The day before Alani’s thirteenth birthday, Prototype Mouse Raft 19 passed final test runs.

It had been a long and difficult journey, much longer and harder than anyone anticipated, but at last, the first Sorrelian-built spacecraft was ready to launch! After many revisions and failed designs, the Mouse Raft ended up looking less like a crate and more like an egg with ears. It wasn’t thrown into the air, or hauled up by airship; instead it was lowered from a crane at the Starport loading dock directly onto Zor’khan’s back, strapped on securely by people in industrial Hauler Frames, and only when the technical crews announced it was ready did the Mikkika Lynxmouse Clan finally board their destined transport.

The launch was scheduled for evening, on a day when the moon was up, so as to make it easier for Zor’khan to head directly to it.

By then, Mikkika was a great-great-great-great-great-grandfather or something like that. His clan of thirty had grown to nearly