Prologue

When Korea sent a series of unmanned crafts to Mercury, and Britain launched the Queen Mary and three crewmen to the gas giants, and when South Africa joined the race with a telescopic expedition to Neptune, everyone wondered what the United States was. After Japan announced a joint effort with China to send men on the nine-and-a-half journey to Pluto, the media really began to pressure the former world-power. Where was the U.S. of A. in the second space race? What was going on? Were they waiting for news from the foreigners? Were they not participating at all? Or, the million-dollar question: what were they planning?

They weren’t planning to tell anyone.

So when they launched Zeus later in the decade, they picked a remote place to launch it and kept this location secret. It was a better-kept secret than the atom bomb; southeast Texas. But an illegal Mexican immigrant escaping in a sewer heard the launch and thought it was the Imígre police. He came out of the pipe with his hands up, but instead saw the smoky train of the largest rocket mankind has launched. When the police did catch him, his story dumbfounded the world, leaving him innocent and forgotten.

The media was on fire, like never before. “Yes,” were the words quoted over and over again from Dr. Joseph Plovis. “We sent up a rocket. And I don’t have the authority to say any more.” But he did. A few months later, a harried Dr. Plovis screamed at a reporter, “yes! Fine, tell them we sent it to the Belt! FINE! Read my lips: we’re sending it to the star! Leave me alone!”

Yes, the United States had made the breakthrough. But the media digested it and spat out a blunder, an embarrassing secret mission that would, like the atom bomb, sour the United States’ image. Was it? Of course, no one had that answer. And no one would for 120,000 years; enough time for that rocket to get to then nearest star, take a few polaroids, and return.