Here it is! The beginnings of a brand new, never before seen, completely 
original fanfic. While this story isn't based on any particular anime 
series, it has been inspired been the whole genre of science fiction 
space exploration stories. I've been watching Robotech and Gunbuster and 
the like lately and I've been motivated to write a similar story.

This chapter is actually pretty polished up and ready for the remailer and 
raas, but I thought I'd share it here first and get your reaction.

BTW, I have absolutely no idea for a title for this story. I'm open for 
suggestions. Anyone?







 CHAPTER ONE: GATHERING
------------------------

	Boredom is a Space Marine's worst enemy, but these Marines
were not bored.

	"Close in! You squinty-eyed offspring of a BASIC program. So
what if you've lost your outside video! You've still got radar and
groundplots! Close in!"
	The words came from deep inside a short, chunky, round-faced
woman with dark-black skin, a close-cropped head of curly black hair,
and a crisp Marine officer's uniform seemingly tattooed on her
muscular body.
	Major General Virginia Jones punched her supervisory keyboard
as her parade-ground voice echoed off the naked beams and taut
pressurized walls of the crowded cubicle. Crammed into the compact
control room of a Space Marine Lightsail Interceptor, the programmers
were short-circuiting the software in the ship's computer to optimize
an "unwilling capture" trajectory between their twenty-five-kilometer-
diameter sailcraft and the radar image of a lumbering cargo hauler. The
huge heavy-lift vehicle was rising slowly from its launch pad deep in
China on its way to resupply one of the Chinese bases in
geosynchronous orbit. Under the rules of the UN Space Treaty, if they
could intercept it, they could board and search for illegal weapons.
	"Boarding part!" General Jones roared to the deck
below. "You've got ten minutes to do the fifteen-minute suiting drill!
Move it!"
	There was a bustle as hammocks were stowed to give a little
more room in the tiny communal barracks. Suits were lifted from
lockers and donned--rapidly, but carefully. General Jones looked
sternly around at the organized pandemonium and took a bite of her
energy stick. She looked at it in distaste, thought blissfully of the
excellent mess back at the Space Marine Orbital Base, then stoically
took another bite of the energy bar. If it was good enough for her
Marines, it was good enough for her.
	Like the PT boats in Word War II almost a century ago, the
interceptors had to be fast. With only light pressure to push them,
that meant keeping weight down. It was battle rations every meal when
the Space Marines were on interceptor duty.
	General Jones carefully watched the captain of the interceptor
as he swung his ungainly craft smoothly around. Captain Jesus Mendez
was short and handsome, with dark flashing eyes and a youthful wave of
hair over his forehead that had Jinjur's mind wandering
slightly. Captain Mendez was the best lightsail pilot in space (with
the possible exception of Jinjur herself).
	The lightsail scooped, dumping its cross-orbit excess speed in
the upper atmosphere by using its huge expanse of sail like a sea
anchor. It then tilted to maximize the solar photon pressure and rose
again in a pursuit trajectory of the bogie. Captain Mendez called on
one of the orbiting space forts above him for more power. A powerful
laser beam struck the sail with a flood of light five times brighter
than the sun. The acceleration rose to one-tenth gee, and they skimmed
rapidly above the earth's atmosphere, gaining speed by the minute. Ten
minutes later General Jones called a halt to the hunt of the phantom
fox.
	"Freeze program," she said, then turned and tapped a code word
into her command console. The computer memory of the practice pursuit
was locked until she released it. The primary purpose of this exercise
had been to test the reconfiguration skills of the human element of
her computer-assisted spaceship--the programmers. By reconfiguring the
software in the computer to take into account its loss of components
and capabilities, the programmers could hopefully tune the program to
obtain its optimum response time. She wished the interceptors could
have the latest in self-reprogramming computers, or at least the
touch-screen input terminals, but that was many fiscal-budget cycles
away.
	General Jones started her critique. The crew wasn't looking
forward to it, for General "Jinjur" had not gotten her nickname by
being soft on her troops. Fortunately there was an interruption.
	"Excuse me, General Jones," said Captain Mendez. "You have a
message from the Marine commandant. It is encrypted and marked
personal."
	"I'll take it at my console," said Jinjur. She floated over to
her console, punched in her password, and read the message.
	"I'm commander of Prometheus, the interstellar sailcraft going
to Barnard!!" she cried.
	"Congratulations!" said Mendez. "Could you use a good pilot?"
	"I'm already stuck with some Air Force flyboy for my second-
in-command, a Lieutenant Colonel George G. Gudunov. Do you know him?"
	"George Gudunov? Is not he the one who first came up with the
idea of laser sailcraft to go to the stars?" said Captain Mendez.
	"Right. It's been so long ago, I'd forgotten," said Jinjur. "I
was in high school when the first interstellar robots were sent out. I
remember wishing I were sailing out on them. Now, I'm going to get my
wish."

				* * *

	A large, slightly overweight, middle-aged man in a well-worm
Air Force officer's uniform walked slowly into the cavernous Pentagon
office of the Air Force chief of staff. His round, smiling, ruddy
complexioned face was topped by a thick mane of white hair. George
wasn't surprised that he'd been summoned, for the pressure had been
building up ever since the robot probe data had started coming in from
the Barnard system. His only concern now was his age. At forty-nine he
was getting awfully old. It had been decades since he had been in the
Pentagon. Being stuck as a flight instructor in the hottest corner of
Texas for the past twenty-five years sort of kept you out of things.
	George skirted the huge oak conference table, and headed for
the large desk flanked by two flags. One flag had the a field of blue
carrying the Air Force emblem. The other flag was the Stars and
Stripes of the Greater United States of America with its fifty-nine
starts in four rows of eight alternating with three rows of nine. Next
year there would be sift stars as the Northwest Territories finally
became populous enough to become a state of GUSA. That only left the
Yukon to go (and of course, Quebec, if it ever came to its senses). He
came to attention in front of General Beauregard Darlington Winthrop III,
and saluted, his eyes straight ahead.
	General Winthrop glanced up from the papers in front of him,
the glitter of four silver stars broadening his shoulders.
	"Good afternoon, George," he said. "Sit down."
	Colonel Gudunov perched on a nearby straight chair and
listened.
	"Saw you and Senator Maxwell on the Jimmy Collins show last
night," Winthrop started. "Quite some company you keep there."
	"They wanted someone that could explain what there was in the
Barnard system that justified the interstellar expedition, and Senator
Maxwell suggested me."
	"I've got to admit you did an excellent job of explaining the
laser drive in terms even my secretary could understand. She talked
about nothing else for the entire coffee break this morning." He
shuffled some papers, and then drew one out.
	"Your friends in Congress have been good to you again,
Gudunov." His tone chilled a little. "By all rights, no
forty-nine-year-old should be allowed on the Barnard expedition,
especially since you're not a Regular, but ROT-C." Winthrop didn't
even have the courtesy to spell out the initials of the Reserve
Officer Training Corps, but gave it the slang pronunciation he had
learned at the academy.
	Winthrop straightened and became more formal. "Lieutenant
Colonel Gudunov: You have been selected to participate in the Barnard
expedition to take place in two years. You are hereby promoted to
colonel and will be second-in-command, reporting to Major General
Virginia Jones, Space Marine Corps."
	George winced and grinned internally at the same time. He had
never met Jinjur, but had heard a great deal about her. He had
wistfully hoped that he would be chosen to lead the expedition, but
that was politically impossible. His many friends in Congress could
protect him from the vengeful types in the military, but they didn't
have enough clout to go over their heads, especially at his age. He
didn't care, he'd got what he wanted--a chance to go to the stars. He
only half-listened as General Winthrop dropped his formal tone and
verbally lashed out at him.
	"...and I'm goddamned glad you're going. You've been a goddamn
thorn in the flesh of every goddamned Air Force chief of staff since
you were twenty-three. I don't know why you stayed in the goddamned
Air Force anyway after that stupid goddamned trick you pulled in 2008
when you were a goddamned captain.
	"'Why don't we test the laser forts by using them to push a
sail probe to the nearby stars?' you said. Unfortunately the chief of
staff agreed with you and approved the test. You made a fool of him
when ten percent of the nation's defense capability failed in the
first goddamned minute..."
	"...As it would have if it'd been a real attack instead of a
test," George reminded him, uncowed.
	"ALL RIGHT!!!" shouted the general. "Since then you've been
protected by your goddamned friends in the goddamn Congress. We can't
touch you, but we don't have to promote you any GODDAMN faster than
necessary."
	He subsided and sat back in his chair. He smiled grimly. "You
realize that if you accept this appointment, Colonel Gudunov, you'll
never get another promotion. There will be life-extending drugs
available, but at your age there is no chance of you ever coming
back."
	George looked at General Winthrop with a slight air of
bewilderment. He then realized that even thought the general had been
briefed on the interstellar mission, he apparently had not allowed
himself to recognize the full truth.
	"Sir..." said George, hesitantly, "as planned--the mission
will take over sixty years. Forty years to get there and twenty years
of exploration. Even with life-extending drugs, most of the crew will
be old and well into retirement age before the work there is
done. Besides, there is no provision for a return flight. This first
expedition is a one-way mission."

				* * *

	Colonel Gudunov waited in the VIP lounge while the flight from
Cape Kennedy landed at the Washington National Airport. He fished a
thirteen-sided two-dollar coin from his pocket, bought a plastican of
Coke, pulled up the sip-tab, and wandered over to the window to inhale
his morning dose of caffeine and phosphoric acid. He heard the clamor
of an approaching group of press reporters and photographers outside
the door of the lounge. Underneath the yapping of reporters and the
whir of cameras there was a firm tenor voice.
	"No comment."
	"Excuse me, please."
	"No comment."
	The door to the suite opened. A pair of huge Marine guards
seemed to fill the opening. Then they were gone, herding the press
away in front of them. George lowered his eyes to see a slightly
disheveled female Marine officer slapping the dust of her uniform with
her overseas cap. Suddenly she noticed him and stopped.
	"Are you Gudunov..." she asked.
	"I hope so," said George, with a broad smile, taking the
unfair advantage that his name sometimes gave him against the fair
sex.
	"I'm pleased to meet you," said Virginia, extending a pudgy
black hand to cancel the sexual overtones of the previous
exchange. "Heard a lot about you in my briefings. Glad you got to go
on the mission. After all, if it hadn't been for you there wouldn't be
a mission. What's next?"
	"Choosing the rest of the crew," said George. "You and I were
picked by the president and Congress. The choice of the fourteen
others is up to us. Actually, the Space Administration doctors and
evaluators have prepared a list of those qualified for each specialty
needed. Mostly it will just be a matter of following their
guidelines."
	"Good," said Jinjur. She walked to the door of the VIP suite
and looked through the peephole.
	"The reporters are gone," she said. "Let's take the Metro to
the Space Administration headquarters. It'll be faster than waiting
for a VIP limo."

	Jinjur tossed the thick stack of resumes onto the table. "The
evaluators did a pretty good job," she said. "They chose Jesus Mendez
as the chief pilot for Prometheus. He's got to be the best lightsail
pilot in space. Now for the rock hounds. I really feel at a loss
here. These types love to much around in the mud, while the last thing
I want to do is pound dirt again. Whom do the Space Administration
people recommend?"
	"We have a real dilemma here, Virginia," said George. "The one
most qualified has a number of significant problems. He doesn't have
an advanced degree, he's too tall for the beds on Prometheus, and
worst of all, he's forty-three years old."
	"You should talk, grayhair," said Jinjur. "Who is he?"
	"The head of the Galilean satellite mapping expedition, Sam
Houston."
	"If he's good, then it doesn't matter how old or how tall he
is," said Jinjur. "Sam it is. But we need of them. Who was the next
best recommendation?"
	"He's a brave young man," said George. "He has a generally
good background, but there's a reservation in it."
	"I'm beginning to catch onto your twings, Granddad," said
Jinjur. "It must be Richard the Red."

				* * *

	Richard Redwing leaned his hundred-plus kilograms on the ice
core drill and lifted himself up on tiptoe. He could feel the motor
whining through the gloved of his space suit, but there was no
downward motion of the drill. He wished he had some purchase so he
could use his muscles to drive the drill bit through the rounded
pebble that was blocking its path, but on Callisto there was never any
purchase, no topography whatsoever...
	"...and no gravity to speak of," complained the planetary
geoscientist. He finally gave up and pulled the incomplete core from
the hole, breaking it into segments as he did so, and throwing the
striated columns of ice to the crust in disgust. He moved over a meter
and started in again, cursing under his breath in resignation. He was
three meters down when his suit speaker relayed a message.
	"I've got good news!" boomed Sam's voice through the
speaker. "Can you come in?"
	"I'll be there as soon as I finish this core, Sam," he
replied. "What's the news?"
	"I'd rather wait and see your face when I tell you," said
Sam. "See you soon."

	Richard loped into the office of the head geologist of the
Galilean mapping expedition. He was relieved the he didn't have to
duck as he came through the door. Sam was not only big enough in
status to obtain special treatment for his living and working
quarters, he was big enough in size to need them. At a full two
meters, Sam Houston's spare frame had to bend to get through any door
but his own specially constructed ones. Richard's hairline, nearly
five centimeters less, went through without ruffling the invisible
feather that he subconsciously wore on his head like some people wear
a chip on their shoulder.
	"Good news!" Sam boomed again, this time in person. He didn't
waste time.
	"You've been chosen to be on the crew of Prometheus," he said.
	Richard was elated.
	"Wow!" he said, his normal reserve dissolving into a smiling,
exuberant caricature of himself that was more appropriate for a
college freshman than a professional.
	Richard had stoically resigned himself to the fact that there
were hundreds of applications for each position on the crew. When he
had lost two toes to frostbite during a mountain rescue in his
twenties, he had figured that the minor physical handicap would be
enough to keep him off the expedition. It wasn't much of a handicap,
but when you have a dozen young, intelligent, fully qualified
applicants, why pick one that was stupid enough to lose two toes?
	"Gee, Sam," Richard said, "I hate leaving you in the lurch
like this, with us five ice-cores behind schedule."
	"Found another round-rock layer, have you?" grinned Sam, his
smile getting broader as he talked. "But that is neither your problem
nor mine," he said. "You aren't leaving me in the lurch.
	"But all those cores..." protested Richard.
	"All those cores are the next director's problem," said
Sam. "You weren't the only one chosen for the expedition! We're *both*
going to the stars!"

				* * *

	"We need two heavy-lift pilots," said Jinjur. "This handsome
young astronaut with the stuttering name, Thomas St. Thomas, is an
obvious first choice. What bothers me is the rich bitch, Elizabeth
Vengeance," said Jinjur. "Why did the evaluators pick her over
hundreds of other candidates for lift pilot? And why would she want to
give up all her billions to spend the rest of her life cooped up in
tin cans? I think she's on a publicity kick."
	"Red was the first of the asteroid belt miners and has more
experience landing on small moons than anyone else," said George. "As
for her billions, it all came from a lucky find of a ten-kilometer
asteroid on nearly pure nickel-iron. I think she is getting tied of
being a rich ground-pounder. Did you read her resume thoroughly?"
	"No, I didn't," said Jinjur. "I know her type only too well."
	"Read it again," said George. "Especially the handwritten part
after the signature."
	General Jones pawed her way through the voluminous file,
ignoring the numbers in the financial section that seemed to exceed
those found in the Space Marine budget. She finally came to a
hand-printed line below the scrawly signature. It looked like the
scratchings of a grade-school dropout.
	"I want to go to the stars," it said.

				* * *

	A tall, aristocratic woman with a lean, high-boned freckled
faced walked across the exoplush carpet toward the wall
communicator. She touched a tiny circle on the control plate and
stared at the face that appeared in full color on the screen. She
frowned slightly, her green eyes flitting over the image. In a smooth
motion her right hand reached down to pick up a hairbrush on the table
in front of the viewer as her left index finger touched another circle
on the control plate. The image of the screen reversed as if she were
looking in a mirror. A few quick brushes of her short cap of red hair
and she was satisfied. She blanked the screen and set up a call to her
financial adviser. It didn't take long--her calls had priority a Homes
and Baker, Pty.
	The face of a young business executive flashed into view.
	"Good afternoon, Mycroft," she greeted him.
	"The same to you, Ms. Vengeance," he replied. "Although it's
still early morning here. What can I do for you?"
	"What's my net worth today?" she asked.
	"Hummm..." he replied. "That will take a few seconds." As he
talked, his hands flickered over the control plate in front of him and
the numbers appeared at the top of both their screens.
	"Well, your stocks are worth about 22,475 million, and you
have about five million in your various checking and credit accounts,
but that is offset by about a million in short-term debts..."
	"No--not just my accounts," she protested, "I mean my total
net worth--businesses, asteroid mining rights, real estate, homes,
cars, everything right down to the clothes on my back."
	His hands continued to move across the control plate and they
both watched the figure at the top of the screen grow in size, then
finally stabilize, fluctuating slightly in the last five or six places
as the stock and commodity markets around the world continued with
their buy and sell transactions.
	"It looks like 61,824 million American dollars, plus or minus
a million," he said.
	"Damn!" she exclaimed. "I thought I'd be over a hundred
billion by now. But it's still pretty good for a slum kid from
Phoenix." Her eyes dropped from the numbers and stared straight into
his eyes.
	"Liquidate it," she ordered. "You have six weeks."
	"Yes, Ms. Vengeance," he said with a noticeable gulp. Then,
showing an avid curiosity he asked, "What are your reinvestment plans?
Mining on the moons of Jupiter?"
	Her face took on a pixie-like grin as she replied. "No, I'm not
going to reinvest it, I want you to turn it into cash. I want ten
million in gold coins, one billion in hundred-thousand-dollar bills,
and the rest in thousands and hundreds. Then I want you to rent a
warehouse to hold it all so I can come and say good-bye to it."
	"Good-bye?" he said in bewilderment.
	"Yes," she said. "I'm going to give it all to the University
of Arizona. Where I'm going I won't have any use for money. I'm taking
a tour, Mycroft."
	"A tour?"
	"The grandest tour the human race can device. I'm going to the
stars!"

				* * *

	"The next batch is really a rubber-stamp choice as far as I am
concerned," said George. "We need at least two computer types that
understand the computer systems built into Prometheus, the planetary
landers, and the atmospheric aircraft. The top choice for the hardware
side is the astronaut and aerospace engineer Karin Krupp. For the
software side he have David Greystoke. He wrote most of the programs
for the computers."
	"Don't know him," said Jinjur. "A typical computer-nerd, I
suppose. Yet the name sounds familiar."
	"Vision Through Space," said George, trying to help.
	"THAT David Greystoke?" said Jinjur. "But he's a sonovideo
composer."

				* * *

	The computer console screen was alive with writhing, brightly
colored abstract forms that roiled and curled in deep blues and
lavenders, while scintillating spheres of orange and white rolled over
and under the billowing waves of color. The display stopped suddenly,
then started over again with the lavender shaded just a bit less red
in color.
	Watching the screen critically was a tiny, thin, quiet young
man with orange-red hair--a computer leprechaun. The long fingers on
his neat hands played over a specialized input board as they
controlled the computer generated images on the screen. He finished
the sequence, saved it in a computer file, then combined it with
several others. He pushed his glasses back up on his long thin nose,
sat back in his console chair, and watched the performance as the
computer played the whole sequence back from its memory.
	As the artistic computer-animated show was reaching its
conclusion, some white letters appeared in the upper portion of the
screen.

	MAIL FOR DAVID GREYSTOKE

	David noticed the words, but waited for the end of the file
before saying, "Read mail."
	The screen blanked and a short letter scrolled it way rapidly
up the screen and hung there. David's eyes widened as he read the
message. He gave a quiet smile of satisfaction and reached for his
sonovideo panel. As the realization of the meaning of the message sunk
into his body, his soul was reaching out through his fingers to create
a new optical masterpiece, a moving new view of the splendor of the
heavens as seen from the bridge of a starship leaving the solar system
and stretching for the stars. As the starship approached a distant
deep-red point of light, the spaceship grew wings--long, thin gossamer
wings. The winged spaceship-turned-dragonfly circled the star, the
swooped in to land on a small planet with a tenuous breath of
atmosphere. It was all imagination, but the magic of the motion
through the imaginary air gave a reality to the golden dragonfly as it
settled slowly to the surface of the indigo planet.

				* * *

	"At least three of the planets in the Barnard system have an
atmosphere," said George, "including the strange double-one. We're
going to need some good pilots."
	"I've got one," said Jinjur. "You. Unless you've lost your
flight instructor's training?"
	"But I'll have to sleep sometime," said George.
	"There's no question about the other pilot," said Jinjur.
"Arielle Trudeau wins it hands down. Y'know, after that exploit where
she single-handedly landed a crippled shuttle with two dead pilots, I
always thought she was the best aerospace pilot in the world. As for
the rest of the crew, I don't see why we don't just go along with the
choices of the Space Administration experts. Let's call a meeting."
	"We'll be missing a few people," said George. "Sam Houston and
Richard Redwing are both busy on Callisto. Rather than coming all the
way in, they'll go on out past Uranus and meet us on Prometheus. The
hydroponics expert, Nels Larson, and the computer expert, David
Greystoke, are already on Prometheus checking out the systems they
designed. The solar astrophysicist, Linda Regan, is stationed on
Mercury. We'll pick her up when we visit the Mercury laser transmitter
base. The rest should make it to the meeting. The three astronauts
should be on their way back soon if they aren't already on earth."

				* * *

	Two women sat side by side in the Super-Shuttle cockpit. The
one in the pilot seat was thin and fair, almost delicate in
appearance. She sat quietly, her hands folded in her lap. The
flickering deep-brown eyes scanned the board and flight display,
missing nothing their vigilant watch over the nerve center of the
multiton spacecraft.
	The woman in the copilot seat was working the controls, her
strong capable hands making tiny adjustments as her eyes alternated
view of the flight display and the curved arc of the horizon outside
the windshield. She was a very tall, superbly built young woman with
blue eyes and heavy yellow hair that she wore in a single large braid
over one shoulder. While she nervously handled the controls, the
smaller woman's calm test-pilot voice quietly guided her through the
reentry procedure.
	"...Keep nose at right attitude, Karin. Also watch those nose
and wing thermometers. If nose goes down, we dive in too fast. If nose
goes up, we skip out, miss the landing field, and have to dump our
nice shuttle in the ocean."
	There was a dull thud. The view outside the windshield started
to roll.
	"What happened, Arielle?" said Karin, her voice tight with
panic. "I can't seem to get any roll response!"
	Arielle didn't move, but her eyes were studying a distant
corner of the status board where a light had come on.
	"Attitude-control propellant tank is busted," she said. "Shut
him down and bring up auxiliary system."
	Karen searched over the board, flicked the proper switches,
and used the jets to bring the heavy spacecraft around.
	"You let nose get low," Arielle remarked calmly. Karin looked
out the window at the wings. The white-hot incandescence left
green-yellow streaks in her vision.
	"Take over!" pleaded Karin. "I'm going to lose it."
	"You doing just fine," Arielle replied in a soothing
tone. "Besides, we may have a computer glitch if consoles be switched
now."
	The air was getting thicker. The temperature indicators were
dangerously high, but as the massive craft shed it orbital energy to
the air outside, the temperatures started to drop. They were nearly
through the critical reentry phase.
	"You start switch to aerodynamic controls?" Arielle reminded,
and was pleased to see that Karin had anticipated her.
	There was a warning Klaxon and the spacecraft started to roll
again, A red message light flashed, indicating that the main hydraulic
system was failing. Karin reached to switch on the backup
system. Arielle started to warn her to deactivate the malfunctioning
system first when the high-pressure oil hit the inactive actuators and
jerked them wildly about. The nose dipped and the view outside started
to whirl violently. The windshield turned red, glaring white, then
black...

	A cool Arielle popped the top of the Super-Shuttle trainer and
stood up. She stared over the head of the shaken Karin at the grinning
brown face peering over the top of the simulator console.
	"Thomas St. Thomas!" she said severely. "She's third time on a
reentry and you dump two breakdowns on her. You be ashamed! Look at
her!"
	Karin quickly recovered, gave them both a weak grin, and
extracted her 190-centimeter frame from the copilot seat.
	"The trouble with the pass wasn't Thomas' fault, it was the
simulator. It's so realistic I was fooled into thinking it was the
real thing and panicked. Shall we try again?"
	Arielle was about to protest when the door to the simulator
room opened and the director of the Johnson Space Center strode in,
followed by a few minicamers.
	"Don't you three ever take a break from training?" he
said. He looked at the three envelopes that he held and passed them
one at a time to the three astronauts.
	"Captain Thomas St. Thomas, Arielle Trudeau, and Karin Krupp."
	Thomas got his open first.
	"YAHOO!" he hollered. "I'm going to Barnard!"
	He looked at the expression on the faces of the two women as
they looked at their letters, then he hollered again, "YAHOO! We're
ALL going to Barnard!"
	He leaped over the console, picked up Arielle, whirled her
around once, and deposited her on the top of the simulators. He
started to pick up Karin, but she just stared him down with her
two-centimeter height advantage. He passed her by and proceeded to
pump the hand of the director vigorously as the minicamers stored it
all on chip.
	The Houston TV stations that night ended their news program
with a shot of the three astronauts, Thomas with one arm around
Karin's shoulder and talking, while Arielle stood in front of the
other two. She looked out of place. One would have thought she was a
beauty queen, with her pretty face and short, curly blonde hair,
rather than what she was, one of the best aerospace pilots in the
world. As usual, it was Thomas who had the last word as their pictures
faded from the screen.
	"We're going to the STARS!"

				* * *

	It was another drizzly day in DC, so George stood in the
narrow portico at the front of the headquarters building and waited for
the crew to arrive while Jinjur was upstairs checking out the meeting
room with the Space Administration staff. The first to arrive were
Caroline Tanaka, fiber-optics engineer and astronomer, Carmen Cortez,
radar and communications engineer, and John Kennedy, mechanical
engineer and nurse, who bored a striking resemblance to his distant
relative. They had all flown in yesterday and had spent the morning
across the street at the National Air and Space Museum. During a lull
in the rain they rain down the short block on Sixth Street to where
George was waiting. He greeted them and sent them upstairs to the
briefing room.
	It was five minutes later when he saw a small figure come up
from underground on the Metro escalator on Maryland Avenue, then trot
quickly through the rain toward him. It was Dr. Susan Wong. she had a
Ph.D in levibiology and organic chemistry, and an M.D. in aerospace
medicine. She would not only take care of the crew, but would help
Nels Larson keep the hydroponincs tanks and tissue cultures
healthy. George was helping her off with her coat when a Space
Administration station wagon pulled up with the three astronauts. They
had flown into Andrews Air Force Base in their trainer aircraft.
	"Dr. Wong," said George, shaking the water off her coat. "I'd
like you to meet three of your future patients. Arielle Trudeau, Karin
Krupp, and Captain Thomas St. Thomas."
	"Hi, Doc," said Thomas, sticking out his hand.
	"Susan, if you please," said Dr. Wong with a shy smile,
placing her tiny pale yellow hand with the long surgeon's fingers in
the strong brown grip.
	"Sure. Susan it is, Doc." said Thomas.
	Susan shook hands with Karin, then Arielle. She held onto
Arielle's hand and looked quizzically at her face.
	"Such a pretty woman you are," she said. "Weren't you Miss
Quebec in '12, just before Quebec separated from Canada?"
	Arielle blushed. "Yes," she admitted, "but the Quebecois
always want to live in past. I want to live in future, so like rest of
Canada, I leave Quebec and become citizen of Greater U.S."
	A humming sound that had been hovering on the horizon of their
consciousness burst into a burbling roar. A high-powered sports car
appeared, working its way down Independence Avenue through the
Washington traffic. They all turned to watch the fiery red Liberian
Sword come to an expertly controlled stop in a reserved parking space
in front of the building. A security guard took a look at the list and
went down to put a special card under the windshield wiper blades. A
tall, redheaded woman dressed in a green satin jump suit that matched
her green eyes unfolded herself from the front seat and strode up the
short flight of steps toward them. Her long thin legs glistened in
their shiny, green, high-heeled alligator boots.
	George stared in fascination at the legs. Probably the new
mutation-green stock from the hide farms, he thought. He started
forward to greet her, but Thomas beat him to it.
	"I bet you're the famous Red Vengeance," said Thomas, holding
onto her hand. "Few people can afford a Sword, much less drive it so
well. Y'know, you're the dream girl of the heavy-lift pilots. We'd all
like to take a prospecting trip with you."
	Red shook his hand politely with a faint smile on her
face. "Not all at one time, I hope," she said. "I'm Elizabeth, and
you?..."
	"Thomas," he said. "Thomas St. Thomas, and this is Arielle
Trudeau, Karin Krupp, and over there is Colonel George Gudunov and
Dr. Wong... ah... Susan."
	Red nodded to each one and stared for a long moment at George
as she slowly extracted her hand from Thomas' grip.
	George tried to return the look but finally had to glance away
from the deep green eyes. He coughed nervously.
	"We're all here," he said. "Let's go up to the briefing room."

	Jinjur was waiting at the podium in front of the briefing room
when they entered.
	"Get yourself a hot cup of coffee to ward off the chill and
have a seat," said Jinjur. "Thomas? You'll be talking right after me,
so get your viewgraphs out."
	After introductions around, Jinjur returned to the podium.
"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. I don't know you well now, but since I
am going to be spending the rest of my life with you, I hope that soon
you'll all be friends." She paused, and took a sip out of a coffee cup
that had the laser and lightsail emblem of the Space Marines on one
side and black letters spelling THE BOSS on the other.
	"This is not a military mission, but we will be lightyears
away from earth authority. So like the old-time sea captains, I will
have final authority on everything. I will allow discussion and even
straw votes, but this mission will not be run by popular vote. I know
you all understood that when you volunteered, but if you don't agree,
then now is the time to say so. There are plenty of others willing to
take your place." She waited for a few seconds, then relaxed.
	"Enough of that," she said. "We're off on an adventure to
visit some exciting worlds. We only got a long-distance look at them
as the robotic interstellar probe flew through at one-third light
speed, but Thomas and Caroline have put together a picture of the
Barnard system. Thomas?" She stepped down and Thomas took her place.
	"First let me give some details about the star," said
Thomas. "Here is a dull table that summarizes what we know about it."
He put a viewgraph on the machine. "Barnard is a small, red dwarf
star, about six lightyears away. The only star system close is the
alpha Centauri system with three stars. Barnard was called +4 deg 3561
until an astronomer named Barnard measured its proper motion and found
it was tearing through the sky at the terrific clip of 10.3 seconds of
arc per year, or more than half the diameter of the moon in a
century. It is an M5 red dwarf with a temperature of 3330 degrees
Kelvin compared to the G0 yellow-white 6050 degrees Kelvin of the
sun. Probably the thing we will find hardest to get used to is the
dull red illumination. It will be sort of like living by the light of
a charcoal fire. Not only is the temperature low, but the diameter of
the star is only twelve percent of the sun's diameter. It is going to
be cold there except very close to Barnard.
	"Now comes the interesting part," said Thomas. "The planetary
system around Barnard. The robotic probe only got a glimpse as it went
through the system, but it looks as though there are only two
planets. However, one of the planets is so large and has so many moons
that it is practically a planetary system by itself." He replaced the
Barnard data table with an orbital diagram, then walked up to the
screen with a pointer.
	"The main planet is a gigantic one, called Gargantua. It is a
huge gas giant like Jupiter, but is four times more massive. If
Gargantua had been slightly more massive, it would have turned into a
star and the Barnard system would be a binary start system. Gargantua
seems to have swept up all the material for making planets, since
there are no other large planets in the system. Gargantua has four
satellites that would be planets in our solar system, plus a multitude
of smaller moons. We plan on visiting as many of them as possible
after we have taken a look at the most interesting planet--Rocheworld.
	"Rocheworld is a co-rotating double planet whose two halves are
so close to each other that the planets are not spherical, but are
drawn into egg shapes. This shape was first calculated by an ancient
French mathematician called Roche, hence the name. Rocheworld is in a
highly elliptical orbit round Barnard. Caroline, using her
three-hundred meter, ten-thousand-element optical multiferometer was
able to resolve the planets and track the orbits for the last two
years. According to her, Rocheworld has a period that seems to be
exactly one third the period of Gargantua. We know that such orbital
'resonances' are usually unstable. Whether this nearly three-to-one
ratio is real or a coincidence is one of the things we hope to figure
out when we get there."
	"What are the sizes of the orbits?" asked Karin.
	"Small," said Caroline. "The radius of Gargantua's orbit is
thirty-eight gigameters, while the semi-major axis of Rocheworld's
elliptical orbit is a little over eighteen gigameters. The whole thing
would fit inside the orbit of Mercury."
	"What are the condition on Rocheworld and the moons?" asked
John.
	"We know that Rocheworld and the larger moons have
atmospheres," said Thomas. "And that one of the two parts of
Rocheworld seems to have a liquid on its surface. But the prove
couldn't get very much detail during the flyby. That's one of the
other things we're going to have to study when we get there."
	There were other briefings for the crew. Some by Space
Administration experts and some by members of the crew.
	"Now we come to one of the more sobering aspects of our
journey," said Jinjur. "Dr. Wong, could you please give us a short
medical briefing?"
	"Certainly," said Dr. Wong as she rose and took Jinjur's place
at the podium. "This expedition is a long one. Longer than the normal
life-span of the human body, even with all the medical advanced we
have made. Therefore, after the initial launch phases of the mission,
we will all be treated with the life-extending drug, No-Die. When it
has thoroughly saturated our tissues, it will slow our aging processes
to one-fourth of normal rate. Thus, the forty years that it will take
for us to travel to Barnard will only produce ten years of aging in
our bodies.
	"Unfortunately, our intelligence will also be lowered by
roughly the same factor. That is why No-Die is not used more on
earth. Fortunately, you all have been picked as persons with higher
than normal intelligence, so that the No-Die will merely reduce your
functional level to that of a small child. We will have a
semi-intelligent computer on board to keep us out of trouble during
the trip out. It will stop administering the No-Die as we approach
Barnard so that we will be back to normal intelligence when we arrive.
	"As for sexual matters. The engineers cannot make Prometheus
go any faster. So even if they designed the system for a round-trip
journey, No-Die couldn't stave off death long enough to bring us back
alive. Thus, this trip is a one-way journey for all of us. The planets
there are not habitable without using highly technical life-support
systems to protect us against the poisonous atmosphere, so this cannot
be a colonization mission. There must be no children born during the
mission, and since we cannot count on your intelligent cooperation
during the No-Die phase, all of you will have to undergo surgical
operations to ensure that your reproductive organs are blocked."
	George leaned over and whispered in Jinjur's ear. "I'm already
fixed so that I only shoot blanks."
	Jinjur didn't blink an eye. "Bang, bang," she muttered.
	Dr. Wong continued: "Although this procedure should have no
physical side effects, there are occasionally psychological reactions
to the loss of your reproductive capability that produce physical
effects, including loss of sexual appetite and impotency. If this
happens to you, please don't hesitate to consult me." A twinkle cam to
her eye. "If the normal medical procedures are ineffective, my
grandmother told me of some ancient Oriental procedures that are
guaranteed to produce spectacular results." She sat down amidst
whispered conversations.
	"Thanks, Susan," said Jinjur. "Well, that's enough for
today. I assume you all have your personal affairs taken care
of. After your final physicals and briefings, we'll head down to
Mercury to visit the laser propulsion center, then out to Titan for
some practice sessions using the lander rockets and the Dragonfly
aerospace plane, then board Prometheus on the other side of Uranus for
the trip out. Good day."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

AUTHOR'S NOTES (Does anybody even read these?) 

Hmmm... Upon rereading this I fear I may have gotten a little too 
technical in some parts and not technical enough in others. 

* Does the concept of a lightsail make sense to anyone but me? There is a
  complete technical discussion about it in an upcoming chapter but perhaps 
  something should be added to explain it briefly here.

* I fear I went a bit off the deep end in discussing the characteristic 
  of the Barnard system during the meeting at the end. I tried to make it 
  sound both scientific yet simple enough not to need a degree to 
  understand it. Maybe some more work there...

* The sequences were all the crew members learned they were selected for 
  the mission was cut short cause I got bored and didn't want to finish 
  them all. ^_^  The chapter is long enough as it is, but maybe I'll do 
  up a casting sheet seperately to list all the crew members and other 
  players in the story.


So... What do you think? Does it read interestingly? I'm sort of enamored 
of this concept and I'll probably continue writing it up either way, but 
I'd sure appreciate some input on what is done so far.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
  Mark Crewson <mcrewson@mts.net>            http://www.mts.net/~mcrewson