The Black Corridor

The spaceship Rope Dempsey held thirteen men and women, refugees fleeing an Earth doomed by atomic destruction. While twelve slept in suspended animation, the thirteenth, Ryan, ran the ship alone. For three years he had been responsible for the lives of the only humans left in the universe. Ryan's job was to that they reached a distant sun where unmanned probes had detected two Earth-like planets. As he checked the life-support systems and read the ship's computer printouts, his thoughts and dreams often turned to the Earth he hadn't seen for three years, since their take-off in 2002. It was…