more years. According to Eldest, the causes of discord are difference, lack of a strong central leader, and individual thought. To keep the peace, Eldest maintains a submissive, monoethnic population with himself as the central decision-maker. Eldest constantly reminds Elder that he, too, will have to assume this central role in the future.

One day, Elder is in the Resource Center, a library of sorts on the Feeder Level, when a strange worker named Orion mentions that the ship has a fourth level Elder does not yet know about. Curious, Elder goes to this extra level and finds a huge, open room full of small doors. He opens a door and finds a coffin-like box containing a frozen girl. Elder has the monoethnic brown skin common to all of the people who currently live on Godspeed, but the girl is Caucasian with red hair. He finds her beautiful and fascinating, but he does not get to look at her long. He is soon discovered by Doc, the ship’s doctor, who reports Elder’s discovery to Eldest. In the argument that follows, Elder demands to know why the ship has a whole level full of frozen people, but both men refuse to explain.

Shortly after this, somebody unplugs the girl—Amy—and allows her to thaw. She almost dies, but with Elder’s help, Doc manages to save her. Amy cannot be refrozen because the process is too likely to kill her. Amy soon learns that by the time her parents wake up, she will be older than they are. She is devastated.

Amy finds life on Godspeed claustrophobic and confusing. She is constantly upset by the placid, emotionless way most people behave. The only people who seem normal to her are Elder and those who live in the hospital’s mental ward. Strangely, all of them, including Elder, insist that they are crazy. They all take mental drugs called Inhibitors to curb their strong impulses.

The age distribution on the ship seems strange to Amy, too. Nearly everyone on the ship is 20, 40, or 60 years old. A new generation is born every 20 years, and everyone has children once, when they go into Season at age 20. Sixteen years before each new generation begins, a child is born who will be its leader. Elder, who is sixteen, is that leader for the generation that will be born from the next Season. Eldest, who is seventy-six, is that leader for the oldest living generation. The Season has been in place for generations, ever since a Plague killed three-quarters of Godspeed’s population.

When the Season begins, Amy is horrified. People rut like animals in the hallways and the fields. Amy is attacked by some of the men, and she only escapes with the help of Elder’s “crazy” friend Harley, a painter who lives in the hospital’s mental ward. Amy insists that the Season is not normal, but Elder dismisses her as naïve. He knows that Earth’s people are not arranged into staggered generations the way Godspeed’s people are, but he assumes that everyone everywhere goes into season at age 20.

Amid the chaos of the Season, someone unplugs three more of the “frozens.” Doc is able to plug one back in before she melts, but two others die. Eldest puts the dead out an airlock, and when the hatch opens, Elder sees real stars for the first time. He finds them amazing, and he wonders how he could have been fooled by the silly light bulbs up on the Keeper Level. However, he has to focus on finding the murderer. Amy is terrified that her parents will be killed. With Harley’s help, she and Elder try to figure out why anyone would kill frozens. They privately suspect Eldest, but they cannot prove their suspicions. They focus on figuring out why anyone would want to murder the frozens.

During the investigation, Elder slowly realizes that Amy’s beliefs about “normal” human behavior—and not his own—are closer to the truth. He learns that Eldest drugs the ship’s water supply to keep people passive. Inhibitors block the pacifying effects of this drug, which is why Elder and the patients in the hospital’s mental ward show more emotion than anyone else. Eldest also pumps birth control into the water most of the time, replacing it with hormones to make everyone fertile and lustful during the Season. Eldest and Doc then genetically modify each Season’s babies to undo the effects of incest and to ensure that each generation is born with enough intelligence and creativity to keep the ship alive.

One day Eldest calls everyone on the ship to the Keeper Level for an announcement. He shows the people the screen with the fake stars, and everyone gasps, believing they are real. Eldest explains that the ship is 25 years behind schedule. It will land in 75 years instead of the originally scheduled 50. All of the people who are influenced by Eldest’s drugs accept this unquestioningly. The young women are all pregnant, and they are all comforted by the fact that their children will live to see the new planet even if they do not.

To cheer Amy up after this news, Elder takes her to the Resource Center to show her pictures of Earth. While there, they realize that thirteen generations passed before the Plague. Thirteen generations should normally take 300 years, easily, but Elder says the Plague happened long in the past.

Afterward, Eldest reveals to Elder that the uranium the Shippers use to fuel the ship is not recycling properly. 450 years have already elapsed since the ship left Earth, and another 100 years, or more, will pass before Godspeed reaches Centauri-Earth. When the people of Godspeed first learned this, chaos erupted. Many people became violent, and others committed suicide. It was this, not a great plague, that killed most of the people on the ship. Out of the chaos, one man rose up and brought peace. He became the first Eldest, and his ideas about leadership led to Godspeed’s current state of dictatorship. Every second generation, the current Eldest calls everyone to the Keeper Level, shows them the fake stars, and tells them that they will not see the new planet—but that their children will. The Eldest always times this announcement right after the Season, when the women are pregnant. It is hope for the next generation that allows the ship’s little society to survive.

While Elder is learning all this, Amy tries to help an old woman at the hospital, and she ends up seeing Doc killing elderly people with IV drugs. Doc explains that the old are no longer useful, and that killing them is necessary for the good of the ship. Elder tries to reassure Amy, but not long afterward, they discover that the murderer has again visited the cryo level. Elder and Amy manage to rescue the frozens. Then, using a computer-like tool, they figure out that the murderer is Orion, the quiet worker in the Resource Center. It turns out that he used to be Elder for the forty-year-old generation. Eldest tried to have him killed long ago, but he managed to escape and create a new life as Orion.

Before Elder and Amy can confront Orion, Elder hears something in the next room. They sneak inside and find Eldest and Doc in the process of drugging the water supply. Elder tries to stop them, and he and Eldest get into a fight. While they are occupied, Amy pulls out the wires from the water pump, destroying its ability to transmit the drugs. Orion bursts in, revealing himself to Eldest, and dumps the bucket of drugs over Eldest’s head. The dose is so strong that Eldest dies.

Afterward, Orion explains his belief that, when Godspeed lands, the frozen people in the boxes will force the living people on the ship to work as slaves or soldiers. He wants to kill all the frozen members of the military to ensure that the living people on the ship have a chance to survive and be free when they reach the planet. Moments later, Elder shoves Orion into a box and freezes him.

Now that Eldest is dead, Elder takes control of the ship. He lets everyone come off of the drugs and regain their ability to feel, and then he asks them all to participate freely in running the ship. He does not, however, reveal the truth about how long it will take to reach the new planet. He does not restrict information, so he knows some may figure out the truth, but he feels that a sudden announcement will plunge the public into despair.

There is one truth that Elder cannot hold back forever, however. He finds Amy alone one day and admits that he is the one who unplugged her from her freezing chamber. He explains that he thought he could just talk with her for a while, and that she could be refrozen afterward. “I just wanted to meet you,” he says. “I didn’t know I’d ruin your whole life.” At first Amy attacks him, but when she calms down she comes to respect the fact that he is telling the truth. She has little to hope for, no chance of seeing her parents or walking on a real planet again. If she has to live out the rest of her life on Godspeed, she knows she needs to hope.

The only hope that Amy can find is the hope not to be alone. As the book ends, she begins to forgive Elder, and she asks him to stay with her forever.