Commander Altsain had an idea. A rather large idea.

She had already taken a passenger to the galactic core in the Anaconda-class Cosmos, and that had gone well. Now she started thinking about a Grand Tour – a mighty sightseeing trip visiting six different locations dotted all around the core on board a purpose-built Anaconda, the Carl Sagan.

The Carl Sagan had been built a while before, but the commander had managed to find all sorts of excuses not to take the leap into what would be an incredibly long voyage. However, a day came where no such excuse remained, so she picked the Carl Sagan up from Jameson Memorial, and travelled to the home of Cosmic Flipper Spaceways, Ito Orbital in the Rhea system.

There, she quickly found six explorers, each eager to travel to locations around the galactic core:

Rudolf O’Donnell, paying MCr49.6 to visit Red and Green Glory.

Paisley Avila, paying MCr32.4 to travel to the Dance of Cerberus.

Roland Schmidt, paying MCr38.7 to be taken to Jaques Visitor Beacon in Colonia.

Cody Rocha, paying MCr36.5 to see the Black Hole Heart.

Huey Browning, paying MCr43.2 to land on the Exotic Giant.

Rickie Mcclain, paying MCr36 to be taken to the Devil’s Dancefloor.

All in all, these passengers would be paying the best part of a quarter of a billion credits (exploration data would add a lot more to that, of course), and Commander Altsain would get to see some of the more interesting sites around the galactic core.

However, when she started plotting the journey, its scale seemed… daunting.

This would be a very, very long trip. Still, wanting to put her best foot forward, the commander launched from Ito Orbital and the Carl Sagan began the 17,500 light year journey that formed the first leg of the Grand Tour, heading for the Devil’s Dancefloor.

The Devil’s Dancefloor ended up being quite an interesting place, with four neutron stars orbiting a black hole.

There was a bit of an unfortunate bang as the Carl Sagan left witchspace and the ship lurched a little too close to the black hole, causing the passengers some consternation. However, they quickly forget their peril when they looked out of the windows of the ship to see neutron stars dancing around a black hole.

Wanting to keep to a tight schedule, the commander soon plotted a new course for the Carl Sagan, this time taking it much closer towards the galactic core, to the Black Hole Heart. Forewarned now, the commander brought the ship out of witchspace in a much smoother manner, and soon all the explorers on board were marvelling at the sight of a black hole in the centre of a planetary nebula.

The next destination filled Commander Altsain with some dread, as the location had been called the Exotic Giant. She hoped against hope that this would be some kind of weird gas giant that she could simply do a flypast of – however, this was not to be.

The Exotic Giant turned out to be a massive ball of rocky ice, and explorer Huey Browning insisted that the Carl Sagan land on this world. Commander Altsain remembered well how badly damaged the Cosmic Flipper was after it struggled to leave the gravity well of a 10g world and while the Exotic Giant was a ‘mere’ 2.2g, the Carl Sagan was a lot larger and its weak thrusters had a much lower power to mass ratio.

Tentatively, the Carl Sagan entered low orbit of the planet, and the commander manoeuvred it very slowly and very gently, bringing the Anaconda to a halt just a few kilometres from the visitor beacon.

The passengers never knew how nervous she was, and it was with some relief that the Carl Sagan completed this leg of the journey and boosted out of orbit.

The furthest point of the Grand Tour was next, the Red and Green Glory, which lay over 31,000 light years from civilised space – the furthest the commander had ever travelled.

She figured Red and Green Glory might be a type of planetary nebula, similar to the Patchwork Plains which lay spinward from the Bubble, and she was right. The Carl Sagan soared over a low gravity world as its passengers marvelled at the colourful sky above them.

A new course was plotted, and the journey seemed to be taking less time now, as every jump carried the Carl Sagan closer to civilisation and Ito Orbital – the commander felt like she was now going downhill.

Colonia would mark the final location of the Grand Tour but, between that and Red and Green Glory was the Dance of Cerberus – yet another black hole with stars closely orbiting it.

It had occurred to the commander that she could use the neutron stars there to speed up her journey to Colonia, but this was something she had never attempted before, and she did not think her passengers would enjoy the experience – to be fair, they were paying a great deal of money for a luxury journey.

Colonia was a relatively short distance from the Dance of Cerberus, but this was the one stop that made the commander the most nervous.

Each of the passengers had approached her before leaving Ito Orbital, insisting that the Carl Sagan not be scanned at any point of the journey. Now, the commander had the security forces at Ito Orbital in her pocket and they knew when to look in the other direction (some large donations had been made to their pension funds), but she had no such support in Colonia. The Carl Sagan would have to drop out of supercruise, fly past the visitor beacon outside Jaques’ station, then depart without gaining the suspicion of any security craft.

This was achieved, but the commander was a bit miffed that a) she had not been able to visit the station (this was the second time she had been there without being able to dock) and b) she had not even been able to take any good photographs, so eager she was to leave as soon as possible.

Still, explorer Roland Schmidt seemed happy enough with the results, and as he was paying nearly MCr40 for the privilege, the commander could not really argue.

Another issue she had spotted was that the Carl Sagan had no SRV on board, which made landing on planets and, well, exploring a bit moot. The Carl Sagan was a purpose-built long-ranged passenger craft, and there was no room for dalliances with interesting worlds. She began to regret bringing passengers along for this trip (though, to be fair again, she also suspected this regret would dissipate the moment they got back to Ito Orbital and paid their fares).

There were still some worlds worthy of mention on the journey back to the Bubble, however, such as this huge ammonia-world in binary orbit with a massive ice planet.

After many, many jumps, the Carl Sagan finally returned to civilised space and docked at Ito Orbital. It was at this point that Commander Altsain realised that every passenger had offered a bonus if they could get into the station without being scanned, something that had already been agreed in their original charters but the commander was more than happy to oblige – this literally doubled their fares.

So, a grand total of 76,419 light years had been covered and, with exploration data, the trip had earned the commander MCr612.

Commander Altsain was now rich!

It had been an impressive Grand Tour, with many sights the commander may never have otherwise seen, and she was glad she had embarked upon it – but it may be a little while before another trip of this magnitude is contemplated!

Besides, she must now figure out what to do with nearly a billion credits…