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anyone's. My smile grew bigger.
    "Almost. Just wait there until someone
picks you up."
    "Okay."
    There was a snick sound as the connection
was turned off.
    He turned and started shuffling the way
he'd been going.
     

Two
     
    The Bridge of Galactica was bustling with
activity. At the center of all the activity, was a small island of calm.
    Richard Hunter, the captain, sat in his
chair, observing the activity with some satisfaction. After all, he'd made it
to the top at last. No longer a young man at sixty, he should have been put out
to pasture long ago. But the Navy is not the Air Force, and his choice of which
service to join had paid off. All his years in Submarines had made him the
number one choice for this post. Galactica was a space ship, but the nature of
it was more submarine, than aircraft.
    His father shuffled in, and took the seat
which had been set aside for him, out of the way. Richard felt a moment of sadness
that his mother was no longer with them, but was comforted by the thought he
now had grandchildren of his own, albeit still very young, and that the whole
family was heading out into space.
    He nodded to his father, whose vision of
this day had never wavered. He looked to the helm position, and nodded to his
son James, who'd won the coveted position on his own merits. Like his
grandfather, he'd joined the Air Force, but had chosen to fly the biggest planes
ever built, thus giving himself the experience to fly the biggest ship ever
built. Like his father, he shared his grandfather's dream of this day, and
where they were headed.
    Richard shook off thoughts of family, and
brought himself completely into the now.
    The launch was going to be a media circus,
but he'd managed to convince the brass to not allow any on the ship itself,
other than those who'd taken up the challenge of going into space with the rest
of them. Even then, they had their own media center, and could monitor the
cameras on the Bridge and other areas, as long as he allowed them the feeds.
    This was a military ship, even though more
than three quarters of the people aboard were civilians. Most of the crew had
chosen to bring their families, and there were more civilian specialists than
military crew, plus their families.
    It had been made very clear to everyone
who'd applied to join the ship on her maiden flight. This might be a one way
trip into the future. While assured the engines did not generate relativistic
effects, who actually knew? And when they arrived at the first of the anomalies
discovered five years earlier? What then? No-one knew. Guesses abounded. The
ship had a pool running about what they would find. But whatever it was, it
might prevent them ever returning home.
    Six years before, one of many probes sent
out testing new space engines, had detected an anomaly out near the Oort cloud.
Months later, a second one had been detected on the other side of the system.
No-one knew what they were. Neither probe had enough control left to alter
their courses to investigate.
    Richard had made a leap of intuition these
might be a way to other star systems, and I'd 'encouraged' him to make a
proposal for a manned explorer ship, which could also double as a colony seed
ship. He'd brought his father in to help him with the proposal, and even
allowed his son to contribute.
    The governments of the time all rejected
not only his, but every proposal to build an exploration vessel. Not giving up,
he'd pushed every private resource he could, and in the end, a consortium of
Australian, American Indian, Malaysian Buddhist, and several other groups who
wanted to remain unknown; was formed to fund and build both a ship construction
platform in orbit, and a true explorer ship.
    It took a lot of effort on my part to make
sure Richard was appointed to command the new ship. He'd been with it since the
beginning. He wanted to be with it to the end. Little did he know where the end
was.
    I stood there on the Bridge, while the
checklists were run, double