CORE BELIEFS - CHAPTER 70 - STARSHIP 1

Core Beliefs – Chapter 70 – Starship 1

As quickly as it had come, Christmas 2014 was over. Life for all involved with Dlrow Wen returned to the passionate pursuit of changing the world.

Following New Year’s 2015, Emily Coblentz and Jacob Martin found themselves frequently in the silo. Both had visited before, but now they were active participants in assembling and creating some of the most sophisticated systems ever conceived.

Both found the tasks demanding and exhausting, but nothing prepared them for the lessons. Three times a week, the two high schoolers sat in the control room, immersed in lessons on advanced physics, engineering, history, political science, and other topics. They and a hundred other participants were given study assignments.

They needed to do their part of the assignment. They had a responsibility to their fellow teammates. Every part had to be right for the assignment to succeed.

For both, the coursework pushed them to the limit. At first, the assignments seemed impossible, but as the weeks passed, they grasped the material, the methods, and the instructors’ motives.

Though the tasks never became easy, they became a happy challenge. Emily and Jacob fiercely competed to do their best. The two were surprised that some students were as young as twelve.

***

Following months of design and planning, Matt unleashed Charley on a new project on the island. Construction began deep within the island, but the final destination would be a mile offshore of the big island and three miles below the ocean floor, still within the Earth’s crust, well above the lithosphere layer above the mantle.

It would be the largest room ever conceived. In this cavernous space, they would build spaceships. The venture was a major leap of faith. The ship plans were, at best, conceptual, missing technology by the boatload. To build anything more than a larger, glorified version of a GEM unit, they would have to conceive, develop, and design new systems.

In late January, Dr. Ellis Mandaville flew to Wichita and joined Chris, Suchet, Doug, and Ellie.

Dr. Mandaville had been reworking theories on faster-than-light travel.

The group assembled at Armonia House. Ellis outlined his theory of the universe’s ultimate power source: Dark Energy. He described it as the force powering the universe’s expansion. World scientists knew it existed, but no one could say with certainty what composed this force. The evidence was fifty percent theory, fifty percent hypothesis, and very little factual data.

Over two days, Ellis expanded on possibilities and concepts. The “Fantastic Four” absorbed the information like sponges. What Ellis did not realize was that this group had memorized many of his previous papers and had an excellent grasp of thousands of his equations, fine-tuning several and adding their own ideas.

On the third day, they began probability discussions and debated every element of Ellis’s work and their own concepts. It took the better part of two more days to reach a starting point.

Someone would have to go to a place in space where Dark Energy could be studied without interference from planetary disturbances and its true nature identified.

Ellis surmised the expedition might also encounter Dark Matter. This was not the same as antimatter, but there could be similarities and even more unknowns.

It would take weeks to establish basic designs. No one could set a timetable to build a ship capable of the trip. The idea was to travel perpendicular to the plane of the planets and thereby reach void space faster. Fossil-fuel rockets had zero chance of achieving the required range.

The teams figured they needed months or more of travel time with their current capabilities to even approach the distance needed, and possibly as much as a year. The group therefore believed they needed to design the first Starship with interplanetary capabilities.

***

While the scientists worked on solving the mysteries of the universe, something else happened in Bangladesh. M&E Enterprises purchased a vast tract of land. Lenny and a crew of one hundred Dlrow Wen members started to build a city, a city able to withstand the onslaught of the typhoons that so often devastated the region. They would build it above ground, five levels high, and allow for every aspect of life’s needs. Homeless and destitute would occupy the city.

Lenny and the others hoped it would become like Well of Hope and a pathway to prosperity. Well of Hope had transformed into a self-sufficient community. The technology continued to be maintained by Dlrow Wen members, but the people who lived there ran the daily operations.

Word of the project in Bangladesh spread, and soon people came, first to see, and when the purpose of the construction was explained, they aspired to be a part.

The Kumar twins were among the Dlrow Wen team and proved invaluable as translators. They also made sure the team did not get crosswise with local customs.

Lenny realized the people were desperate for food. A call to Joe Lehman unlocked tremendous resources, and soon food arrived from all over Asia.

Local men cleared areas for camps near the city site, and a tent city rose with over thirteen thousand people encamped near the construction site.

Lenny wanted to leave the ground under the city site intact with its native foliage, knowing it flooded during the rainy season. He started the city by erecting piers to support the structures above.

The Dlrow Wen group realized they had to involve the local people. Many of them would be the people who would occupy the city. Lenny modified the plan. His team built the city’s skeleton and cross braces, one level at a time.

They formed the flooring panels and buildings in modular sections. Local people could then help assemble each unit. The material was a new composite that looked like concrete but was actually a hybrid polymer. It weighed 75% less than concrete but was five times as strong.

Charley had given Lenny the structural element designs. Everything assembled like an Erector Set. This made it possible to build most elements without cranes or heavy-lifting equipment.

The plans included crop and grazing areas, and the five levels would reach over one hundred ninety feet.

The work progressed with some problems, but they were resolved. Lenny had a two-year plan, and knowing shield technology was available, they could work through monsoons.

***

Back on the island, the agreements to provide power modules kept the production facilities running at maximum capacity. Secondary production was beginning at the silo, but the automated equipment for the newer power module designs was just being set up.

One bottleneck was transporting the modules to their appointed destinations. They shipped them by boat and then by land. Shipping sometimes took over two months, with a higher-than-desired risk of loss because of weather or human error.

In council, Dlrow Wen decided to transport the modules using GEM-C’s.

In addition, they decided to build a new class, the GEM-D, larger and designed for more cargo. Fabrication had been underway for almost five months, and on February 22nd, 2015, the first Super GEM-D rose from the caldera’s depths. The new unit looked similar to the existing model, except twice the size, had far more power, and was faster.

It could hold thirty-six power modules in the cargo hold and had control-cabin seating for eight. When converted for carrying people, it held fifty-eight comfortably.

***

Several Dlrow Wen members became concerned that, with wide use, the GEM-Ds would be spotted and cause a panic. Following a full conference, everyone agreed it would be better to be proactive than reactive.

Matt and selected team members would make the ships public in a way that generated the greatest exposure in the least time. The concept was to change the public perception from being a mystery to it being normal for a craft to fly around without wings, engines, or propellers.

Several members of Dlrow Wen, with connections to broadcast networks, arranged for the major stations to have teams in New York’s Central Park on the morning of Monday, March 2nd.

Matt with Chris, and Dr. Mandaville watched the news crews set up. They handed reporters a leaflet with a basic description of the craft and its capabilities.

There were plenty of doubters. Some made jokes. One aged newsman vocally berated the existence of flying saucers as a GEM-D casually and silently glided overhead and began a slow descent to the ground.

The Camera crews snapped into high gear, correspondents describing the scene. The craft landed, and a large portal in the rear opened. Out stepped Mandy and Michael in blue jeans, wearing sweatshirts imprinted with, “I live to fly.”

Matt introduced them as the pilots and invited the news people on board for a tour. The craft’s interior walls showed a 360-degree panorama of the world outside, almost as if they were looking through glass.

Chris and Ellis made general explanations without getting into technical elements.

Matt offered to take the reporters for a ride, and if they provided their transponder frequency, he could even arrange for them to keep broadcasting. Most stations said yes. Soon reporters and crews scrambled aboard. They drew names to see who would sit behind the pilots.

It took a few minutes to coordinate the video and audio links, but in short order, everyone watching at home could see the interior of the craft and the view outside.

Matt gave the go-ahead. Mandy and Michael took their seats, closed the hatch, and Michael said, “Ascent is go.”

Mandy tapped her console, and to everyone outside…the vehicle disappeared.

Inside, it grew silent as the view flashed bright blue sky, then the darkness of space; the image reversed, and the Earth grew smaller until the entire planet became visible.

Matt said, “We’ve ascended at a rate of 20,000 thousand miles per second. The reason you didn’t feel any G’s is because the gravity inside the craft is precisely controlled.

 “How do we know this isn’t just a movie on the screen,” one reporter asked, “and that we’re not still on the ground?”

“Where do you want to go?” Matt asked.

“Paris would be good,” the reporter, a younger woman, said.

“Right, they can take us to Paris,” another joked.

All this time, the cameras transmitted video and audio back to their stations. The communication was one-way, so the people on board had no clue that calls flooded the stations from people who had seen the GEM-D vanish in the park.

Matt asked his pilots if they had heard the request.

“Manual plot,” Michael said. “Paris, thirty seconds.”

Again, the view on the monitors changed rapidly as the Earth swelled to fill the screen, and then, almost instantly, the Eiffel Tower came into view.

The next thing the reporters realized was the rear door sliding open, and before them the plaza in front of the Eiffel Tower, and all about them Paris.

It was chaotic, both inside and outside the craft. Locals cautiously approached the GEM-D. Reporters were stumbling out in disbelief. One fainted for a minute. Chris revived him with a cold pack.

Throughout the trip, the TV cameras and audio were broadcasting every picture and every word back to the stations and out over the airwaves.

After about ten minutes, Matt said, “I think it’s time we move on. I notice we are in an area where vehicles are not permitted.”

The people filed on board, and the craft quickly returned to Central Park, having circled the globe. The door opened. Everyone disembarked except Mandy and Michael.

“The reason we wanted you to see this craft,” Matt spoke to the group, “is because we are going to be using these to transfer materials to the new power plants we are building, and to our humanitarian aid projects in various countries. You will have little chance of seeing them because of the speed they move, but if you see one, we want you to not to be alarmed and not start calling the police and telling them you’ve seen aliens.”

“You sure you’re not aliens?” a reporter asked.

Matt laughed, “We are all people of Earth. But I think you agree that every day this world gets smaller, and it seems to me more than ever we need to find ways to get along.”

He, Chris, and Dr. Mandaville took a few questions and said no comment to those involving the technical aspects of the craft. Boarding, they closed the door, and then the GEM was gone.

The clamor over the next week was, as expected, specials with experts trying to explain how the craft worked. Some explanations were so preposterous that Chris and Ellis hurt themselves laughing.

Dlrow Wen’s goal was to use the craft for carrying power modules and other freight, and they accomplished that. Power plant creation accelerated, and by the end of the year they hoped to top a hundred new energy plants, replacing the worst polluting plants in the US.

Matt had to fend off a request from the military and NASA for technology, but this time the White House ran interference.

***

Another event took place just a month later. The Inter-mole labs working with Ellie and Ling developed a variation of the DNA treatment. Instead of perpetually restoring the body, this special DNA molecule, carried by nanobots, was specifically designed to search the body for selected types of cancer. It would penetrate the cancerous cell, stop its replication, and sometimes reverse the cancer.

They ran clinical trials at Wheatley and Baylor under Ellie’s careful watch, and the only patients not cured were those in advanced stages where their bodies were already failing.

***

It seemed there was no end to the good things until one day an unexpected news story caught Matt off guard. It was plastered on the third page of a St. Louis newspaper.

Matt glanced at it, passed it by, then realized the seriousness of the headline: “Elders of the Evangelical Union have condemned Matthew Lehman and his technologies, labeling him the Anti-Christ.”

Matt read the article and got the picture. The Evangelical Union was a national organization of the most conservative and extreme evangelical pastors. Their reasons were irrational, and the assumptions and links they drew to scripture were ludicrous.

Matt recognized it as garbage, but he thought it could turn into trouble, putting members of Dlrow Wen at risk.

He shared the article with Ling, who understood his concern.

Matt called Charlotte Martin, his all-time favorite shrink, to see what she thought. Charlotte agreed the statements were unfounded, but also believed people like this sometimes do extreme things to maintain control over their congregations or followers. She agreed it posed a danger to Dlrow Wen members and notifying the members was a prudent move.

Charlotte copied the article from the internet and found other information about the conference that produced this statement. The group had an executive council, and four of the five members had voted to make the declaration.

Charlotte sent the information and a summary to the entire Dlrow Wen body, now numbering over a thousand and growing daily. She took on the task of finding out everything she could about these men and their organization.

***

June 2015, a news flash destabilized the world. A radical Middle Eastern country had acquired nuclear weapons. They claimed to have working bombs and rockets and could build more.

Matt reviewed the story and concluded that instability was high enough that the likelihood of weapons use was real. He wasn’t alone. Almost immediately, he received messages from over a hundred Dlrow Wen members about the situation, asking whether there was a recommended action. Matt asked everyone to share ideas before taking any action.

The entire world seemed concerned. Everyone knew the country was trying to acquire nuclear weapons, but nobody thought they were this close.

Senator Coldwell messaged Matt, asking him to call. It had been a while since they had talked, and he felt it would be best to see and hear the Senator on his personal PCM and not just type messages.

“Good morning, Saulman,” Matt cheerfully greeted him.

“Hello, Matt,” The Senator replied. “I guess you’ve seen the news about the Middle East?”

“Yes, I think it caught everyone a bit off guard.”

“You think?” the Senator said. “More like, caught us with our collective pants down. Matt, I wanted to talk to you because the Administration has asked me to reach out and ask if you have any technology in your cupboard that could keep these people from blowing up half the Mediterranean. I don’t know what your assessment is, but the CIA and most intelligence organizations across the world say it is likely these people will start making demands, and when they don’t get what they want. Well, I think you get the picture.”

Matt saw the same scenario and confirmed to Saulman that he agreed with the analysis.

“You know we have things we could adapt to stop a missile or a truck. We might be able to disarm a warhead. I think this is going to take several heads to come up with an answer, and even then we have to have a method completely in accordance with our core beliefs. We cannot make an arbitrary decision to take unprovoked aggressive actions.”

The Senator was quiet for a few seconds. “The Administration has also asked about a cooperative effort with the UN. Might working through the UN be a possibility?”

Matt connected the dots, and a recognized a side issue. “Saulman, you know this evangelical group is trying to paint us in a nasty way. Normally I wouldn’t worry about it, but if we get directly involved in the Middle East and are effective in obtaining peace, then they will be off to the races with their rhetoric.”

“I know, Matt, but I think having nuclear bombs exploding is the greater of two evils.

“Saulman, what if we neutralized the threat with no one knowing?”

“You mean as if the threat never really existed?”

“No, more like they thought they had the weapons, but they were really duds?”

“It would make them look foolish,” Saulman chuckled.

“Saulman,” Matt said, “advise the Government that we’ll review the issue but will not violate our core beliefs.”

Matt recruited several of the brightest people in Dlrow Wen to achieve an undetectable method of armament.

***

Dr. Ellis Mandaville, Chris Martin, and Suchet Kumar were not among those tasked with the Middle East issue.

They had continuously worked at the silo, developing designs and technology for the Starship with intermittent help from Ellie and Doug.

Finally, in mid-June, they felt they had most of the design complete and were ready to turn it over to the island for fabrication.

The timing was good. Charley had completed construction of the Starport’s main room and was carving out the support rooms.

The “Fantastic Four” and Dr. Mandaville visited the island, bringing with them the detailed plans and specifications for the Starship.

The quest would be a massive undertaking, and the required human resources would stretch the people who now called the island home. A general call went to the whole membership of Dlrow Wen to see who could come and help. In short order, they had over two hundred additional people commit to the project. In less than three weeks, the various tasks were manned and in production.

Most of the one hundred Dlrow Wen members who had started the city in Bangladesh were still on site, working away. Some had gone home, replaced by new people.

In mid-June, the city’s first level was complete. Measuring two miles square, it began thirty-five feet above the ground and included housing for eight thousand, plus an array of gardens, hydroponics, and all the critical support facilities.

Harry and Annabel Morgan were on site with a medical team establishing medical facilities. They were changing these people’s lives forever. Throughout the process, they provided education, from basic skills to advanced studies.

Schools on the first level were state-of-the-art, with internet, libraries, and the best teachers they could recruit. The new residents named the city “Haven Hope.”

Lenny and the rest of the Dlrow Wen crew enforced the basic beliefs of Dlrow Wen. No weapons were allowed in the city. They emphasized the value of human life daily and mandated peaceful dispute resolution.

Any arguments or acts involving violence were brought before a council of the residents. Perpetrators could make amends or be cast out of the community.

It became very clear, very fast, that violence of any kind was a quick ticket back to the jungle. The behaviors of those who inhabited the city were changing, and their expectations that all new members of the community would live in peace were a motivator more than Lenny could have ever expected.

Lenny was already working on the second level when a visit from the local authorities surprised the Dlrow Wen crew. It seemed the local governor was demanding they pay taxes on the land, and the assessed value was astronomical. They also blockaded the site.

Lenny advised the governor he would have to contact his people to approve funds of that magnitude. He used his PCM and reached Matt and Joe, explaining the Governor’s demands.

Over the next few days, messages and phone calls rocketed back and forth between the Dlrow Wen and the National offices of Bangladesh.

It took a little more than a week to appoint a new governor.

His first order of business was to visit the city. He apologized for his predecessor’s ill-advised behavior. He promised his support and supplied trucks and other aid to help with the project.

Lenny was sure they would have level two done by Thanksgiving.

Dlrow Wen surpassed the 2000-member mark in July. Emphasis was placed on serving. Some served in their communities, but many chose a Dlrow Wen mission. Hundreds of members asked to participate in the Dlrow Wen missions.

***

In a general conference, they determined to start another project and targeted an island in the Philippines, near Manila.

Joe negotiated an arrangement with the government. Dlrow Wen would lease the island for two hundred years, solely to provide a place for people living in slums and ghettos in Manila and the surrounding area.

This would help the government relocate these people and sell the slum land to developers.

A Dlrow Wen crew of three hundred began the project in August with a design for a city of two hundred thousand people. It was the most ambitious humanitarian project to date, to be done in five phases over five years.

***

Others in the Dlrow Wen family research a means to neutralize the nuclear threat in the Middle East. They succeeded.

Using the latest Dlrow Wen communication satellite designs, the team repurposed units, fitting some with sensors capable of detecting microscopic levels of rocket propellant, radioactive emissions, and mass anomalies. The units were roughly a foot in diameter, with light and EM energy-absorption coatings.

Deployed at night, they crisscrossed the country, effectively making a complete survey every week.

They had successfully located and identified six rockets with nuclear warheads, fifty-nine rockets with conventional warheads, a storage bunker with three more nuclear warheads, and five locations where various phases of the production and assembly were taking place.

The armed rockets were mounted on trucks in underground bunkers, which allowed them to be rolled out, fueled, and fired in about twenty-five minutes.

Phase two of the neutralization system adapted a converter into one satellite. The unit could bore a hole through the Earth and come up under the rocket in their storage bunkers. Once they accessed the rockets, phase three went into effect.

The converter made three precision holes in the rockets’ casings at critical locations. Another unit then fitted specially designed pods into each opening, matching the rocket’s exterior.

It was a bonus for Matt to get this news on his birthday. In fact, the last several months had rolled past with almost no real issues to deal with, and as Matt and Ling lay in bed together that night, he asked her how she perceived “destiny.”

They had talked many times about how things had fallen into place, as if guided by an unseen power. Ling reminded him that this feeling went back to the first time she heard his voice and had never left.

More now than ever, she believed they were fulfilling a purpose and that she, for one, was excited about where that purpose took them.

Matt called Saulman the next day and covered a variety of Dlrow Wen issues. He concluded the call with, “Don’t lose sleep over rumblings in the desert. Sometimes things just don’t work like they were intended.”

Saulman understood. “I’ll contact the Administration and encourage them to continue all negotiating efforts, as if the threat still exists.”

“True,” Matt said, “but it’s also important that others keep cool heads and don’t initiate conflict.”

***

In November, right on schedule, the second level of ‘Haven Hope’ was completed and another eight thousand residents were living progressively in peace.

Charlotte made several trips to observe the psychology of the process and noted that once they removed fear of hunger, fear of violence, and fear of nature, the people’s needs and desires shifted from self-preservation to outreach to others.

Lenny’s hard line at the beginning regarding weapons and violence had established a standard, and it was now the accepted norm.

Existing residents counseled the new arrivals, practicing tolerance and understanding. Learning took place mostly by example.

She drafted an overall report, and the general membership of Dlrow Wen adopted it as the blueprint for future refuge developments.

***

On December 10th, a major gathering took place on the island. For six months, hundreds of people had poured their hearts and souls into a project they believed would change the world forever.

They acknowledged that many Dlrow Wen projects had changed the world. This one was different because it held the promise of going to new worlds, different worlds, and creating colonies and homesteads for humanity where before it had only been dreamed.

The island looked almost unchanged from the outside, but within the rock of the three islands, continuous expansion had created twenty-eight levels. It had truly become a country unto itself. Labs and facilities could create everything from microscopic elements to massive slabs of metal that were pure and ready for the most sophisticated machine tools in the world. Charley’s vision had surpassed his wildest dream, and Dlrow Wen was a fully self-sustained nation.

Starship-1 was radically different. Instead of the oblong shape like the Gems, it was perfectly round. Huge, almost two and fifty feet in diameter.

The hull was black like the other Dlrow Wen craft, but the exterior material was an upgraded Carbon-Taladium alloy.

Taladium was a new metal contrived by Adil Patel, a metallurgist who had joined the team on the island in 2013.

The material was a natural superconductor, and once in the frozen temperatures of space, its conduction characteristics increased almost thirty-fold.

The Starship’s shell was almost eight feet thick, with embedded power systems for propulsion and shields.

The new power modules were the latest design, and again, power output soared tenfold. They had sixty-three power modules for propulsion alone, and the projected maximum speed was an unimaginable one-hundred-twenty-two thousand miles per second.

One of the team members working on the ship wanted to mount an old fashion analog speedometer and just add a bunch of zeros to the numbers, but that was nixed.

They divided the interior into seven decks. Because of the globe’s shape, the top and bottom decks were the smallest, and the middle deck was the largest. They subdivided the decks into control, engineering, labs, life support, living, exercise, medical, storage, and communications.

These were the major divisions, and each had subsections. A crew of thirty would man the Starship.

Dr. Mandaville had every instrument and piece of equipment he could imagine, enabling him to collect the information needed to complete his theories on faster-than-light travel.

It would take another month to fit the craft out, but the major power and control systems were online and tested in every way except actual flight.

For two days, everyone pored over the starship, checking systems, and critiquing every aspect of each component. They compiled and documented forty-eight modifications that would enhance everything from comfort to the craft’s performance.

On day three, the team determined to do a test drive. Piloting was by Winston Mandaville and Martha Emmons.

With a full contingent, the ship gently lifted clear of its supports and glided horizontally into an adjacent chamber. Massive doors closed between the rooms, and seawater slowly flooded the space.

Winston and Martha carefully adjusted the craft to compensate for the buoyancy, keeping the ship centered. Once the chamber filled with water, another door a mile above slowly opened, and the pilots carefully guided the ship up into the open ocean offshore from the big island.

They remained in constant communication with the control center on the island. Except for Matt and Ling, everyone had responsibilities on board, monitoring, inspecting, and documenting every aspect of the vessel.

The craft broke the surface and hundreds of people on the island lined the hills to see this wonder. Even a mile away, it looked immense.

Winston halted ascent to allow a full rundown of all systems. Crews confirmed all systems were operational. A dozen items were not optimal, but none were critical. The checks took about twenty minutes.

Dr. Mandaville whispered to his grandson, “To the moon.”

Martha plotted the coordinates, and Winston set the antigravity drives to progressive acceleration.

The craft lifted higher and soon disappeared from view. Within minutes, it hurtled ever faster through space. The moon was but thirty minutes away.

On the island, the control room monitored the performance data. Once or twice, flashes occurred near the ship, and what looked like a momentary comet trail appeared behind.

They arrived at the moon and decelerated rapidly. Martha placed them in an orbit, making sure they did not cross the face of the moon.

After twenty minutes of running complete systems checks, Ellis instructed, “Take us 5000 miles perpendicular to the median plane of the planets.”

This took only ninety-three seconds at reduced speed. They again halted, rechecking the critical propulsion systems and flight controls.

Continuing perpendicular to the plane, they began a more aggressive acceleration, and in thirty-five minutes and sixteen seconds, they reached a speed of 123,634 miles per second.

Dr. Mandaville had them continue at this rate for five minutes before commanding the ship to stop.

The images on the view screens were unbelievable. Chris had rotated the view back to their solar system. They spotted the sun. The gas giants were but tiny dots, and they could not see the Earth.

“Let’s get to work,” Suchet said.

The crew plunged into processing massive amounts of data, and after several minutes, Chris advised they were 167.3634 million miles from Earth.

You would have expected clapping and backslapping, but instead, stunned silence filled the bridge of the ship.

“Dr. Mandaville,” Matt said, “I think I speak on behalf of all here and those of our teams on Earth that this is your moment.

“If not for you, we would still putter around on fossil fuels. You have succeeded beyond all our hopes and infused us with a desire to go even further!”

Applause erupted. Ellis felt deeply moved. He sat thinking of his colleagues’ rejection of his ideas many years ago, and now each one fulfilled before his eyes in his lifetime. It was more than he had ever hoped for.

It took a minute or two before he composed his thoughts. “My friends, only a small part of this is mine. What we have accomplished is the soul and effort of many, and it would not be possible if even one did not do their part. This is truly an endeavor of community and family, and even though this is wonderful, we have more to do.”

He faced Winston and Martha. “So, my dear Miss Martha, please plot a course home, and Winston, bring us to rest safely beneath our island in the sea.”

The trip back took twenty-two minutes and twenty-nine seconds. They had to recalculate Earth’s position to locate the island. They waited thirty-eight minutes for the water to be pumped from the entry chamber, and Martha and Winston maneuvered the craft back into the spaceport and docked it perfectly.

Ling gazed at Matt, speaking to his mind, ‘We really were there, 167 million miles from Earth, and back again?’

The immensity of the accomplishment flooded through Matt’s mind. All the planets were within easy reach, and the stars were possibly…just around the corner.

He whispered to Ling, “More than ever, I believe this is where we are supposed to be, and what we are to be doing.”

The review of the ship and control room data revealed several issues to address, but none were life-threatening.

The next step was to finish fitting the ship with long-term life support capabilities and prepare for an extended mission. Another task was to select the crew and their backups.