The Boy Between the Stars

The spaceship hummed like a big, sleepy machine.

Rakshit pressed his nose against the cold window. Outside, there was nothing but stars — millions of them, scattered like spilled salt across a sea of black. He loved that view. It never got old.

"You've been staring for twenty minutes," said Commander Priya, not looking up from her screen.

"It's really far," Rakshit said quietly.

"What is?"

He pointed to a pale, blueish moon hanging in the distance. It had ice on it — you could tell from the shimmer.

"That one," he said. "I keep looking at it."

Priya finally glanced up.

The Sound from Somewhere Cold

Priya squinted at the icy moon.

Then an alarm beeped.

A small, sharp sound — like a smoke detector going off in someone's kitchen.

"That's a heat signal," Priya said, very quietly.

Something on that frozen moon was on fire.

Rakshit pressed closer to the window. The moon looked the same — pale blue, still, silent. But on the screen beside Priya, a tiny orange dot blinked right at its center.

"Who do we send?" Priya asked, mostly to herself.

She turned to look at Rakshit.

He was the only astronaut-firefighter on board.