Chapter 1

It has been twelve years and six more children since we returned to Bortinan (EE4). We now have a thriving colony here and were looking forward to our earth brothers' arrival in about ten more years when we got the shock of all time. The Constellation and 5 huge cargo ships entered orbit. A safe orbital path I might add as we cleared out all the rocks and debris to build our defense platforms thus also giving them large free-fire zones.

When Capt. Rosewood landed in his shuttle he filled us in on all that has happened around Earth. There were riots on Beta Centauri as the government tried to institute a selective breeding program. The Government tried to put down the rebellion but in the end was overthrown and a new Peoples Republic was put in its place. The old bunch was tried for crimes against the people and was sentenced to the asteroid mines for life.

Mars got a full voting seat on the Council of Governors and promptly halted all forced immigration. The old Mars station, that I knew, was moved closer to the asteroid belt and two new stations were built at L5 and L6.

Moon base 10 was completed as were the tram tunnels between all Moon bases. Moon base 10 was built on the 'Dark' side of the Moon so that Earth-light would not interfere with astronomical observations.

The biggest thing of all was the development of an FTL engine system. It seems that some of the people that worked on the 9024 when she was there discovered a way to focus the Orlanan Gravity Drive into a beam that would open a wormhole. The original trouble was that the Orlanans had tried it but it was unstable. The guys at Space Command found that by heterodyning three drives of different frequencies focused on the same spot the wormhole could be made stable. This allowed for speeds up to about 2.5L. What really got things going was when a young engineer named Thomas Dillon discovered that by focusing the 'drive waves' on the ships own shields it allowed the ship to just slide through space/time at amounted to almost instantaneous movement. The gest is that it used gravity to warp space so that two places were in affect joined as one and all you had to do was cross the threshold between the two. Like squirting a seed from between your fingers was one crew-man's comment; it stuck, and 'Squirt Drive' is what it's called.

The Connie's crew said it took them ten days to reach the transit point and ten days to reach EE4; twenty days to cross 10.5 light years when it took me 11 years. Two of the ships with Constellation were filled with colonists and the other three with supplies.

One of the cargo ships is to be used as a tug to get Enterprise home for her refit and then return with more colonists and supplies. Capt. Rosewood informed Cmdr. Sordane and us that 9024 would also be towed to Earth for an engine refit. One of the other cargo ships would go on to Orlana to apprise then of the development of the new drive system and then would return here with colonists and supplies. Our little world was not going to be little much longer.