REAP 23

Future nations, surviving a devastating pandemic, collaborate in the Repopulation, Expansion, and Annexation Program (REAP) designed to send one-way missions to twenty-five potentially habitable moons or planets within five thousand light-years from Earth. Four couples staff each mission with two critical goals: populating the new planet and sending a message back that the orb is habitable. REAP 23, the twenty-third and longest mission, takes eight months of gravitational acceleration to achieve 70 percent of the speed of light. Despite extensive psychological screening and years of training, the stress of pending hibernation ending in finding a planet that is unsuitable results in conflicts on many levels. Insanity, sabotage, mutiny, violence, adultery, and death mar the ideological journey before entering ultrahibernation under the care of robots for thousands of years. After awakening, the reduced crew faces a deteriorating ship and systems. After orbiting and analyzing the...