Imagine, if you will:
It all began with a what.
What, as it turned out, was a tiny speck racing through the blackest depths of space, catching the faint and distant light of the Sun as it did so, growing fainter and more distant at each passing second.
The speck was a freight carrier – a loderunner, looking exactly like one of the multitude that traveled between Mars and Earth. This particular one was a brand new ship, which – most unusually – had already been refitted. It had been specially modified – in great haste – to meet the demands and purpose of a new mission, and as a result, most of the ship’s cargo space was now occupied by a passenger compartment and extra fuel cells to allow it to make this extraordinarily long and distant journey to the outer reaches of the solar system. Unmanned probes had gone there before, but probes weren’t ships – they didn’t carry crew… Human beings, in person. Crewed, full–sized Human ships had never ventured this far out before.
