. Almost literally, in fact.”

The princesses exchanged a glance. “Well, it appears I’ll have to explain less than I anticipated,” Princess Celestia replied. “You have our deepest gratitude for everything you’ve done for her.”

Needle Prick smiled at that, but made an attempt to brush it off. “You’re welcome, but I’m just doing my job.”

“I have to ask, Doctor, out of curiosity more than anything…what condition was Miss Bloom in when she arrived on your doorstep?” Luna asked, despite looking a little sick.

Needle Prick turned to Spring. “Do you mind?”

She shook her head, even though she was honestly a little apprehensive about hearing it. She didn’t want to deny one of the Princesses, despite her discomfort.

The doctor began his account of the day she was teleported into the station.

“She was discovered by a pair of maintenance workers in a ground-level airlock as they were heading out. Lucky for her, as that airlock is hardly ever used. I was called almost immediately; in vacuum exposure cases, time is of the utmost importance. I estimate she was exposed for about a minute; she would have lost consciousness about fifteen seconds in. The capillaries in her eyes and nose had ruptured, and her tongue was swollen. Her body was covered in bruises, also from ruptured capillaries. The damage to her lungs, combined with the shattered visor of her spacesuit, leads me to believe the pressure loss was relatively rapid, rather than gradual.”

Princess Luna’s face was grim, but she remained silent.

“Thankfully, she was stable enough that more drastic measures were unnecessary,” Needle Prick continued. “Just fluids, painkillers, and plenty of bed rest.”

Spring thought she heard sighs of relief from the princesses, but their faces were still.

“Thank you again, Doctor,” Princess Celestia said. “We’ve both placed some measure of blame on ourselves for this tragedy, and we will do everything in our power to help her as much as we can.”

The last thing Spring wanted was for the princesses to feel like what happened was in any way their fault, and she made to speak up, but Princess Celestia held up a hoof to forestall any argument.

“Beginning,” she continued, “with a royal escort back to the palace in Canterlot.”

Spring felt her jaw drop. She wasn’t anypony special; just a thirty-something accountant who had ended up at the receiving end of one of the universe’s cruel jokes. But now, the royalty of Equestria, not one but both ruling princesses, were offering their help, including personally escorting her to the palace.

She was snapped out of her stupor by Needle Prick speaking up.

“Pardon me, your Highnesses… do you mean now?”

“Well, yes,” Princess Celestia answered. “Our shuttle is ready and waiting to take you back.”

The doctor shook his head. “Absolutely not. She stumbled in from hard vacuum just yesterday. She can hardly walk on her own. To be completely honest, she needs another week of rest at minimum. I cannot in good conscience let her leave this station, on my oath as a doctor.”

The other three occupants of the room were somewhat taken aback by Needle Prick’s outburst. After a tense few seconds, Princess Celestia laughed quietly.

“Of course, Doctor, forgive me. I wouldn’t dream of putting undue stress on the mare. She’s been through enough already.”

“Thank you, your Highness.”

“Well, I am immeasurably grateful to see you in good health, and in good hooves as well,” Princess Celestia said, nodding to Needle Prick, “but unfortunately we cannot wait here until Miss Bloom gets better. We must return to Canterlot. Let us know when she is well enough to return, Doctor, and we will send a shuttle immediately.”

The princesses exchanged final words of farewell and, much to Spring’s shock, bowed to them both before making their exit.

“Well. I never thought I’d have to put my hoof down against the Princesses, but here we are. This has been a very strange week,” Needle Prick said, slowly shaking his head.

“Um. Thank you,” Spring said.

“For what?”

“For that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anypony tell them off like that.”

“Me neither. But I take my job seriously, and I’m not going to release you without a clean bill of health, royal escort or no.”

Needle Prick looked around the room awkwardly for a bit, before his ears shot up. “Oh! I almost forgot to give you this.” He lit his horn and picked up another black rectangle from a nearby counter and passed it to Spring.

“I’m sure you’ve been curious about these. It’s a portable computer called a tablet.”

Spring picked it up, and its size and weight were even more astonishing now that she knew what is was.

“This is a computer!?”

“Yup! It can access the datanet, read and write emails, play games, take photos…I use mine for medical work, and the maintenance teams use smaller hoof-mounted units to help with their jobs.”

Spring turned it over and couldn’t see any discernible buttons or switches. “How do I…turn it on?”

“It’s already on. Just tap it a few times to wake it up.”

Spring did as instructed and tapped the screen with her hoof. It lit up with a bright display covered in small pictures. Needle Prick helped her navigate the device, explaining that each of the tiny pictures was actually a program, and touching it would start the program. It was even powerful enough to run several programs simultaneously, and you could switch between them freely without losing any data.

The feature that Dr. Needle was most excited to show her was a virtual encyclopedia. He showed her how she could “search” for any topic she wanted, and it would bring up an up-to-date encyclopedia page, complete with full-color photographs and links to other pages within the text.

Spring was dumbfounded – in her experience, an encyclopedia had been dozens of volumes taking up entire shelves in the library. She vividly remembered spending hours in the library on a research project, writing and editing everything with pen and paper before using a typewriter to make it presentable. Home computers had been starting to increase in popularity just before she…left, including text editing programs and attachable printers, but those machines were bulky and heavy. Everything those could do and more was now contained in a flat piece of metal and glass that could fit in a mailbox.

After taking her through the basics, Needle Prick left her alone, saying that he had other work to do. Spring had no idea what she wanted to look up at first, so she sat and thought with the tablet in her hooves until the screen went dark. She eventually decided on something and tapped the screen to wake the tablet up again, then typed “gravity plating” into the search field.

The page began with a generic, simplified explanation, then devolved into technical terms and math that she couldn’t make heads or tails of. The gist of it, though, was that gravity plates projected a localized magic field that induced an acceleration in nearby masses. This acceleration could even be configured to point in any direction with any magnitude, which was similar to how spacecraft engines now worked. She followed the link to learn more about those, and found out that instead of burning thousands of liters of rocket fuel, these “kinetic thrusters” could provide almost unlimited acceleration as long as there was enough electrical power.

That led her to read about spell matrix crystals, a topic that she was at least somewhat familiar with; the concept of using a network of tiny enchanted crystals formed the basis of modern computing technology – or at least, what had been modern in her day. A century and a half of advancements had seen these crystals to shrinking to microscopic scales, allowing millions of them to be built into a single device, just like the one she was holding. The crystals were still grown, just like they had been in Spring’s time, but interestingly enough the technology still hadn’t developed enough to grow the truly huge crystals that were used in spacecraft. Since the minimum size of a spell matrix crystal went up with the power requirement of the imprinted spell, very large cyrstals were built into spaceships that allowed them to teleport all the way to the moon and back.

That was something Spring had to stop and think about. A flight that used to take three days could now be done in seconds, leading to the blossoming of a new space-based economy, complete with factories and cities. She kept reading until she felt her eyelids grow heavy. She looked at the clock on the wall and realized with surprise that she had been reading for hours, following linked page after linked page. It was such a natural progression of topics, that she hadn’t noticed that she’d read through almost twenty of them.

With a yawn, she set the tablet on the nightstand and curled up to sleep.

***

The next morning Spring was feeling a lot better. Her bruises were healing, she could take deeper breaths without pain, and according to Dr. Needle her eyes were no longer bloodshot. As she was eating her breakfast (which she had been told was oatmeal, but she had yet to find a single oat in it), she noticed that the doctor kept giving her strange sidelong glances as he was checking her vitals.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Hm? No, I’m fine,” he replied. “It’s just…are you okay?”

She was pretty sure she knew what he was talking about, but she was in a good mood and decided to play dumb. “You just said I’m doing great, right?”

“Well yes, you’re recovering nicely physically, but…” he seemed to founder for a bit. “Are you doing alright…mentally? Emotionally?”

Spring wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She let out a heavy sigh. “Honestly…I don’t know. It was a shock at first, but now I’m just…numb. I’m sure I’ll keep getting reminders of how different things are, and how much I’ve lost, and it’ll be hard. But I’m not going to curl up in the fetal position and repeatedly scream “FUTURE” or something like that.”

That brought out a chuckle from both of them and managed to lighten the mood again.

“Honestly though, if you feel like you need to talk to someone…I’m probably not the right pony. There are therapists and counselors in Medical Section; just let me know, and I can have one of them come and talk to you.”

“Thanks,” Spring said, even though she felt like she’d be able to talk with Dr. Needle just fine.

That thought brought something to mind. “Why are there therapists here?”

“Maulwurf is pretty remote, even for the moon, so it’d be really inconvenient to send ponies back and forth to Starshine City every day. The standard work period for an LMC employee here is six months, after which they get two months of paid leave. Some have their families here on the moon, but most go back to Equus. Spending six months at a time inside a metal can hundreds of thousands of kilometers from home can be hard on some ponies. Not to mention that the station spends all its time on the dark side, so you can’t even see the sun until we get really close to Starshine. The Maulwurf was designed to be as non-claustrophobic as possible, but there are still some areas with no windows at all.”

“Like Medical Section? I haven’t seen any windows yet.”

“Yeah, this section doesn’t have any exterior bulkheads. But if you think it’s stifling in here, you do not want to see the maintenance areas.” Needle Prick gave a shudder. “I don’t envy the poor bastards who have to work down there.

“Speaking of which,” he continued, “You’ve been practically bed-ridden for over three days, and you’ve never even been outside of Medial Section. I’ve gotten approval to take you on a tour of the station, if you’d like. Then maybe later, we could get you something to eat besides hospital food.”

Spring set down her spoon and looked Needle Prick in the eye. “It is taking every ounce of my self-control not to leap out of this bed right now.”

***

It was amazing what a hot shower could do. Spring Bloom felt better than she had in over a week; the less said about the zero-g showers aboard the Celestia Dawn, the better, and she hadn’t been at the Luna Hotel long enough to experience theirs. But the Maulwurf had proper hot water, in proper gravity, in proper – albeit small – shower stalls. After lunch, which would hopefully be her last experience with hospital food for awhile, Needle Prick led her out of her room.

“You’ve seen most of Medical Section already, so I won’t spend too much time here. It’s honestly pretty slow around here aside from routine checkups and the occasional sprain. You’re the most exciting thing to happen in a long time.” Dr. Needle grinned, but his expression quickly turned to horror. “I mean, uh, not exciting, like, it was enjoyable you almost died, but, like, interesting? No…I’m just going to shut up now.”

Spring couldn’t help but chuckle at the way the doctor kept stumbling over his words, but he quickly regained his composure as he motioned to a sign on the wall.

“Our first stop is Control Section, and to get there we’ll be passing through the Atrium.”

Several corridors and an elevator ride later, Spring found herself in the largest indoor area she had seen in space so far. The ceiling stretched perhaps three stories above her, and the walls were lined with mezzanines. It reminded her of a mall, even more so than the gravity ring on the Celestia Dawn. Various shops, bars, restaurants, and even a theater lined the walls, advertised with colorful signage. The floor was scattered with potted plants and even a decorative fountain, with tables and benches clustered in groups for ponies to sit and eat, or just talk. The most impressive feature, at least to her, was that one whole wall was a single, massive window, stretching from floor to ceiling, where she could see the endless swath of lunar terrain stretch out before her. There wasn’t much to see; aside from pools of light illuminated by the exterior floodlights, the bright lights from inside the station just made a reflective glare on the windows. It might have been spectacular in sunlight, but Spring was unsure how much she really appreciated the sight of the moon’s surface anymore.

“The Atrium is where everypony aboard the Maulwurf spends most of their leisure time, and spends the money the LMC pays them with. We’ll be back here for dinner, so take some time to think about what you might want to eat.”

“You have to pay for food?”

“Yep. Lodging is free, but you have to pay for your own meals. It’s not too expensive though, and the pay more than makes up for it. If you’re really pinching bits, the cheapest option is the cafeteria, which serves…well, the hospital food you’ve been eating has come from there. So most ponies just eat at one of the restaurants.”

Spring craned her neck around, impressed at the sheer variety of options, and was taken aback at seeing a familiar sign outside one of the restaurants.

“There’s a Hayburger here!?”

“Yeah! All these places are actually businesses, run by private contractors. Hayburger, Shimmy Shake, Sonata Taco…I admit I might have gained a little weight since I started working here.”

***

Needle led Spring to the entrance of Control Section, where he introduced her to an older mare with chestnut hair and a burgundy coat. She greeted Spring with a friendly smile, but her gold eyes were piercing; she seemed to be sizing Spring up. Spring also noticed that Dr. Needle seemed tense around the director.

“Ah, this is the mare I’ve heard so much about,” she said in an accent Spring didn’t recognize. “You’ve been quite the talk of our little station.”

Spring didn’t know how to respond, feeling a touch embarrassed at all the attention she was getting.

“But I don’t mean to make you feel unwelcome. My name is Rosette, and I am the director of the Maulwurf. It’s my job to make sure everything runs smoothly. Please, come with me and I’ll show you around my…domain, so to speak.”

Rosette led the pair into the first room of Control Section, which was a large space mostly consisting of staff seated behind computer screens.

“This is the central control room, where we can monitor and control almost everything that goes on aboard the station. From here we can send and receive telemetry and communications from Starshine City, monitor the environmental and gravity systems, and, most importantly, supervise the onboard harvesting and refining operations.”

Spring also noticed that there was a console monitoring what appeared to be feeds from security cameras.

“There are cameras mounted almost everywhere in the station,” Rosette said with a pleased smile. “We can locate anypony, anywhere, at any time.”

Rosette then took them up into the space traffic control tower, where they could see the pony responsible for directing the in- and outflow of spacecraft to and from the station. In addition to flat screens, her console’s main display had a three-dimensional representation of the station and the surrounding areas projected above it with orange light. With motions of her hooves, the operator could rotate the display and zoom it in or out, or lock onto specific targets to track their movements. Unfortunately there didn’t appear to be much going on; although the controller did her best to look busy, Spring couldn’t see any ships appear on the display and there was no radio chatter.

As they descended the elevator back to the control center, Rosette spoke up. “I don’t mean to pry, but I have to ask, Spring Bloom, what happened the day you stumbled into our airlock? I’ve heard the story from Dr. Prick here, but I’d like to get it straight from the horse’s mouth. So to speak.”

Spring recounted the story again, fighting through the nausea and trembles she always got when thinking about what happened.

“…the next thing I knew, I was waking up in a hospital bed. I have no idea how or why I escaped suffocating to death, or ending up a hundred and fifty years in the future.”

Rosette was silent, bearing only a thoughtful expression until the elevator doors opened and they all stepped out into the control center. “That is an interesting story. One I think you will need to repeat often.”

After Rosette bid them goodbye and the pair left Control Section, Spring was left with a strange feeling, like she had failed an interview.

“I don’t think she believes you,” Needle said.

“What? Why not?”

“She’s always been a…skeptical person. Don’t take it personally.”

“You seemed pretty uncomfortable around her.”

“Was it that obvious?”

Spring simply nodded.

“Well, we had a brief relationship a few years ago. We didn’t part on the most amicable of terms.

“She has a strong force of personality, and I can respect that. But she’s incredibly ambitious, and I could never shake the sense that she was never showing me the real Rosette, just a mask she wore while she was figuring out how to use me to further her own goals.”

***

The walk to the next destination on their tour took them all the way from the front of the station to the rear, to the Engineering Section. According to Needle, it was by far the largest, taking up over half of the bulk of the station.

Their guide for Engineering Section was Sigma, an excitable earth pony stallion who took great pride in how smoothly the refineries were run. He led them into the production areas, where mazes of pipes ran along every bit of wall and ceiling. Sigma pointed out which pipes carried which material, and explained the function of the various pieces of machinery they connected to. The regolith, he explained, was routed to an array of furnaces, which melted it down and combined it with various chemicals that separated the constituent elements. The process yielded materials like iron, aluminum, magnesium, and titanium. They could even extract water from the ice crystals mixed into the soil.

Another large room contained the machinery that actually collected the lunar soil, including the massive bucket wheels that Spring had seen on the exterior view of the station. They weren’t allowed to go inside – Sigma explained that moon dust could be dangerous if inhaled – but she could see most of the machinery through the windows. The ground-up soil was collected into large pipes and distributed to the melters and reaction vessels.

The last area was far cleaner and quieter than the production areas had been. In the center of the room were two structures, several meters tall and resembling massive metallic donuts covered in pipes and wires. A few technicians milled about, mostly behind a collection of computer monitors along the far wall. One of the technicians, she noticed, was a zebra mare; and she realized that was the first non-pony race she had seen on the station so far. She was about to ask about it when Sigma spoke up.

“And these,” he announced, “Are the station’s twin fusion reactors.”

Spring couldn’t help but raise her eyebrows and gape. She didn’t really understand fusion power, but she had heard whisperings in her own time that it was this miracle technology that could provide almost limitless power with meager fuel, but the technology was always too far away. And right in front of her were two of them.

“They use helium-3 as fuel, collected from the very soil beneath us,” he explained with all the zeal of a high school science teacher. “Inside the toroidal chambers, a magical containment field holds the fuel inside, raising it to temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun! The atoms crash into each other and fuse together, releasing lots of energy in the process…what is it?”

Spring realized she had been slowly shaking her head. “Sorry, I’ve just been thinking. My grandfather, Spring Hill, died in a coal mine collapse. I remember seeing coal trains kilometers long passing through my hometown. And now I get to see these…fusion reactors that produce power from nothing more than helium.”

“Well, it’s very special helium, but I see your point. Technology of all kinds has advanced a lot in the past hundred and fifty years, and you don’t know how happy I am to be able to show some of it to you.”

Since the reactor hall was the last place to visit, Needle and Spring said goodbye to Sigma and headed back towards the Atrium for the promised dinner free of hospital food.

“Have you thought about what you want to eat?” Needle asked.

Spring thought for a moment. “I want a hayburger.”

Author's Note:

Special thanks to Mockingbirb for prereading and suggested edits.

Comments

[CommissarVulpin]

Sorry for taking over two months to finish this chapter, but life got in the way and left me little time for writing. Hopefully Chapter 4 won't take nearly as long.

[Thought Prism]

10677169 Hey, for me, the wait was worth it. For real, now there's two mysterious conspiracies I'm suspecting Spring Bloom will eventually be roped into uncovering, plus the fish out of water element. Being even farther into the future lets the technology be more interesting, and for the reader to discover it along with Spring. The tangential bits of set dressing are also great. I approve of Celestia being as terrible with computers as she is at acting, really adds to the whole 'she's everypony's wise grandma' vibe she puts out. And I laughed out loud at the Spongebob reference. All in all, this is shaping up to be excellent gem of a fic, one which won't remain hidden if there's any justice in the world.

[Frazikar]

Sonata Taco

OK, somebody tell me how that siren got to this moon!

[* Shimmy Shake? Shimmer escort service for an ex-siren? *]

[Mix-up]

Nice to see an update on this story, still happy that she somehow survived the vacuum of space. Interesting to hear a little what happened in the past 150 years, nice to see Celestia and Luna in this. I do like growing romance with Spring and Niddel, I wonder if this will also turn into tragedy. I do like the nodded with with the Qannon that lead to the 6th events and pointing out all the dangers to it.