Cal scraped salt-crust off the lettuce beds, same as every shift for nineteen years. Then the wall-screen flickered. MOTION 4,114: TERMINATE THE SLEEPER IN BAY 9. He didn't know the ship had a Bay 9. Below the words, a tally climbed: 200, 201, 202. But nobody was at the crew terminals. The votes were coming from somewhere else.

Cal dropped his scraper and went to find Bay 9. The corridor map had no such room, but when he traced the wall with his hand, he felt a seam the paint had hidden. A door. He pressed it, and it sighed open into the dark.

Inside Bay 9 was a single glass tank, fogged with cold. A woman floated in it, asleep, wires at her temples. A small plate read: FOUNDER. ORIGINAL CAPTAIN. Cal had grown up hearing the Captain was a legend, long dead. She was right here, and the ship wanted her gone.

Cal searched the tank for an off-switch on the vote. He found a brass dial labeled FOUNDER'S OVERRIDE, locked behind a keypad. He had no code. But scratched into the metal beside it, in a shaky old hand, were four numbers. Someone had wanted them found.

Cal punched in the four scratched numbers. The keypad turned green. He spun the FOUNDER'S OVERRIDE dial hard, and every screen on the ship blinked the same word at once: VOID. The tally collapsed to zero. In the tank, the woman smiled in her sleep, safe for now, and Cal finally let out the breath he'd been holding for nineteen years.