Sally Rook felt that her life was about as unexciting as a life could be for a twelve-year old girl in the year 2718. She felt that way right up until the day that she stumbled across the dead body. That was when her life began to become a lot less normal.

She had spent all the days that she could remember in the not-very-creatively named Mining Colony 31416. Nick-named Pitown by the residents, it was the only town on a desert moon called Dustran. Dustran circled a planet on which nothing else lived. The planet orbited an uninteresting star. The star was the last stop on a little-used hyperspace route. Pitown was literally an astronomical dead-end, but it was home.

On the day she found the body, Sally was woken by a particularly loud creaking noise from one of the many rusted pipes that criss-crossed the ceiling of her room. The noises continued day and night, but Sally was used to most of them.

While she waited for her brain to wake up fully, she sat up in her bunk and rubbed her eyes. She could hear the sounds of her Dad clattering around the kitchen. When she opened her eyes, they fell on the one poster decorating the grey walls. It had been a present from her Dad for her tenth birthday. It must have been hard to come by this far out. On the poster was Chaos Feary, Sally’s favourite hover derby racer. Chaos Feary was flying almost horizontally in full battle mode, pushing an opponent out of her way with her shoulder. Her boots were blazing blue light behind her and she had a crazy grin on her face. Sally would really have liked to be a racer herself, but there was little chance of that. There wasn’t even an official track for hundreds of light-years and she’d probably never even get to leave Pitown. That thought made her frown.

Sally yawned and left her room still feeling bad about being stuck on a rock in the middle of nowhere, and entered the kitchen. She cheered up and even smiled when she saw her Dad bent over the kitchen table, tools, wires, other parts, and his empty breakfast bowl strewn across the remains of a board game they had played the night before. He was working on her hover boots, her most prized possession. They had been her Mum’s once.

Sally’s Dad didn’t seem to notice her entering, he was concentrating so hard. But suddenly he leapt up and began to run away, still not seeing her. He seemed to be in an immense hurry. Then he spotted her and stopped.

“Oh! Sal, you’re up!” he exclaimed.

Sally looked from him to the boots, with a quizzical look.

“Yep, they’re all ready to go, I think. You were right, the Higg’s inhibitor was disconnected,” he said with a smile. Nodding to the game board, he added “Good game last night. Sorry I beat you again!” He didn’t sound very sorry.

Sally said “I don’t care. It’s all random anyway.”

Her dad smiled and opened his mouth, seeming as though he was about to contradict her. Then, seeming to remember the hurry he was in, he sprinted to his bedroom.

“What’s the rush, Dad?” Sally asked.

Sally’s Dad’s head poked back out from the bedroom a second later, looking surprised.

“You forgot? Sal, it’s the exam today!” With that, his head disappeared again. Sally kicked herself. She should have remembered and said something reassuring. She didn’t want her Dad to think she only ever thought about herself.

“Oh that?” She said as she began to make her own breakfast. She tried to sound as though she had remembered but thought it wasn’t a big deal. “You’ll ace that, Dad. You know all the stuff. And I know, ‘cos I’ve been the one testing you when you revise.”

Sally tore open a packet of NuGrool, poured the powder into a bowl, added water, listened to the fizz, and watched as the powder expanded into ‘food’. It tasted of potato and the smell of her Dad’s socks. Sally wished Pitown had a bigger farm. Then the colony wouldn’t have to depend on deliveries of NuGrool from the government to survive. As she plonked the bowl down on the game’s board, made from a piece of packaging, she knocked over several of the pieces she and her Dad had roughly carved from some of the black rocks of Dustin’s surface.

Her Dad’s voice sounded panicked and distracted as he shouted from his bedroom “I know I know the stuff now! I’m worried about remembering it all in the exam room! Where are my socks?!”

“They’re on the heater in your room Dad!” She shouted back. As she ate with a grimace at the flavour of her ‘food’, Sally looked out the kitchen’s one window. The glass was inches thick, to keep the air in the room from bursting out into the vacuum of the moon’s surface. She watched the black surface of Dustran roll by in the dark outside. She could only see patches of ground that were shown by lights from Pitown’s windows.

Pitown was, in fact, an enormous train. It rolled along on rails that circled Dustran’s equator. Behind Pitown, over the horizon, the heat of the sun made the rails move apart. This expansion pushed Pitown forwards, keeping it away from the sunlight. This was good because the day side of Dustran was hot enough to roast alive the people in Pitown. Always moving, never getting anywhere interesting, never seeing the Sun, that was life in Pitown.

Sally could hear noises of her Dad getting ready in a panic in his room: mutterings, bangings, water running, and the creaking of his bed when he sat on it. She started to feel nervous, like it was contagious and she’d picked it up from her Dad. She didn’t like seeing him like this when he was usually so calm.

Strimbul, the planet that Dustran orbited, was coming up over the horizon. Sally stared at the swirling patterns of the purple and green clouds that covered its surface. It was always beautiful. She wondered about what was on the surface, as she often had. Nobody knew, other than the members of Mining Colony 31498. On the rare occasion when one of them was seen in Pitown, they didn’t talk about it. She imagined the excitement of riding the space elevator from 31498 through the clouds to Strimbul’s surface. She looked as hard as she could at the planet outside her window, trying to see 31498, but it was too small and too far away.

Instead, Sally imagined herself away to a favourite fantasy of hers. A talent spotter from the Galactic Hover Derby Association would come to Pitown, having heard about Sally’s talent on the ‘track’ she and her friends used. She’d see Sally’s skills and instantly ask her to come to train at an official Derby Academy. There, Sally would outshine all competition. She would rise to become the greatest jammer of all time. She imagined crowds roaring her derby name, "Lunar Tick! Lunar Tick! Lunar Tick!"

The fantasy was interrupted by her Dad sprinting to the door. He stopped on his way to kiss the top of her head and say “I love you, Superstar!”

“Good luck, Dad!” She said, beaming at him as he turned away.

“Thanks!” He shouted as he ran out the door.

After breakfast, Sally showered in recycled water. The shower made its usual clunking, sputtering, grinding noises. Then Sally dried herself, dressed, and waited while her toothbrush laser-cleaned her teeth. She tied her blue hair back into a ponytail. She loved having naturally blue hair. It was pretty unusual now that genetic engineering technology wasn’t available to everyone, since the gene that controlled it was recessive. At least a couple of her ancestors must both have gotten it some time before The Waning.

On her way to the door, she picked up her physics homework. As she did so, she realised that she knew the answer to the last question. She had struggled with it for an hour after school the day before but had got nowhere. Sleeping on it had somehow allowed her brain to work the answer out on its own. She quickly scribbled the solution, showing all her working of course.

She packed her homework in her bag, shouldered it, and was about to leave for school, when her eyes slid over the noticeboard she and her Dad kept next to the door. On top of many old notes to each-other and various reminders, there was a sheet of paper with another, smaller note stuck to it. The note read “Don’t forget me!” Scanning the sheet of paper, she read “Registration form for Examination 112358M: Site Management of Class U Mining Operations, Theory. Please bring this document to the examination hall on the date of your examination.”

Sally felt dread surfacing in her chest, then sinking down her body all the way to make her legs weak. Her Dad wasn’t going to be allowed to take the test without this piece of paper. But he’d worked so hard to prepare! She also knew that passing the exam might mean a higher paid job for her Dad. That might mean they could take a holiday off Dustran one day. She had to get the form to her Dad. It said that his exam was taking place in Sports Hall 34. She knew where that was! She checked the time on her wrist computer. Her Dad’s exam started in 9 minutes, and so did school. No way could she get to him on time walking, let alone get back in time for school. She didn’t think there would be a tram that could help either.

She lost half a minute thinking about what to do before realising that she was staring at her hover boots, not seeing them. A smile crept across her face. It wasn’t allowed, but this was surely an emergency. She skipped over and turned them on. The rim of the tongues glowed green. Half-charged, then. That was OK. She hesitated for a second, then hurriedly swapped her shoes for the boots. She stuffed her Dad’s exam form into her bag, left the apartment and looked around. There was nobody to stop her. She clicked her heels together. The soles blazed out green light and she was lifted a foot off the ground. The boots hummed as she hovered still for a few seconds, feeling the usual tingle of excitement. She checked the time again. Seven minutes left. A crazy grin spread across her face, just like the one on Chaos Feary’s poster.

She angled her toes to the floor and the boots responded. Sally was ready, falling forwards and shifting her legs in response to the increasing force pushing at her feet. Almost immediately, she was flying along, almost horizontal, the walls of the corridor a blur beside her. It was the best feeling in the world.

Of course, she didn’t know then that she would never return to her apartment. In three days’ time, she would be leaving most of her friends, her school, and Dustran behind forever, chased by murderers.