Lost in Transmission

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Radmer vividly remembered his last sight of the old moon, before King Bruno's terraforming operations had begun to squeeze it. . . .

He was called Conrad Mursk in those days, and he was standing on the bridge of the QSS Newhope, falling past the Earth and moon on a sunward trajectory. They had started their fall at Mars, and would keep on falling until they were within a million kilometers of the sun. At that point, scorching even through their superreflectors, they would swing around and rise again.

Their path was like the orbit of a comet: long and narrow and lonely, descending briefly to kiss Mother Sol and then racing back up into the dark again for another long orbit. Except that they'd be firing their fusion motors down there at the bottom, unfurling their sails, catching the light of the sun and the laser boost of a dozen pocket stars to hurl them into deepest space. Past Mars and Neptune, past even the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud where the true comets lived. To the stars themselves.

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