William Forstchen - Into the Sea of Stars

It was a time of high adventure; an age when men and women could seize destiny and shape it to their will. Can our generation again breed such heroes? I think not, for a golden age of exploration comes but rarely to a race, and ours is now lost forever. They were of the same mold as Alexander at the Asian Gate and Caesar at the Rubicon.

Look to the choices that lay before them, a thousand years ago in the darkness of the twenty-first century. The world beneath them was poised for the madness of ther monuclear night; a madness that threatened to reach out to the Earth's thousand colonies. And with that madness came the calling-the calling from Old America, and Eu rope, and the vast reaches of the Asian giants. A calling for the children to return, to arm themselves, and to join in the war of the parent states. A war that would engulf mankind and create another dark age, from which we have so recently emerged.

But the colonies were no longer of Earth. They were the new children, those who beheld a new horizon and could look beyond the parochial squabblings below.

And one day they were gone. Pointing their colonies into the unknown, they abandoned Earth forever. Using plasma drives, ion thrusters, matter/antimatter engines, thermonuclear pulse propulsion, and even solar sails, the colonies broke the bonds and headed off into the un known-looking for freedom and an escape. Led by such legendary men as Ikawa Kurosawa, Vasiliy Renikoff, and Franklin Smith, the colonies abandoned the parent world to its madness. And then the War came.

Where are they now? What great wonders have these visionaries of the past created, unhindered by the Holocaust War of the twenty-first century and the chaos that followed? Will we ever know the fate of the colonies missing for a thousand years?

From a rejected manuscript by Dr. Ian Lacklin, Missing Colonies and the Heroic Figure in History.

"Mr. Hansin, are you with us, or are you again pon dering the earthly delights awaiting you in the women's dormitory?" In disgust Ian Lacklin collapsed into his chair and awaited the response.

"Ah, oh yes, I fully agree with you, Dr. Lacklin. Of course, you're absolutely right."

An undercurrent of snickers ran through the stuffy, overcrowded room. Ian stared them down and was greeted with forced looks of attentiveness.

Idiots. Graduate students, indeed. Every semester he was lectured by the dean that this year's was the best crop yet, survivors of a lengthy winnowing process. The dean made Kutzburg sound like Nouveau Harvard instead of the Provincial University's worst campus, one that ca tered to ozone-head athletes and near-morons who had failed entry in every other system and, therefore, would become educators.

"Then, Mr. Hansin, perhaps you could enlighten us all as to the ramifications of the Geosync Positions Com munications Treaty of 2031 and how it was later cited by Beaulieu as the underlying cause of the Second South American Crisis of 2038."

"Say, Dr. Lacklin, was that in our readings?"

"By God, man, yes!" In exasperation Ian rose up to his full five-and-a-half-foot height and pointed a stubby finger at Hansin.

"Can't you see how important this was? With the crowding of the geosync points in the early part of the twenty-first century came the increasing agitation by the equatorial countries for control not only of the atmos phere above them but of the geosync positions, as well. Out of that came the abortive attempt to take Powersat 23 from the Sino-Japanese Energy Consortium, which in turn placed in jeopardy the Skyhook construction project in Malaysia. Can't you see how important that is to your life today?"

Blank stares greeted him. An ocean of blank stares.

"This room is a vacuum!" Ian shouted, waving his short, pudgy arms. "I know this course is required, I know you were all dragged in here kicking and screaming, but, by God, it's required for a reason.

"But, of course, you cretins already know that when you are history teachers yourselves, instructions in throwing a ball through a hoop will be far more important than this." Ian realized that his sarcasm was lost on that crowd, but with a note of pleading in his voice he valiantly tried to push ahead. "Don't you realize that you should also be able to teach your students about history, as well? Can't you see that?"

"Sure, Doc. We see that, but it's Friday, and the shuttle tram's leaving for Bostem in half an hour."

"Ah, a visit to the fleshpots of Bostem is more impor tant to you than this, is that it, Mr. Hansin? And you, too, Mr. Roy?"

Silence.

"Well, Mr. Roy, don't sit there slack-jawed and drool ing, answer me."

"Doc, that's an interesting point, and most difficult to answer." lan's cherubic face turned crimson. "Idiots, get out, just get out of here." His voice cracked on a high note, as it always did when he got excited. "Just get out!"

The mindless herd of thirty-odd students exploded into action and stampeded past him for the doorway.

"Wait, wait a minute, your reading assignment for next week…" But they were already gone, the corridor ech oing with the sounds of their cattlelike trampling and muted comments about Lacklin's heritage and physiological shortcomings.

Another brilliant lecture wasted. Mumbling obscure Old American obscenities, he returned to his desk and started to shuffle a pile of notes into his briefcase. Eigh teen years! Eighteen years of trying to give to an uncaring mob a brief glimpse of the joys to be found in history. There was an occasional pearl to be found, but for most of them, he was " Lackless Lacklin," master of "Enrichment Requirement Number 3: Sputnik to Armageddon- a History of the First Space Era."

"Excuse me, Dr. Lacklin."

"Yes, yes, what is it?" He looked up from his desk. "What is it, Shelley, why weren't you sucked into the vortex of that mob?"

"You were about to give an assignment?"

He looked at her appraisingly, the pearl of the semester, a gangly six-foot, twenty-one-year old; suffering from a bad case of acne and allegedly responsible to him as a research assistant-assigned by the dean, no doubt, as a practical joke. As a graduate student she was adequate, but she constantly hung around his office looking for sophomoric debates on the real meaning of Lock's the ories of space sociology or other such foolishness.

"Do we have an assignment in Beaulieu's book?" she asked eagerly.

"No doubt, you've already finished it?"

"Of course, but I wanted to be ready for Monday's class. I can review it over the weekend."

"Don't worry about it now, why don't you just go along with the others."

"Here, let me help you back to the office with that." Before he could object, Shelley picked up the model of the Schuder space colony and started for the door.

"Damn it, look out!"

But it was too late. She brushed against the doorway, knocking the antennae structure off.

"Oh, Dr. Lacklin, I'm sorry, I-"

"Never mind, Miss Walker, just take it down to the office."

With a sigh of despair he picked up the broken plastic and followed after her. It had taken him the better part of a weekend to construct the three-foot-long model of a colony that had once been home to fifty thousand people.

As they made their way down the dimly lit corridors to lan's subterranean office, Shelley chattered on about a paper she was writing for The Journal of Space Antiq uities, and Dr. Lacklin occasionally grunted noncommit tally, but his thoughts were already light-years away.

A new copy of the journal had just come that morning, with a lengthy article by Beaulieu concerning the recently discovered ruins of the colony on Mars. The site was one of the biggest finds of the decade and was revealing a wealth of artifacts on early twenty-first-century technol ogy. The article would provide an excellent weekend's entertainment away from students, the school, the world- in fact, an escape from all reality.