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his leave.

4
    Nine days later, Cyrus entered the institute auditorium with twenty-seven other Specials. They put on plays in the auditorium, practiced making speeches here, and watched movies on Tuesday nights. There were three hundred padded seats. Cyrus had always wondered why they’d put in so many.
    The twenty-seven Specials sat in the first three rows. In the back were the institute teachers, a few dignitaries, one of them being Jasper, and a dozen NKV agents. They’d come to hear one of the most famous men in the solar system.
    Captain Nagasaki was going to tell them about the coming voyage to New Eden. He would lead the expedition to a star system two hundred and thirty light years away, the longest journey yet made by any human.
    As the headmaster spoke to them from the podium, getting ready to introduce Captain Nagasaki, Cyrus thought about the voyage.
    Several years ago, astronomers on Pluto had made an amazing discovery with the most powerful telescopes yet. Two hundred and thirty light years away was a star system named AS 412. According to the telescopes, it contained not one, but
two
Earth-like planets. Someone had coined the name “New Eden” for the system, and it stuck.
    Premier Lang’s propagandists had gotten busy with the news. Cyrus had heard it said Lang wanted a symbol to unite humanity under his rule. What could be better than a grand adventure to excite the masses?
    At New Eden, the propagandists said, mankind could start over in perfect harmony. Even better, anyone could go. People had to pitch in and do their part. If they did, they might win an emigrant ticket, leaving Old Sol to start afresh in New Eden. Teleship
Discovery
would lead the way and it would set down the first colony. These first colonists would enter stasis tubes, awaking once they reached New Eden. There, humanity would to do things right this time.
    From what Cyrus had read, the project had electrified humanity. People from Neptune to Mercury filled out personal data forms, bought emigrant lottery tickets, and argued about the right form of government for this pristine environment. This wouldn’t be habitat living or underground dwelling, but new Earths, humanity-friendly worlds to fill.
    “Let us warmly welcome Captain Nagasaki,” the headmaster said.
    Cyrus clapped with the others, and he noticed the teachers in back clapping vigorously.
    Captain Nagasaki strode onto stage and shook the headmaster’s hand. Nagasaki was short and slender, with silver hair under a trim cap. He wore the blue uniform of the Solar Space Service. A single Orion Star adorned his jacket. He’d won the star for leading the first voyage to Epsilon Eridani over thirty years ago and helping set up the colony base there.
    After the Cyborg War, humanity had begun sending sleeper ships to the nearest star systems, beginning the expansion of man. There were outposts at Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti, and Epsilon Eridani. The colonists lived in habitats circling each system’s planets as they float-mined the gas giants of deuterium. Before shift technology, that meant each colonist had been effectively cut off from the mother system. A visit by a replenishing ship every three to five years was the best any of them could hope for.
    Like all interstellar voyages before discontinuity windows and Teleships, Nagasaki had made his famous trip the old-fashioned way, under the terrible constraints of Einsteinian physics. His sleeper ship
Argonaut
had accelerated at a constant one G the first leg of the journey up to near light speed. Then it coasted until the end of the trip and decelerated.
    Epsilon Eridani was ten light years from Sol. Because of relativistic time dilation, the trip had only lasted five years for the captain and his crew. Nagasaki had spent several years at Epsilon Eridani as they’d constructed thecolony’s lone habitat. Then he’d returned to Sol to a hero’s welcome, twenty-some years after he’d left but only eleven years older.
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