The third leg of the Cosmos’ grand voyage was to the Eye of Fire, the destination that the explorer Alan Robertson had chartered the ship to carry him to. Commander Altsain was keen to discover just what the Eye of Fire was…

By this time, the Cosmos was over twenty two and a half thousand light years from its starting point at Shinrarta Dehzra, and it was high above the galactic core, looking down upon a veritable maelstrom of stars.

Spending most of her time dodging black holes and neutron stars (not very useful when you need to refuel your ship), the commander saw relatively few sights of interest compared to the previous legs of the voyage. However, she did come across a pair of huge class B and A stars that fairly dazzled the cockpit of the Cosmos.

However, when the Cosmos reached a distance of 24,453 light years from home, it finally found the Eye of Fire. And Commander Altsain was a little… disappointed. At first.

The primary of the system was an MS class star, which the commander had not seen before but learned that it was a star that was nearing the end of its life. The Eye of Fire itself was a ringed gas giant. All well and pretty… but the commander had seen plenty of ringed gas giants before.

However, she soon noticed that the gas giant had an extreme axial tilt relative to its star, and it was when the commander flew the Cosmos ‘behind’ the gas giant that everything became clear.

Angled thus, the rings glow when the star is behind them, and the gas giant itself… kind of looks like a fiery eye!

The commander was quite pleased with that, and her exploring passenger announced that he was ready to return to the core systems.

Commander Altsain, however, had other ideas…