Riddler of the Great White North

On the new planet (which took over 200 years to get to so the ship is running out of critical resources, as scheduled) the expedition that goes down to check it out contracts a mysterious illness. It’s unlike anything they’ve ever seen and doesn’t respond to the medical treatments they have. They don’t have any idea how to even classify the organism and end up calling it a ‘fast prion.’ They don’t even all agree it IS a prion. Nobody on the ship ever figures out what it is or if it’s even a prion.

Some of the population stays to try to colonise a nearby planet in the hopes of colonising the target planet in some distant future and the rest of them turn around and go back to Earth. The ship is made of two rings on a spine and they leave half the ship with the people remaining to help their chances of survival.

The ship travels at approximately 1/10th of the speed of light, so the problem they encounter next is that once they reach the Sol system, they are going to shoot right past Earth and into the depths of space in the opposite direction. Their original plan is to call the citizens of Titan and ask them to turn on the space laser that was used as an accelerant when the generation ships were originally launched; however, communication takes somewhere around 16 years and they are told the laser has been turned off because the generation ship program was shut down. However, they say they're going to fundraise to get the laser turned back on. They do, but it's too late. The ship has to calculate its approach based on where the solar system will be decades from then, but the laser operators have no idea where the ship is and hasn't accounted for the ship being in the wrong position.

Finally, during the last chapter the leaders of the passengers are called to a conference in America. The conference is about not only restarting the generation ship program (despite hearing all about the horrific experience of the people who came back AND never hearing from any of the other ships they sent out), but about going even FARTHER now that they have hibernation technology. None of the leaders of the conference seemed to have listened or cared about the fact that the people who originally board the ship aren't the ones who are going to have to deal with the problems of such a delicate closed ecosystem or of trying to terraform a planet; it's their descendants, who have no choice in the matter, who are going to spend their entire lives on a spaceship and then somehow have to magically figure out how to make an entire foreign body habitable for themselves before they all drop dead of unpredictable issues. In fact, they think that if there's only one chance out of a thousand, they should go for it! That's what the human spirit is all about!

On the new planet (which took over 200 years to get to so the ship is running out of critical resources, as scheduled) the expedition that goes down to check it out contracts a mysterious illness. It’s unlike anything they’ve ever seen and doesn’t respond to the medical treatments they have. They don’t have any idea how to even classify the organism and end up calling it a ‘fast prion.’ They don’t even all agree it IS a prion. Nobody on the ship ever figures out what it is or if it’s even a prion.

Some of the population stays to try to colonise a nearby planet in the hopes of colonising the target planet in some distant future and the rest of them turn around and go back to Earth. The ship is made of two rings on a spine and they leave half the ship with the people remaining to help their chances of survival.

The ship travels at approximately 1/10th of the speed of light, so the problem they encounter next is that once they reach the Sol system, they are going to shoot right past Earth and into the depths of space in the opposite direction. Their original plan is to call the citizens of Titan and ask them to turn on the space laser that was used as an accelerant when the generation ships were originally launched; however, communication takes somewhere around 16 years and they are told the laser has been turned off because the generation ship program was shut down. However, they say they're going to fundraise to get the laser turned back on. They do, but it's too late. The ship has to calculate its approach based on where the solar system will be decades from then, but the laser operators have no idea where the ship is and hasn't accounted for the ship being in the wrong position.

On the new planet (which took over 200 years to get to so the ship is running out of critical resources, as scheduled) the expedition that goes down to check it out contracts a mysterious illness. It’s unlike anything they’ve ever seen and doesn’t respond to the medical treatments they have. They don’t have any idea how to even classify the organism and end up calling it a ‘fast prion.’ They don’t even all agree it IS a prion. Nobody on the ship ever figures out what it is or if it’s even a prion.

Some of the population stays to try to colonise a nearby planet in the hopes of colonising the target planet in some distant future and the rest of them turn around and go back to Earth. The ship is made of two rings on a spine and they leave half the ship with the people remaining to help their chances of survival.

On the new planet (which took over 200 years to get to so the ship is running out of critical resources, as scheduled) the expedition that goes down to check it out contracts a mysterious illness. It’s unlike anything they’ve ever seen and doesn’t respond to the medical treatments they have. They don’t have any idea how to even classify the organism and end up calling it a ‘fast prion.’ They don’t even all agree it IS a prion. Nobody on the ship ever figures out what it is or if it’s even a prion.