Distress Signal

Two runaway youths are marooned on an icy satellite of a dying red star after their ship's warp drive fails. Rescued by a diminished, humanlike people who live in vast underground caverns, one boy gradually adapts to communal rituals and the planet's simple comforts while the other becomes obsessed with manufacturing rocket fuel to escape. Their differing hopes and methods create tension and eventual confrontation, and the narrative shifts between survival detail, cultural description of the subterranean inhabitants, and the moral strain of longing for home versus accepting a new life.