Last Exit Before the Final Frontier

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When I’m off duty, I like to go up on Carver’s Peak and watch the really big ships come in. I remember the last time I saw Ashley’s Charm, all five kilometers of her, slowly being brought in by the tugs to the huge interstellar spaceport here on Cameron. As I watched her gain size against the background of diamond-bright stars, she slowly turned as the tugs oriented her for parking orbit insertion, and the doors of the thousands of individual spacecraft berths came visible.

I looked at my watch. Two more hours.

In two more hours, I’d be back on duty, and as a senior port loadmaster, I’d be responsible for assigning transport slots to the multitude of individual ships that had come from deep down the well of the Solar System—from Earth, from Mars, the inner asteroid belt, and the satellite systems of the gas giants—craft bearing families intent on leaving this star system to vault into the vastness of the Universe and build a life out there under the light of other suns.

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