The last one of the 1000

Claudia gave Ron a brilliant smile. The kind of smile that only a baby can give, an expression of sheer bliss.

He held the tiny child, his grandchild, in his arms, and he had to keep them from trembling. She was the 1001st crewmember on board of the Night, the spaceship that had carried her passengers from earth all the light years to Kepler. Countless generations of humans had lived and died on the ship, never expecting to see their destination, and their headcount never exceeding 1000. Whenever a child was born and the number of passengers did exceed that magical number, the oldest crewmember had to die. The adamant law of the 1000 ensured the sustainability of life on board. Never had that law been bent or broken, and usually it had been followed willingly and bravely, even in the times of greatest tyranny, strife an unrest.

They were the 1000.

Never had the law been broken until now, Ron corrected himself. Ron was the oldest person on board of the Night. And the headcount was now up to 1001. He should have died when Claudia was born, some weeks ago.

The reason why they had ignored the law in his case was in front of him, on a large viewing monitor. Beta, Kepler's sole habitable planet, was visible as a sphere of vivid colors, sparkling in the light of its sun before a black background pinpricked with starlight. They were now orbiting their destination, and the law of the 1000 was bound to become obsolete.

They had ceased to be the 1000. They were the settlers now.

Ron could not decide which of the two views before him was more ravishing. Beta with its promise of living on a planet's surface, under the sun. Or Claudia, herself a statement of life, and their future.

"Hey, granddad!" Susan, his daughter and Claudia's mother, pulled his sleeve. "It is time to take your seat in the dropship."

They were to descend to Beta today, in the dropship, basically a heat shielded box with a short-burn solid-state rocket and parachutes. It would carry all of the Night's passengers and their equipment to the planet.

"We are coming." Ron smiled at his daughter.

The dropship was crowded with people and their equipment.

"Ten seconds to ejection." The captain's voice was hard to hear over the excited babble of the passengers. The dropship was to be ejected from the Night, the starship, and Ron was bracing himself.

"Three ... two ... one."

A hush fell over the passengers.

Nothing else happened.

"We have a problem," the captain announced, after a few seconds. "We need to investigate. Mechanics crew, please check this out."

The mechanics crew consisted of Ron, who was the chief mechanic, Jeremy and Linda. They all left their seats and headed for the airlock to the Night.

"The coils have burned," said Jeremy, with only his legs still extending from the hatch leading into a machine's innards. The coils he was talking about were those of the drive of the grapple that held the dropship.

Ron was not surprised. The equipment on board had been falling apart for generations. Gently, he put a hand on the aged casing of the grapple drive.

Linda and Jeremy, the latter having retracted himself from the machine, were looking at Ron for guidance, as they always did. Ron knew so much more about the workings of the Night than they did, but he knew next to nothing in comparison to the chief mechanics before him. It was hard to keep all that knowledge alive over generations, with a crew of so few and with the computer archives slowly failing.

"We have a spare," he said. "I will get it from the store. I can replace it within fifteen minutes. You just head back to the dropship and tell the others. I can do this alone."

"But, I can help you," said Linda, obviously reluctant to leave him alone.

"No, I want to do this by myself. One last service to the old Night." He firmly looked at Linda. "Please grant me this favor."

Linda smiled and gave a nod. "OK, chief!" She left with Jeremy.

Ron followed them, unseen, at a distance, making sure that they did close the airlock to the dropship.

He returned to the burned drive. Every such drive on board could also be operated manually, by a crank. A necessary precaution on a spaceship designed to operate for centuries. He got himself the crank, slid it into the machine's shaft and started to turn.

With a clank, the grapple released its target. He went to the controls and saw how the dropship disengaged from the spaceship. The ignition of its rocket fired  in a fiery burn, decelerating it from orbit towards the planet, away from the Night.

Ron was back in the room with the large viewing monitor, looking out at Beta below him. The Night's corridors and cabins were quiet, as quiet as never before.

Yes, there was a replacement drive in the store, probably. And he could have replaced it, probably, and then he could have returned with the others to the dropship, from where they could have disengaged the grapple remotely. He could be one of the settlers on the dropship by now.

Probably.

But no. Ron had wanted to pay homage to those before him, those who, by the bane of their birth, had lived and died without any hope to see their final target, under the inhumane laws that the ship's builders had forced upon them. He belonged with them. 

He was the last one of the 1000.

The Night, with her broken grapple drive, had gently reminded him of that.

The planet below him was breathtaking, its green-brown continents, blue oceans and white clouds shouting their welcome to its human settlers.

Just like his granddaughter's, some hours before in the same room, his smile was a happy one.