We told stories to pass the time. I kept mine to myself, but I learned of how the other travelers had been abandoned, cast out, driven from their homes, the many journeys which had led them, at last, to seek out alien ruins and venture beyond the known stars. In the end, we were all running from something.

When we reached the ocean planet gate, I was eager to step through. The portal frame shared a similar design to the Cassiopeia Gate, and so was most likely constructed by the same extinct, forgotten civilization. They seemed to have had a taste for extreme weather.

Again, no fanfare. Crossing the gate was impossible yet mundane. The other end, however, was frigid.

We found ourselves on the shore of a rocky, lichen-covered island in the middle of a calm and endless ocean. Fine snowflakes drifted from a crisp green sky and melted upon our skin. The oxygen here was dense and took time to acclimate to, but made each breath feel full and sharp.

We were quick to don more clothing, after which we put our fabricator machines to work and laboriously began to assemble boats. This we would need to reach the next gate, which lay on the rim of an impact crater atoll closer to the planet’s equator.

The weather was favourable this time, and as we set sail the setting sun gave way to a night sky far darker than what I was accustomed to, with the stripe of the Milky Way mottled in an unfamiliar pattern and seeming unusually distant. We had taken a sharp turn toward the galactic west since the planet of radioactive storms, but our path toward Prima Sagittarium remained true.

Then we saw lights floating in the darkness.