Over 13,000 light years had been covered by the Longreach, and Commander Altsain was about to find out exactly what lay at the tip of the Orion Spur, which she had decided would be the star system FLYA DRYA DY-X B48-0.

As it turned out, there was not a great deal.

There were a few scattered planets, the most notable being a large world with high metal content. Probably interesting to engineering types and people who dig stuff out of the ground for a living, though as the world was eight times the mass of the Earth, Commander Altsain doubted they would enjoy the gravity much.

No aliens, no life, no gift shop. So, what to do but turn back and head home?

Commander Altsain did not like that idea, and still wanted to explore. But in which direction? Well, she could carry on past the Orion Spur and find out what lies between the spiral arms of the galaxy. Or she could travel to the galactic rim, which was close (actually, it was the edge of a spiral arm that was close – the actual rim where the stars end was many thousands of light years further out, so that idea was quickly scotched).

In the end, she decided to travel to a nebula. She had never been to a nebula before, and they seemed, well, colourful.

The Seagull Nebula looked quite large and it was sort of on the way back to the core systems so, based on no other criteria, the course was set. Another 298 jumps and 11,331.89 light years.

Still, that meant more exploring, and the Longreach hit pay dirt almost immediately. In the 13,000 light year voyage out to the tip of the Orion Spur, Commander Altsain had found but a single Earth-like world, the treasure of interstellar explorers. On this trip, she found one on the third jump.

And it was not to be the last by a long shot.

Then the really interesting stuff started to appear, starting with this would-be Earth-like world that, instead of blue nitrogen skies, had an atmosphere of ammonia.

There were binary water worlds (two water worlds spinning around each other, very closely, as they orbit their star), worlds with lava flows so wide they were visible from space, and little lumpy potato-like moons. There was even a small star cool enough (it was barely big enough to be called a star at all – more like a really big gas giant, way larger than Jupiter) to have a ring system of ice around it.

And then, in a system a few jumps on, there was this…

A set of binary worlds again, but this time they were rocky and both sported their own set of rings. Their axis were canted from one another and orbiting very close, creating a pleasing spectacle. Then, Commander Altsain realised one of them had its own tiny moon – she figured the view from the surface of that moon had to be most magnificent, and she quickly spun the Longreach around to land.

If only the moon had an atmosphere, that is a sunrise worth waking up to!

Commander Altsain spent quite some time on that moon, partly because there was germanium to be mined from the rocks, and some of the engineers had asked her to keep an eye out for it, but mostly because the moon had an extremely low gravity (way less than 1% of Earth’s) which meant she could get some serious air in the SRV. The commander managed to top over 80 metres in altitude, which she decided would be counted as a world record (there might not have been much competition, but the record stands).

All too soon, it was time to go, and the Longreach blasted off from the moon, the commander keeping a constant eye out of the cockpit to see the ringed planets drift by.

By now, the Longreach was making good time, but the course was far from straight. Almost the entire voyage from the tip of the Orion Spur to the Seagull Nebula was running along the gap between two spiral arms – not across, but along.

This meant that star density was very low, and the Longreach’s navigational systems had to pick their way across stars that were vaguely in the right direction, sometimes dropping to jumps of less than 20 light years. An extended patch of brown dwarfs (tiny stars that the Longreach cannot skim fuel from) caused some concern, but the ship’s fuel tank proved sufficient to leap over them to refuel at a massive class B star that made Commander Altsain feel quite insignificant.

By now, the Seagull Nebula, having been nothing more than a coloured smudge seen through the canopy of the Longreach, was beginning to grow noticeably in size.

Commander Altsain’s first nebula could only be a few more jumps away…