Birthright

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Eons passed, and Man slithered out of the slime, sprouted limbs, developed thumbs. He stood erect, saw the stars for the first time, and knew that they must someday be his. Still more eons. Man grew taller, stronger, broader. He strode the face of his world, taking what he needed, spreading his seed across the length and breadth of it. He became clever, if not wise; strong, if

not indomitable. Earth was his, remade in his own image, yet Man was not satisfied.

He reached the moon, and in short order had erected settlements on Mars and the inner planets. The asteroid belt came next, and by the dawn of the twenty-fifth century his ingenuity had allowed him to place metropolis after metropolis on the moons of the outer planets. And there he came to a halt. A trip to the moon took a mere ten hours; even a journey to Pluto, while it required four years, was conceivable. Conceivable and possible, as three growing cities gave testimony. But the stars were another problem altogether. The nearest was almost five light-years from Earth, an inconceivable distance even for this technically oriented century. Not only would the trip require half a dozen long-lived generations, but the ship would need an enormous amount of room for oxygen-giving plants, making the venture both financially and physically unfeasible. So Man looked elsewhere for a solution. The concept of hyperspace was tackled by every scientific mind in the Solar System for more than a century; the sole conclusion, reached countless times in countless experiments, was that hyperspace was a myth. And then, in the early years of the twenty-seventh century, a young Tritonian scientist devised a theory for an engine that would propel a ship at a faster-than-light speed.

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