Commander Randall Evans looked out over the silvery splendor that was his starship. Nearly half a mile of engineered adamantite, the strongest metal humankind had ever known, was seeing the sun for the first time, finally raised from its birthplace underground. This starship, christened the U.S.S. Regent, as the product of the world’s greatest minds, and had taken over a decade to complete. Now Commander Randall Evans’ destiny lay before him, ready to begin its fateful voyage.

"Amazing, isn’t it?"

Maximillian Kraft, chief physicist for the Regent design team, stood beside Evans. The somewhat eccentric scientist was barely thirty, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts. His white teeth glinted in the sunlight, a testament to his genetically altered DNA. Kraft was the world’s first genetically engineered super genius, and quite possibly the smartest man in the world.

"Is everything ready?" Evans asked.

"All systems go, sir," Kraft reported. "The crew is finishing up their training today. Then they will have next week to spend as they wish, presumably with their families and such. After that…" He paused to glance out at the starship once again. "…the universe is ours."

Evans did not return Kraft’s smile. Instead he watched the U.S.S. Regent continue its ascent to the surface. The thunderous boom of its impulse thrusters shook the ledge they stood upon. The Regent was a gargantuous leviathan, hiding acres of Nevada desert beneath its massive hull.

"Perhaps man’s greatest accomplishment," Kraft remarked. "Wouldn’t you agree, Commander?"

"I’ll agree when we get there, Kraft." Evans turned briskly and walked back to the command tower.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Evans stepped forward and saluted rigidly. He was met by a huge round of applause, the entire auditorium giving him a standing ovation. The leaders from every nation stood before him, even the Emperor of the dreaded Asian Alliance, whom Evans fought against in World War III.

"At ease, commander!" President Russel MacArthur now stuck his hand out to Evans, and they shook firmly. "You’re doing our entire race a great service, Commander Evans. Believe me, by the time you get back, you may well be our greatest hero."

"Thank you, sir. I am proud to serve my country and my people." Evans saluted once again and then stepped back.

President MacArthur went down the lines of them, all 1,047 of the Regent’s crew. The world’s greatest scientists, engineers, and astronauts stood on the stage of the Times Square Auditorium. This was to be their last week on earth for perhaps all of two decades.

After the ceremony, the crew split up and went their separate ways. Evans and Kraft joined the group headed back to Nevada. Soon they were on a TransJet, and within a few minutes they stepped back onto Area 73 of the Nevada desert.

Senior Engineer Mikhail Dostyev caught up to Evans.

"Congratulations, Commander," he said.

"Congratulations yourself, Dostyev," Evans returned. "We’re all stuck on the same trip now."

"Of course, Commander. But where would you rather be?"

Evans found he had no answer.

"Please sir, join me in Engineering, won’t you? We have much to discuss."

The two of them opened the Regent’s hatch and climbed inside. From outside, the floors and ceilings were sideways: Evans still chuckled a bit looking at it.

Dostyev caught his snicker and understood. "Remember, sir, this does make sense. As soon as we begin accelerating at 1 G, our gravity will be pushing us backwards. While we’re in the Earth’s gravity, we are accelerated only downward."

"I understand, Dostyev," Evans replied. "Just get in there and turn on the temporary gravity accelerator."

"Will do, sir." Soon Dostyev had turned it on, and Evans felt gravity shift; from pulling him down to the side of the ship, to pulling him to it’s floor.

"That’s more like it," he said. "This is how it will be for the next decade or so, eh?"

"Approximately, yes sir. While we are accelerating towards our destination, we will be feeling a force of 1 G towards the "floors" of the ship. On our slowing procedure, however, the 1 G will be reversed, and will be in fact pulling us toward the "ceiling." When this happens we will rearrange all furnishings accordingly."

"I figured that," Evans replied. "Now, Dostyev….I’ve watched you engineers build this ship for over a year now, and I have yet to completely understand how this ‘ram jet’ engine works. Think you could take the time to educate your Commander?"

Dostyev smiled wide at the opportunity. "Certainly, Commander. But please, don’t use the term ‘ram jet.’ Since it’s early incarnations in the 2020’s, it’s been called the Isis Reactor. In the Isis Reactor, the hydrogen that fills interstellar space is used as our source of fuel. Let me show you…" Dostyev powered up a nearby engineering vidscreen. He brought up a three dimensional model of the Regent, complete with even the interior details. The nose of the ship was almost cone-like, having a huge hole which continued through the ship.

"This is the opening to the Isis Reactor," Dostyev explained. "Here at the front of our ship are the magnetic fields we will use to push the hydrogen into the opening. These fields will always be operating, and are the strongest ever made by man. We need them to be especially strong, too: since we will be traveling near the speed of light at times, these EM waves won’t be traveling much faster. Luckily, with our increased speed, comes an increased area of hydrogen captured by the Reactor."

"Impressive," Evans admitted. "Now…how will hydrogen power us?"

"Well, sir, in the Reactor Core, located here," Dostyev pointed to the 3D display of the Regent, "the hydrogen is compressed to such a degree that it creates Fusion, which as you know is one of the greatest sources of energy. The new, fused nuclei are expelled from the rest of the cone - here, in the back thrusters of the ship. This reaction powers us forward, ever increasing our acceleration towards the speed of light."

Evans had a thought. "Correct me if I’m wrong, Dostyev, but isn’t it extremely hard to fuse ordinary hydrogen this way? In fact, from what I know of the ram - Isis Reactor, sorry - I thought it could process only heavy hydrogen with any success – and perhaps not at all in areas with only neutral particles."

"True, sir," Dostyev agreed. "That is very true. Now, with the marvels of modern technology, let me show you the bombardment chamber here, right before the reactor core. In this chamber the hydrogen we collect is constantly bombarded with antimatter - in this case an anti-neutrino field, which will bump ordinary hydrogen up to heavy hydrogen level. This will make our trip even easier. As for the neutral particles, very few such areas exist in space, and are easily avoided."

Dostyev sat back from the vidscreen model. "As you can see, Commander, our scientists have gotten past the problems of interstellar radiation, advanced propulsion, and an interstellar fuel source all in one brave leap. Professor Kraft, of course, was most of the brains behind this project."

"Of course," Evans agreed. He was having trouble adapting to all these profound leaps in science. In World War III, the U.S.S. Lexington, the ship he commanded, relied on good old natural propulsion; he had control over speeding up, slowing down, and going back to the Spaceport to refuel. During the Regent’s trip, however…the control was in the hands of scientists and engineers, most of which had only experience theorizing with space, not traveling in it.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Maximillian Kraft sat in the captain’s chair of the U.S.S. Regent’s bridge. He looked out at the bare Nevada flatlands, and realized that he would not see anything like them for a long, long time.

The thought brought another smile to his lips.

Kraft had waited for this moment all his life. He knew he wasn’t meant for this world, and was destined to seek out a more suitable race with which to share his talents. Now the day had nearly arrived, and Kraft looked forward to his departure eagerly.

Footsteps approached from the stairwell. Kraft stood up and straightened his Hawaiian shirt.

Evans appeared on the stairwell. "Kraft," he said, "I need your help. Can you show me a bit more of your work here so I can completely understand what I’ll be commanding?"

"Certainly, sir." Kraft began by leading him to the captain’s station. He gestured towards the control panel. "Some of these controls will look familiar from your days in the Lexington, sir. This computer has detailed maps of every inch of space from here to Alpha Centauri. The many probes we have sent out in this direction have provided us with a moving galaxy all mapped and charted."

"Whatever happened to the Ares probe?" Evans asked. "I remember it was the first incarnation of that "Isis Reactor" technology, but that we suddenly lost contact with it about a year ago."

Kraft winced. "That was an error in trajectory." He typed into the keyboard and brought up a display of some part of space. A black hole glared from the center of it. "This is RXG-014, one of the larger black holes in known space. It’s tremendous gravity pulled in our probe, we presume, and it is probably still being pulled into the surface even now."

"And this black hole is in our way?" Evans asked.

"Almost," Kraft countered. "It’s huge gravity will throw us off a bit, but our course has been plotted to allow for it: as a matter of fact, we need RXG-014’s gravity to curve us back toward Alpha Centuari. By calculating its current mass and gravity, and therefore its gravitational pull on our ship’s mass, we have determined a course which will steer us clear of its center, and in fact bring us ever closer to Alpha Centauri."

Evans was silent for a moment. He still refused to believe in the trip’s foolproof design. "What about space debris and the like?," he asked. "Or collisions with moving orbits?"

"Our radar and computer systems will do well enough to avoid any collisions at our slower speeds," Kraft assured him. "When we are at higher velocities, however, we will rely completely on our probe information. Rest assured, sir, all planetary and satellite orbitals have been calculated to a very high level of precision. Besides, most of our sailing will be through open space, with nothing more that hydrogen radiation to worry about-"

"Which will be absorbed into the Isis Reactor," Evans finished for him.

Kraft saw his commander’s frustration and understood. "Don’t worry yourself with the details, sir. Most of our trip will be at such high velocity, we won’t even see the space we’re traveling through. If even one stationary asteroid were in our path, it would tear a huge hole in our ship. Remember, if we’re traveling out there at half the speed of light, every particle is coming at us at just the same speed. So our Reactor will dispose of the little obstructions, and we know enough of our universe to avoid the big ones.

"Now, moving on," Kraft continued, "let me show you the agriculture labs on deck Six." Evans began to get up, but Kraft simply hit a button on his control panel. A virtual image of Deck Six came up on the vidscreen, replacing the black hole. Deck Six looked like a miniature farm, with representations of nearly every known fruit, vegetable, and otherwise edible plant product.

"These labs will produce the best genetically engineered food on the planet. They will produce at an extremely accelerated rate, to provide for all 1,047 crew members. Furthermore they will include all necessary vitamins and minerals for a healthy diet - plus the added aging retardant that will reduce our bodies natural decay rate during our trip."

Evans looked up at Kraft. "No more meat though, huh?"

"Sorry sir, but most types of meat have been found to interfere with our aging retardant. Rest assured our refinement chamber - located here - will produce such delicacies as apple juice and chocolate from our plants’ harvest."

Evans turned away and typed away at his own control panel. "I’m not worried about our agriculture, Kraft," he declared. "I’m worried about the theories behind all this. I’m worried about us landing on a planet when the time comes, and then getting ourselves back here. Frankly, this seems like a theological journey more than anything else, and theories can be very wrong."

Kraft sat across from him and stared him in the eyes. "I’m not wrong," he assured his Commander. "Einstein was not wrong. Here…let me show you exactly why this will work. Kraft pushed a few buttons on his control panel. A new model sprung up, this one of the Regent being towed by two massive rockets. "These are our power sources to the end of the galaxy. They will propel us up to the 1 G we need, then detach. Notice they are completely outside the ship: there are a pair of similar rockets installed inside the Regent, here and here. They will provide our 1 G of acceleration on the return trip, then detach in the same fashion.

Now here are the calculations for our time during the trip." The vidscreen coughed up a complicated-looking equation: u=(e²-1/ e²+1)c. "Now after our first complete year, we will be traveling at approximately three-fourths the speed of light, and will have progressed roughly half a light year toward Alpha Centuari. Simple enough?"

Evans nodded his understanding.

"Now the most important issue here is Relativity – specifically that of Time Dilation. What is one year to us, at an average of half the speed of light, is a bit more here on Earth." Another equation lit up the vidscreen: Δt=ΔJ /v1-u²c².

"See, as one year passes in our proper time, 1.15 years pass here on Earth. In our second year, roughly 2 years will pass on Earth. Soon, we are traveling very close to the speed of light; and after no more than three and a half years, we begin the slowing process. The Isis Reactor will gradually reduce its hydrogen intake, our magnetic fields will reduce their strength a bit, and our bombardment chamber will slow down as well. Eventually we will slow to the point of normal velocity, where we can safely navigate a planetary landing with impulse thrusters."

Evans followed all this very carefully. He may have been no scientist, but space was certainly his field. "So the trip out will take at most seven years. From there we explore Alpha Centuari, land on as many planets as possible, and record any information we find."

"Indeed, sir," Kraft agreed. "Remember that we can spend as much time there as we wish: time will pass the same for us and here on Earth while we are stationary."

"We have a window of up to six years, Kraft. That’s more than enough time. When we finish, we use impulse once again to break out of orbit, use your detaching rockets to power us up to 1 G, then begin the Isis Reactor all over again." Evans mulled it over in his mind. "It seems plausible enough."

Kraft eyed his commander. "The only decision you will have to make, sir, is whether or not we return home at all."

Evans looked up at him in shock.

"Look at these equations, sir; look how much time will pass on earth before we can make it back. At the very least, we will spend over thirteen years in high velocity space travel." Kraft brought up a few more figures on the vidscreen. "Look at what that means for Earth time…well over a hundred years. Our beloved President MacArthur won’t even be alive to greet our return. The world may be a very different place when we get back, Commander…if we decided to come back at all."

Evans looked at the figures. He had never quite believed in Time Dilation: he thought it was just another theory that would be proven wrong. Even when the scientists performed all sorts of tests on him after his many trips in space, and declared that he was however many hours younger than he would have been if he had stayed on Earth. Perhaps small effects like that could happen…but a huge gap in time? Thirteen years of space travel, equal to over a hundred years on Earth? And by the looks of the equation, if they increased speed even more…it could jump to two hundred, five hundred…perhaps even into the thousands. When all that time had passed on the Earth he knew and loved…what would remain?

"I see your point, Kraft." Evans stood up from his seat and looked over the many maps and charts of space they had collected. "Perhaps…perhaps some of us will not want to return here at all."

"Perhaps none of us will," Kraft added. "Perhaps, out there…there is something better."

They both looked at the area of the map where Alpha Centauri would be.

"Only one way to find out," Evans said, and walked away.