Paula stood at one of the few observation ports on the outer ring, gazing out at the stars of the Milkyway. There was no sensation of movement, but the scene continually moved from right to left. It was one of her favorite pastimes, to simply stand by the viewports and look longingly out at stars. She always hoped that one day she would live close to one out there, somewhere.

None of the viewports ever showed Sol. It was hidden by the floor of the thirty mile tube that she stood in. She had been standing there for about an hour, when Fred's reflection appeared in the port beside hers. She saw that he had a couple of folding chairs with him, and he set them up right behind her. He gently guided her to the chair, and she sat down.

The tube was about twenty-five feet wide, and the viewports had been built into a small room in the along the outer wall.. The entire outer wall of the room was transparent steel, which gave the impression of standing in space, especially since the lighting was so dim to be almost nonexistent.

Fred sat down and picked up a pack that he had also carried with him. He reached in and pulled out a bottle. The label was a match to the Scotch Whiskey they had shared so long ago, overlooking Honolulu. He reached into the pack and pulled out two glasses. He poured them each a shot. She didn't down hers immediately. Rather, she held it up and looked at the liquid, which turned the starlight a dim amber color.

"I remember that night you had a bottle of this in Honolulu. I wondered how you had it. It was an artifact from so long ago. This bottle is almost twice as old."

"You told me that night that I hadn't murdered my brother. It took me a long time to believe you, but I finally did. Now I believe you even more."

"There's nothing left on that planet. Do we have the right to colonize other worlds? Maybe we should do as N21 and N22 have done. Just turn Neo22 out of the galaxy and fire our engines until they're out of fuel, to just spend forever between the stars."

He didn't respond for quite some time. He gazed out and finally said, "You don't believe that, Paula. You fought for our survival more than anyone. You were the president when this happened."

"Yeah. I really did well at that," she said dryly. She downed the scotch, and held her glass out for more. Fred almost refused, as he didn't want her to get depressed, but finally poured another shot for each of them.

"You did great, Paula. Nobody could have done a better job than you did."

"You don't believe that, Fred," she said, echoing his sentence back to him.

"In fact, my dear, I do."

"Uh huh. Name one person who couldn't have done better."

"Fredrik Freeman."

She didn't respond to that for several minutes. She just gazed at the stars again. Finally, she said simply, "Bullshit."

He downed his shot, turned to face her, and said, "Not very ladylike, is it?"

She snorted. "I'm not a lady."

"Bullshit," he returned, then they both laughed. When the laughter died down, he took her hand in his, and faced her. Very gently, he turned her face toward his and told her, "You are the most beautiful woman on this ship, and I love you more each day. You are brilliant, self assured, sexy... I can't think of anything you're lacking."

She kissed him, then leaned her head on his shoulder. They stayed there for a long time, holding each other in the light of the stars.

A few days later, the command crew had a meeting.

"We've waited another ten thousand years since Centaurus left," she told them. "I'm not a quitter, but perhaps it's time we admit that N22 isn't returning."

"And do what?" Rhoda asked. "None of the planets have turned out to be what we need to survive. Famolhaut IV is setting out across the galaxy, scanning planets as they go."

Gina backed up her wife. "Mom, we have no place to go."

"We can help look."

"We have twenty sister ships out there, looking for habitable planets," Fred told her. "They are way ahead of us. When N22 gets here…"

"If it gets here,"

"When," he said forcefully. "When... N22 gets here, we'll need to assist them to get up to speed. We'll be their only chance to get to our destination."

"Fred, the people on this shop deserve better than to sit here waiting for something that may never happen."

He knew that she was right, yet there was something she wasn't seeing. "Paula, they chose this, just like you did. Just like I did. The people on N22 deserve us waiting for them. They chose to do what they did. Whether they find N21 or not, they're heroes. That's their nature."

"Mom," Rhoda said, "Think of this. Willem did not think twice about abandoning the people of N21 to flying forever in between galaxies. Gina and I made the decision that we could never be like him. How could we ever face ourselves if we did the same?"

"You told me that I wasn't a murderer, Paula. I am here for that reason. I'm not. I will not do what my brother did. His decision was to abandon them. My decision is to rescue them."

Paula looked at each of her families faces and saw the determination written in each, that made her realize it was permanent. They would not go to a final destination without N22. It simply would not happen.

And so, for another eight hundred years, Neo22 waited

The wait abruptly ended all at once when they tracked N22 heading toward Earth. Gina was in command and called Paula to the command center.

When Paula entered to center she saw that Gina was trying to warn the much smaller ship away from Earth, but they didn't seem to hear. Neo22 watched as they passed the limit of the 'Total Fun' effect.

Suddenly, N22s engines fired, catapulting the ship away from the planet.

At that moment, Neo22 lost sight of Earth, but N22 was heading their way. What was happening on the smaller ship was anyone's guess. They still were now replying to any signal, but were skimming very near the star. Their engines came on for a moment and Paula watched in horror as she realized what they were going to do.

Their course would fling them away from the sun in an ever slowing and widening orbit which would allow Venus' gravity to quickly grab them and fling them into an arc right into Earth's atmosphere, to change course again, heading in a gentle curve back the way they had come.

It was an incredibly complex navigational masterpiece, but they were intending to head directly out of the galaxy!

"Rhoda, please plot us a course to intersect theirs. I know it will take us awhile, but we know where they are now!"

Rhoda was beaming as she started working on her computer. Paula stepped up behind her daughter and nodded her approval as she watched. All of the gravity inside the planetary system made things complex.

The closeness of N22's flightplan to the sun would make any rendezvous there impossible. Frankly, they had no idea if there was enough fuel left for them to change course. Paula knew how close the fuel of that ship had been figured, and she doubted that there was.

Rhoda was setting their courses to intersect well beyond the Oort Cloud. Neo22 would actually come closer to the sun than its counterpart, but would shoot across a very small amount of the corona, to be caught much more by Venus. It would then head toward the rendezvous point.

"Perfect," Paula told her daughter as she saw the course come alive on the screen. It took her a moment to order it, however. While it ended with them intersecting, this would be dangerous. The course was theoretically possible, but it was closer than any sane person would want to get to a star. Hell with it, she thought. "Do it."

Rhoda committed them by pressing a button, and the engines fired. The ship slowed allowing their fall around the star to become stronger. A moment later, the thrusters realigned them, and the engines fired again, making them accelerate their fall while at the same time, angling them to where they would miss the surface and just barely skim the edge of the sun's atmosphere.