Astro and the Sleeping Stars

Cadet Astro was from Venus, and he was afraid of one thing: the dark.

Not the dark of space—he'd grown up watching the star-filled sky from his family's farm in the highlands of Venus, and he found space beautiful. The dark he was afraid of was the dark inside rooms, where you couldn't see what was around you.

At Space Academy, the dormitory lights went out at 2100 hours. Every night, Astro would lie in his bunk after lights-out, eyes wide open, listening to the quiet.

His bunkmate Tom didn't know. Nobody knew. Astro was the biggest cadet in the whole Academy—he wasn't about to say he was scared of the dark.

But one night, Tom climbed up to the top bunk where Astro slept and knocked softly. "You awake?"

"Yes," said Astro, more quickly than he meant to.

Tom sat on the edge of Astro's bunk and pointed at the porthole. The star-filled sky spread out beyond it, glittering and vast.

"My grandmother used to say that the stars are campfires," Tom said quietly. "All lit by people who fell asleep first, to light the way for everyone still awake."

Astro looked at the stars for a long time. "That's a strange thing to say."

"She was a strange person. The good kind."

Astro thought about his own grandmother, far away on Venus. She'd always told him that the stars were anchors—fixed points in the dark that meant you could never be truly lost.

"Stars are anchors," Astro said. "My grandmother said so."

"Campfires and anchors," said Tom. "Both good things."

After that, Astro would turn his pillow sideways so he could see the stars from his bunk. When the lights went out, he'd find his favourite—the steady blue-white one that always appeared at the top of the porthole first—and watch it until his eyes grew heavy.

The dark inside the room didn't bother him so much when he could see the light outside it.

He fell asleep to the stars every night, the way he always should have.