"Space Oddity" David Bowie
"I think my spaceship knows which way to go," said Basrat, as she tapped the wrong icon for our solar system destination.
I sighed. I nodded to Jorab, who voided the entry, and entered the correct destination. The ship vibrated as it entered hyperspace. The stars stretched out as the ship moved between space and hyperspace before settling down.
Basrat stared at the screen and turned to us. "Captain, the ship didn't take the coordinates I entered."
I said quietly, "Those were the wrong coordinates, Bas. We're going to Wellspring, the mother planet. You selected Arcon VII, which is all underwater."
She stared at me, then the console, and lastly the screen. "Oh, really?" she shrugged. "They look alike." Jorab snorted.
They don't look alike to a Spacer who wants to live to get home to Sciona, the Fatherland, I didn't scream. It would go in one ear, rattle around, and if it didn't get stuck in fluff, out the other.
Basrat, a typical parn, was not included on this mission for her intelligence, her astrospace skills, or her explorer abilities. All were well below the minimum required for the Space Service. Oddly, she was here mostly because of her parn qualities. Like most parn types, she was used to getting her way as many people, actually, nearly everyone, spoiled her in their admiration for her beauty, charm, and warm personality. Unlike so many parn types, she was an empath, actually caring for the people she met. That was why we had her along. I knew she was very good at interacting with aliens, and very beautiful, so I tolerated her parnhead comments. If only she knew when to keep her full, lush lips shut.
"I'll actually see the Mother Planet, Wellspring." She grinned widely, beautiful white teeth shining. She rubbed her hands. "The planet we left when we destroyed its environment all those years ago."
Nine-hundred-seventy-three thousand, one month, and five days, to be exact. We kept count.
"We'll see what Wellspring is like now, and what the sister planet has become since the very first diaspora fled the destruction there." She sighed. "Our people, who traveled into space, finding Sciona, will meet our cousins and welcome them to our Alliance," she said, enraptured by her voice, as though she were reciting the great deeds of a hero. "They'll bring their learning, their culture, their history, to us, and we'll share ours with them." She stared out the view screen at the flashes and glimmers of hyperspace as though adding up the wonders we'd find on the home star system.
"Where was I?" she asked, giving us a brilliant smile. The glowing sparks in her hair, typical of a natural-born parn, were dazzling. "Oh, Wellspring. When will we get there?"
"Tomorrow, 1930 hours," I said for the fourth time that day.
Wellspring. The mother planet, the homeland, abandoned all those years ago. In a few centuries, our industrialization advanced, destabilizing the environment. We destroyed the planet, raiding its resources without replacing them, polluting, destroying the environment as the planet heated up steadily year after year, decade after decade, until all our scientists and all our renewal efforts couldn't reverse it.
The Lords and Ladies decided we would build a fleet for interstar travel, and send a tiny group of settlers, a mere 25,000, hoping to reach the habitable planet circling the Red Cat Star. Another group of pioneers would emigrate to the sister planet, the next one out in the habitable zone of our system. They would rebuild our civilization, improve interstar travel, and join us. Only 75,000 Wellspringers could go, selected from 10,000,000 by a lottery arranged by needed skills and education.
Our group left first, after days of goodbyes. We found that our early Spacer technology was not advanced enough to be accurate. Instead of arriving at the Red Cat Star in 17 Wellspring years, we reached another system in 1075 years. We were lost. It was another 970,000 years before we developed accurate interstar travel and explored our bit of the spiral. Last year we found the coordinates for Wellspring's star. Home. The Mother Planet. Our mission was to return to Wellspring and find out what had become of it and our pioneers.
