“You’ve always been a tough act to follow.” He came over to her and they embraced. The truth was, she had mixed feelings about it. There wasn’t much need for pilots anymore. Not for the interstellars, anyhow. It was like the twentieth century, when we found out there were no canals on Mars and Venus was an oven. During that period enthusiasm had declined. There was nothing left to get excited about, funding got cut from NASA, and the space programs all but died. Then the Iapetus statue was discovered, and there was a second breakout movement, which led eventually to the development of the FTL drive. But in the long run, even that had gone nowhere. We traveled to other stars, but the vast majority of worlds located in the habitable zones were as desolate as Mars. We reached a point where the exciting finds consisted of occasional cellular life. For a time people wondered whether they were actually alone. Then, on Pinnacle and Quraqua and a few other places, ruins were discovered.

The big news came when a race of theoretically intelligent beings was discovered on a world whose name made it into English as Nok. They had primitive guns and cannons and spent most of their time killing one another. Except for that, they were boring. There was little art to speak of, virtually no literature, nothing to invite anyone’s interest. Since then, a couple of other intelligent species had been found, but a decision was made to stay away from them to avoid causing any damage. And, of course, there had always been concern over the possibility of confronting an unfriendly civilization thousands or millions of years ahead of us. In the words of the celebrated comedienne Marla Wallace: “The first flight to the nearest star found nothing. The smart thing for us would have been to travel no farther. To stay where we were and never go west of Centauri.”

Eventually, Hutch hoped, there’d be a change of heart somewhere. And the enthusiasm she’d seen in her early years would return. If for no other reason than the strides that had been made in life extension, which had seriously intensified the population problem. Humanity needed to expand.

Quraqua was one of three worlds now available for colonization. But politicians were arguing that we were reproducing faster than we could ever hope to move people off world. So why bother? It was an argument that made no sense to her. Anyhow, if we got serious about constructing interstellars, we could turn things around. Or at least stabilize the situation.

•  •  •