The Earth hung silently in the stillness of space. Many a poet had described its beauty as it sat there in all its calmness, a blue orb surrounded by the cold expanse. George Archer did not share their view. For all its outer serenity, the Earth was a crowded, chaotic place. He found much more beauty in the stars. They were always in the same place, forever static even as the planets turned and the people moved and the clouds glided and blossomed above the bright blue.

Looking away from the suspended sphere, George studied the vast metal column that floated nearby. It gleamed in the sun, rotating slowly. Shuttles and transport drones hovered and whizzed around it, docking and releasing from ports across the titanic structure.

His own shuttle approached the column. It was a utilitarian little spaceplane, with scarcely enough room for five people. He sat alone. The floor was bare, a simple metal plate, but the rest of the cabin was clear quartz glass, giving him a full view around the craft. This feature was unfortunately wasted on him at the moment, as most of the provided view was taken up by the hulk of ugly metal ahead.

The spacecraft looked rather like an hourglass, widening at the extremities. The two larger ends were vaguely cone-shaped, flaring out like bells. They were each capped by five massive engine nozzles, each one a black hole set in the flat base of the bell. The structures appeared to serve as twin propulsive blocks, pointed in opposite directions. One of the two was painted a brilliant blue, while the other was maroon, almost red. Between the engine blocks was a basic column, its surface riddled with antennae and radiators. It was much smaller than the engine blocks and shone bright silver. If memory served, this was the habitation module, the area where the cargo and passengers were to be held. A vividly blue triangle, with a red streak running boldly through the middle, was etched on one side. George guessed the whole ship was approximately five kilometers in length.

It was the EXN-150 003 Facem, a newly constructed spacecraft designed to travel between the stars. More primitive versions of the vehicle had already taken small crews to Alpha Centauri and back, but this one, twice as large as any other spacecraft, was made to finally spread humanity's reach beyond the light of the sun. It was a city-builder, with the capacity to carry two-thousand people to some distant, life-bearing world.

The shuttle continued to float toward one of the many docking ports situated along the outer surface of the habitation module. Periodically, a burst of pale gas flashed at the nose of the shuttle, bringing it to a gradual halt. After an excruciatingly slow final approach, a click and hiss resounded from the front of the vessel. He was docked.

George unstrapped from his seat near the back of the shuttle and pushed off with his arms, soaring with ease through the nil-gravity cabin. He quickly reached the nose of the spacecraft, where he expertly climbed through the airlock and into the transfer chamber. Once through, the airlock swerved back into a closed position, hissing as airflow was cut off.

George waited a moment inside the pristine transfer chamber as the pressure equalized with barely an audible whisper. It still smelled of plastic and paint, a perfect cube of white without dirt or smear. Clean and new.

The whisper of air tapered off after a few minutes and the door to the rest of the starship slid open. Outside, there was more blank plastic, stretching on in a slightly curving corridor. Rungs of silver metal jutted at regular intervals out of the corridor, with an occasional dark patch of Velcro interrupting the pure white.

Using the rungs, George pulled himself into the passage, soaring through with a grace that spoke of experience. The corridor curved down, following the arc of the cylinder, so George occasionally pushed off the "ceiling" to match the curvature.

George was quickly met with a simple hatch in the "floor" of the corridor, which he angled for and grabbed as he passed. George threw the hatch open with a grunt and climbed his way through.

Within, he found a room bustling with activity. People hurried about. Some collided with each other as they soared through the open air. Others were staring intently at screens and workstations, tapping feverishly at their consoles and tablets. The walls and ceiling were, of course white, and heavily populated by screens that spewed data unendingly. This was the bridge. At the center of the room, a woman sat in a large chair, looking uptight and somewhat regal. Several officers had gathered around her, talking over each other in urgent voices.

George approached her despite himself, and, after a long wait, was eventually able to address her directly. She turned to him, her face wooden. Admiral Caroline Pierce responded: "We were beginning to think you had deserted, Mr. Archer. I suggest you get to your position quickly; we're already behind schedule".

George saluted dejectedly and flew off. The admiral returned his insolence with a glare, but was soon distracted by a whining Lieutenant. George found his place, marked with his ID number, far off in a corner.

Pushing off from the "ceiling", he made his way down to the control station. George was the ship's primary navigator. He made sure that the spacecraft was pointed in the right direction, that its trajectory was accurate, and that it was exactly as far away from Earth as it should be. An important job, perhaps, but George felt none of the pressure that came with it.

George Archer got to work immediately. After years of guiding freighters and tugs through their missions, he had gathered the skill to be competent enough. Many would say that he was indeed one of the best, a natural, but George thought nothing special of it. He calibrated all the instruments at hand, made sure they read the correct values, that they all reacted properly to simulated changes in position and velocity. With nothing else to do until launch, he turned on the frontal camera.

It showed nothing but the blank, star-studded darkness, interrupted momentarily by the darting streaks of drones and shuttles. Each of the distant suns seemed to glow in its own hue. Some were white, some seemed to be yellow, others a deep red. A few flaunted an electric blue, or glowed warmly with the orange of a burning flame. The bright points seemed to dance in the display, each vibrating, swaying one way or another, somehow turning random motions into the ballet of a thousand flames.

A sharp, whining alarm tore through George's reverie. The admiral immediately called out, "Look sharp, crew. Final preparations start now."

On the camera, the streams of smaller craft began to peter out, and the stars, alone, glimmered in the window. The last of the transport shuttles undocked and roared away. A voice began counting down from ten minutes, and the crew hushed into tense quietude. George welcomed it, and settled into his seat, waiting for the moment.

"There it is. Remember, we've got a few thousand people in this tin can, and any error on your part is going to mean big trouble for everyone. Now get ready. This could be...rough."

With the crew ready and the passengers safely stowed away, there was nothing but silent tension until the countdown reached zero. At the one minute mark, a simple orthographic diagram of the entire spacecraft appeared in the top left of his screen, along with basic statistics regarding it. The numbers meant little to Archer, and he quickly refocused his attention on the camera view. The last seconds were tense, but George felt nothing but vague apprehension. If he were to die in the next few minutes, it would happen far too quickly for him to feel it or even realize it was going to happen. He decided not to worry.

In an alarmingly short time, the clipped burst of an alarm sounded again, and George was rather unpleasantly startled.

The noise and movement was sudden and unexpectedly intense. The entire crew was thrown into their seats, experiencing a transition from nil gravity to a full g almost instantly. The shaking started as soon as gravity reasserted itself, followed by a loud, deep groaning. George, momentarily caught off guard, was now studying his monitor closely, making sure the structure was still moving properly. The camera stabilized itself after a moment, once again showing the frozen star field. George worked quickly and efficiently, correcting the tiny deviations in altitude as they came and making sure the ship's trajectory was still as projected.

After several tense minutes, the shaking died down, leaving only the pressing gravity and the deep groan. Eventually, the ship was stable enough for the flight computers to begin taking over, and, one by one, the human crew began to lose their purpose in the continued functionality of the spacecraft. Eventually, everyone was standing in open applause for the successful launch. George stepped away from his terminal, now firmly standing on what he could have called the wall less than a minute before. He passed through the throng of yammering humans and made his way out the automatic door.