Peter Flynn
looked into the sky while stretched out on the hammock he had strung between
two trees. It was a rare pleasure to camp out on a Gaean world instead of needing
to speed from one system to another on a cargo run.
Haven’t done this except when on liberty or
when Dad and Grandpa took me fishing.
He looked
at the stars, trying to identify constellations.
But they’re all different. They were all
marked out and designated from Earth. And in the early days, when humanity
didn’t go more than a dozen light years from Earth, that was fine. But now
we’re stretched out over thousands of light years.
He could’ve
pulled up a data slate, which would have shown an overlay of the constellations
as they would look from this planet by using the navigational charts, but that
was cheating. Besides, he really didn’t care. Instead he gazed at the dense
cloud of stars that identified the core of the Milky Way.
Wonder if I’ll get closer to the Core. I’ve
always wondered what it looks like up close. There could be some long range
colonies out there. Maybe we can make a run.