Time to take the test.

"OK, I've programmed the algorithm. Archie, it's time to check and double check."

"Sure Dad, but I don't see why we can't just get the AI to look after it. It's a pretty simple excavation,” said Archie.

"Don't be stupid Archie," said Molly, " We have to do it this way; if you don't understand it, you can't fix it when it goes wrong. And if you can't fix it, your toast!"

"But I bet Mum's already checked it, so there won't be anything to fix."

"Look" Molly took a deep breath. Little brothers! "Just think for a second. If we don't do it their way, there won't be a test, and if there's no test, there's no solo. No solo, no team!"

"Are you sure you're ready for this Archie? You should know this if you're going solo."

"I know dad! I'm ready! I'll do it right!" Archie was decisive and determined.

The Phippses were a builder family; excavating, finishing and parking asteroids for others to live and work in. Simon and Renella had been working as a team since they got married and kept on with the work once the kids came along. Molly knew no other life and didn't want any other. What she really wanted was space and the only way she was going to get it was with Archie. If he could just get through this, the universe was literally theirs.

Archie was finally old enough that their mum and dad were ready to let them try an unsupervised, solo run. This was the big chance. If things went as planned today, soon they would be able to form a new team and get some space to themselves, literally. Mum and dad had promised to help them get setup and registered when the time came. If only Archie took it seriously enough.

Looking through Dad's code on the Padd, Molly knew what would be there, but it wasn't there for her to find. And Mum had made it pretty clear, if it was to count, she couldn't help Archie troubleshoot.

Archie started scanning through the code. This wasn't his job. This is what Molly was good at. It's what she would be doing when they go solo. It all seemed a bit pointless for him to be checking.

But then his brain gave him a little nudge. Remember the family motto - 'Before you act, understand!'. It wasn't pointless. If Dad was getting him to do this, it was for a reason. He needed to understand the rig to be able to install and trouble shoot it properly.

He looked across the sparse, functional deck to Molly and remembered the other reason this wasn't pointless. This was their chance to make a name for themselves and get some independence. It wouldn't be the Phipps Family, it would be MollArch Enterprises, the first step on the way to making a big splash.

It was only really on the last few jobs, he had started to understand how Molly felt. Mum and Dad had their backs, always. No question. But sometimes...

'Wait, what was that?' his train of thought quickly shifting as he registered something that didn't look right. He scanned back to the line of code. It was declaring a constant that would be used in planning all their blasts.

"This constant is wrong," he said. "this assumes a ferrous rock, but this one is water."

"Fix it then" was all Dad said.

Archie started to say something, but it faded out before he even opened his mouth as he realised the extent of the change. That constant would flow on to at least five of the blast points and they would need to be updated. They wouldn't be heading out to set the blast points anytime soon.

Renella took Molly aside. "How do you think he'll go?"

"Well... He spotted the obvious mistake you left for him, and I think he's realised how much he's got to fix up. But I don't know if he's spotted all the iterative errors. If he doesn't get them all, we'll be blowing out enough mass for three rocks."

"Good. I noticed that too. If he doesn't spot them all, he's not ready, and MollArch Enterprises aren't ready either. It's as simple as that." said Mum.

"He'll spot them all!" Molly said firmly, "He's ready. He has to be, otherwise we'll miss the Vega Project."

"Don't worry, there's always another project. If you miss Vega, you'll be ready for the next one."

Molly smiled nervously. "It has to be Vega" she thought, "It has to be"

It was the next day. They were coasting in the shuttle to their first rock, just the two of them. It had taken Archie nearly a whole shift to fix the errors in the blasting algorithm, so they ended up having to wait until the next rotation was completed before they could leave. Dad had insisted on a sleep cycle before he'd let them out on the solo.

'A tired brain makes for a dead team' was another of his mottos.

The plans were on the screen, and they were running through the steps to get the equipment out of the hold and onto the rock that would soon be known as 'Whiskey Delta 5' - a none too subtle name for a distillery. But the client gets what the client wants, if they have the money.

"When is the rock due in its new orbit?' Molly asked, "Is it still on schedule?"

"ETA has slid back another 10 hours, with the corrections but we've been running on plus time so far. We've got a 5-hour margin left."

"That should cover us for any issues we find once we get there. Start fine tuning the orbit for the hub install."

"Roger" confirmed Archie.

As he worked to on adjusting the orbit programming, Archie started humming to himself. It wasn't much but it helped to keep him calm and his mind on the job. It wasn't that the process was hard, there was just so much to keep track of when setting up a job like this. The best planning was never enough, there were always your unknown unknowns.

The humming drowned out the feeling of pressure that came from the importance of this trip. He'd done hundreds like it before but always Mum or Dad had been there with him. Now it was all on him. He set the new cycle running.

He paused. Taking some deep breaths, he said out loud to himself "If you don't understand, you can't fix it. If you do understand, it probably won't kill you."

The cycle rolled on and eventually it all checked out.

Everything had gone smoothly so far, and the finish line was in sight. It was time for the third and final blasts.

The imaging was in, and Archie just had to make the final adjustments to the charge pattern. This was it! Get this right and "Whiskey Delta 5" was ready to be fitted out as it spiralled into its new orbit.

Because this was Archie's test, he was up in the control deck, on the surface of the rock. Molly was down in the Hub, at the newly opened centre. It was check in time. "Everything ok?" he broadcast.

"All A-OK Archie. Need me to make any adjustments?"

"Just working on the pattern now. Looks like we'll need some small adjustments on 3 and 8. The final ultrasound shows a seam that runs between them. I'll have it for you in about 30."

" Roger, I'll start across to three now. We want our signature perfect." They'd determined to give mum and dad a surprise to make sure they passed with flying colours.

"Ok, got the adjustments now. Number 3 +0.031 Rad lat. 0.000 long, 0.051 mt"

Roger understood" Molly repeated the numbers carefully back, even though they were automatically sent to her padd. It wouldn't be the first time the data had been corrupted.

"Check and go confirmed. How long will it take you to get to 8?"

"About 40 or so, once I've got this one adjusted.... On my way now."

"That leaves 4 minutes for adjustment and exit. Plenty of time to get back to the hub"

Soon the final adjustments were made, and Molly was back in the hub, locking the door. From here she'd be safe from both the radiation and the vibration. Only an audio and power line connected her to the outside world.

Over the speakers, Molly heard the distant sound of Archie's voice. It was all out of her hands now. The rest was up to him.

"Countdown on, 20 seconds remaining. Blast program initiated."

"This is it Archie," she thought, "in 2 minutes you'll be a passed engineer and we'll be on our way. I hope the reaction is building ok."

But it wasn't.

"I'm getting the diagnostics now. That seam was worse that the ultrasound showed. It's starting to feedback. Trying to compensate... There's a fault in the rig for 8, it's not cutting back fast enough."

Molly took a deep breath; would he find it in time? Could he handle it? Not that there was anything she could do now. The hub was locked off for a reason.

She remembered when it was her first time. The balancing act, the focus, the deep breaths. But that time it'd been dad in the hub, and she was on the control deck.

Then she heard the word that meant worst case scenario - "Fissure."

Fissure!

That could throw everything off. An unexpected fissure meant that the whole rock could splinter, ruining the whole week's work. "What's your plan?" she said out loud.

"Just tracking the fissure now, looks like it runs straight past the hub. You might get bumped a bit."

"Don't worry I'm strapped down"

"Just stay..." was all Molly heard before the audio was cut. It really is all up to Archie now.

The hub broke free of the rock. From the control deck it was just a new dot on a screen appearing next to the large ball of the main rock, but it was clear enough. The fissure had run straight past the hub and the final explosion, instead of turning inward had spat the hub out like bad food.

Archie could see at a quick scan, the rock was still on about the right path, certainly within the tolerance that they could correct it on the trip. The excavation was now the wrong shape, but they could fix that while it's on its orbit in. Even the extra hole wasn't a big deal long term, it was a water rock after all. More worrying was what effect this would have on MollArch Enterprises.

If Dad or Mum thought this was Archie's fault, that'd would put an end to that and say goodbye to Vega.

But what could he have done? The scan said it was just a seam. You couldn't see it was a fissure until after the blast program was underway. Archie started to review the data to see if there was any way to pick it up sooner, when something else caught his eye.

As soon as it was clear of the rock the computer had started to track a predicted path for the hub. That was normal and needed as the hub would be hard to see once it got a few hundred klicks away from the rock. Even when Molly tripped the emergency beacon, having a probable path would mean he could be sure of finding her before her oxygen ran out.

But the predicted path didn't look right. It was too straight and too fast. Almost as if the charge had...

He activated the long-distance comms "Blast control for mission control, do you read me?"

"Reading Archie. Mission summary please,” said Mum

"No time for that, can you please confirm tracking for the Hub? It was blown out of the rock by an undiscovered fissure, but its projection looks wrong. It's almost if the charge was still attached and driving the hub along."

"Checking" came the concerned voice.

"What's your launch status?" came Dad's voice, "how long until you can get after her?"

"I started emergency launch procedures as soon as I realised but I don't have a lot of acceleration mass. I need a more detailed tracking projection before I can plot an intercept. Plus, I don't know how that will affect the rocks orbit. I don't understand enough to act yet."

"Getting the projection package ready to send to you now" Mum's voice was still concerned but it seemed stronger or even proud somehow. "Our motion is too far in the wrong direction to get to her in time. It's up to you, Archie."

"You've got this Archie." radioed Dad, "Once you have the data, don't worry about the rock. We can take care of that."

"Understood. Data received and plotting now... Launch in 20 seconds"

It had taken nearly two days to catch up with the hub and that meant he only had about 2 hours up his sleeve. He'd expected Molly to be pretty stressed but when he activated the emergency lock and opened the door, she was there, feet up on the console, reading a novel on her padd.

"About time. I only had two books on here and this is the third time I've read this one." Molly gave him a big grin and got up to give him as big a hug as you can give in an emergency suit.

"Good to see you too! Nothing broken from the unexpected acceleration?"

"Who said it was unexpected? Come on, lets get back to mum and dad."

Back in the mothership with the hub and the control ship safely docked, the (hopefully soon to be) founding partners of MollArch Industries climbed the ladder to the control deck.

"Request permission to enter control for debrief" said Archie with mock formality.

"Granted" said duty officer dad and smiled. Once the hugs and exclamations were over, he continued, "Now tell me why I shouldn't fail you and make you miss Vega?"

"Dad!" said Molly, "you know why! You should tell him now!"

"Tell me what? I thought I failed when the hub got thrown out and I had to leave the rock? Tell me what?" he repeated.

To Archie's surprise, it was Mum that spoke next. Instead of chewing him out, she said "This is what. We knew about the fissure. And we knew that the hub would get thrown out. You passed the test when you didn't panic and when you didn't just run after Molly without thinking."

"You knew?" He looked at Dad, "you knew too?"

"Yep and so did Molly. It's part of the test. You need to prove that you understand before you act, and you did.

Molly gave Archie a tap on the shoulder. "Do you think I've been that relaxed if I really only had 2 hours of Oxygen left?"

"That's enough of that" said Dad, "Let's get this rock into its proper place and then we'll go get you two your new ship!"

Once again, straight talk gave way to pure emotion as it sunk in what they meant.

He had passed!

He was ready!

MollArch was on its way to Vega!

The universe really was about to be theirs!