"Come on, Ray!" the little boy from Dome 3 used to grab ahold of whatever part
of my clothes were closest and yank until I paid attention. 

I wasn't supposed to leave Dome 1 without telling my parents but mom was always
busy with her seedlings, she'd just say "not now. I'm in the middle of my
research" and go tell me to find my father.

My father would be impossible to find. He would be given some hard problem to
solve and unless he talking it out with the other physicists, he'd be hidden
off somewhere with a view of the stars if we were darkside or in the library if
not.

The library was his favorite place to go. He always said that if he had it to
do over again he would have smuggled more books onto his launch. It turned out
that a lot of people said the same thing, and they decided to make a library.
Dad always just read on screen before, but something about being 200,000 miles
away from everything he'd ever known made him say he preferred paper.

But now I knew that dad would be holed up somewhere, working on whatever it was
that he did. I wasn't going to find him until he was ready to come out. That
was probably going to be hours at best. I had time.

So I followed the boy. He really was little. Everyone called him just 'Little',
except his parents. He was a whole head shorter than I was, and I wasn't very
tall. Something about his bones, someone said, they didn't grow quite right. He
wobbled a little when he ran, more bouncing and barely keeping to his feet when
he hit the ground again, but that didn't stop him. He tugged on the strap
hanging from my jacket and nearly knocked me off the ground he pulled so hard.

I followed Little through the maze of tunnels leading to Dome 3. All the
stripes on the walls slowly changed from mostly-red to mostly-blue as we ran.
That's the only way I knew where I was. I wasn't very good at finding my way as
a child.

Dome 1 was where I'd spent almost my entire life. It was big, the original
plastic dome that was supposed to house everyone. That didn't last long, and
with the second and third launches, they'd made space for another dome in each.
Those were domes two and three.

They've sort-of turned into our tribes. There's almost five hundred people in
each dome, now, and Dome 1 decided to make their launch colors official, so we
almost always wear something red. Dome 2 and Dome 3 did the same, with their
greens and blues, I guess following our lead. I don't think anyone wanted to
make a uniform on purpose, but living here makes humans do strange things that
you'd never noticed before until you take us out into the edge of nowhere in a
way that's never been done before. Maybe we always just want a group to belong
to, and here, which dome you live and work in is as good as anything. Who knows
what will happen when we start living in the new big domes.

Little didn't wear dome colors. He was wearing the grey tunic that the launch
techs wore. Nobody wore those anymore, we'd worn them all out in almost every
size. I guess Little wore the size that we had extra in. They didn't look bad
or anything, and they hid the color of the moon dust perfectly. You could never
tell when they were dirty until you put them in the cleaner and it had to work
for an extra ten minutes to get it clean.

He turned down a side tunnel, this one didn't have the color stripe on the wall
to guide. Just numbers, painted every twenty meters or so. It felt so tiny, you
couldn't really bounce in it, or you'd hit your head on the ceiling. There
wasn't even a meter to spare over my head.

"I like it here. Nobody comes here. Come on! Let me show you it!" Little didn't
have any way of speaking except hushed excitement, like nobody ever listened to
him unless he made them, but he was always told to be quiet. I followed him
down the narrow passage, and at the end was an unmarked door, the old kind with
the wheel on it to lock it tight. Little gave the wheel a spin, and it wasn't
tight like it would be if it was holding back the vacuum. Even then, I held my
breath every time someone opened one of those doors. People say only firsters
do that, but I can't shake the habit.

On the other side of the door was a room. Plain, white everywhere. The old
fashioned flat light, coming from panels in the ceiling, from before we had so
much solar power that we stopped worrying about how much electricity we used.
This must be part of the original base. Everyone said we'd torn it up when the
first dome was done.

The air smelled funny. Sharp. Little pulled me on further, to another door like
the first, and wheeled it open. It slammed into the wall with a heavy clank.
Another room, like the first one, and tunnels leading out from it. The doors to
each one stood open. The same sharp smell was everywhere. I followed him for
what felt like hours, and I wasn't sure where I was.

Finally he got to another door that looked like all the rest. "Here it is!"

He turned the wheel, though this one was harder to move. I held my breath. I
always hold my breath.

Once he turned the wheel far enough, the door opened easily. No pop or whistle
of vacuum. I let my breath out.

And then held it again.

I was staring out at the inky blackness, through just a tiny dome. We were
outside the shield, its grey bulk shooting up behind us into the distance. We
stepped down, leaving just a door hanging off a bulkhead above and behind us,
and otherwise we had an unobstructed view of the darkside sky.

The earth was hanging, blue and jewel-like as always, but the intensity of it
was like nothing I'd ever seen before. You see it on screens all over, and
sometimes when they're repairing the shield while we're darkside, you'll see it
through the big dome, but it has enough reflectives to dim it.

I wasn't ready for just how black it is, and the stars aren't just the
pinpricks of light, but the broad clouds of billions and billions of them. You
haven't seen the sky unless you've seen it from outside the shield.

"It's the best thing ever, isn't it?" I felt bad ignoring Little, but I
couldn't take my eyes off of it.

"We should go." he said.  I ignored him.

He tugged on the straps on my jacket.

"What?"

"We should go!" 

"Why?"

Before he could answer, the room burst with light. Dayside. It was blinding.
The room started to heat up, too, and fast. It was probably 30 in seconds, and
climbing. My eyes hurt.

Little was already scrambling out of the room. I climbed back up to the door
and followed him out, and he pulled the door shut behind me. It must have been
45 degrees by then. Even the hallway was painfully hot. My shoes were
insulated, but every time I stopped myself from bouncing into the ceiling as I
ran, my glove felt like it was going to catch on fire, and I couldn't breathe.

"Come on!" Little was trying not to pant, and he was sweating. We were both
going to use up our water rations for the week tonight, I knew it.

We finally got to the end of the hall, where it opened into the bigger rooms
again. Little slammed the door and I helped him twist the wheel. The sound of
creaking metal was unnerving. The wheel was hard to move. I guess the metal
expands when it gets hot, and the door didn't fit quite so well after that.

The room felt cool after the hallway. We collapsed in the middle of it, panting
and damp, feeling the cool air drift out of the other hallways on top of us.

My skin felt tight. 

I thought I saw something move in the corner of the room, but I wasn't facing
the right way. Then again, and a door slammed with a clank. We both sat up and
looked around, but we were alone.

We slowly got up and I followed Little back, I hoped, to the main hallways.

He was good at navigating. It felt like it took forever. I was so happy to see
the familiar blue and red stripes winding along in opposite directions.

"Ray! There you are!"

A woman in a red jacket was smiling at me as she descended. "We've been looking
for you!"

"Where have you been? Your father came looking for you and you weren't about.
And your comm wasn't showing active either! Here, give it to me so I can check
it"

I handed her the radiocomm clipped to my belt. It crackled when she pressed the
button.

"Working fine. Strange."

Little waved at me from down the hall and jogged off toward Dome 3. The woman
in red dragged me to my feet, and she clutched tightly to my hand as she said
into her comm "I've found her. Ray's fine, David."