Forward!

I don't know. What does that look like to you, Mitch? I think it's a fizgig, but I can't be sure. A space sextant? Nah, no way. Never a sextant.

Oh, hi, folks. Big Green, here. Yup... we're on our way, once again, to sunny Aldebaran. (Since Aldebaran is, in fact, a sun, it's always sunny there.) Turned out old Dimitri had a few units within our price range. Of course, Mitch has never driven a Soyuz (they're all standard transmission, you see), but our own Johnny White has volunteered to sit in on the flight controls. Got a pretty good deal on this old clunker, I must admit. I think it may have been part of the Apollo Soyuz mission, but I'm not certain. (At least parts of it might have been part of that mission.... hopefully the good parts.) But it's sealed, it holds an atmosphere, it's space-worthy... it's sold! Though I think Marvin (my personal robot assistant) may be becoming unduly attached to the navigational computer. (Unseemly.)

Okay, so how, you may ask, can we possibly use a 70s-80s vintage vehicle to travel light-years through interstellar space in anything less than millions of years? Good question. Real good question. (I'm thinking.) Quite simple, actually - our resident mad scientist Mitch Macaphee has been hard at work modifying the used Soyuz (or "Soyuzed", if you will), hopping it up like he did with his '57 Chevy Bel Aire back in the day. You should have seen old Mitch - he was throwing headers and chrome exhaust on the old Russian capsule like a madman, cranking up its horsepower to the point where it could make such a titanic journey in such a brief period of time. (I speak figuratively, of course. The "headers" are actually ion reactors and the "chrome exhaust" kinetic force generators. Those are, in fact, what Mitch added to his Bel Aire, as well.) Not sure if it's going to be enough, but I guess we'll know when we get there (or not).

Who's doing the navigating? Well, I'm not real good at finding my way from place to place in the universe, I'll be the first to admit. And we have others in our ship's complement that are even less talented in this area than I. Still, I think between all of us we can probably find a red giant star that is relatively close to our own solar system. In fact, it should be pretty hard to miss. It's not like we're looking for dark matter, or some remote galactic body, like that foreboding place where sFshzenKlyrn, our perennial sit-in guitarist, comes from. (Zenon.... not a real good place if you like breathing oxygen.) I've always been a big fan of just pointing the ship at a random object and firing up the engines, but Mitch tells me that's not the best method. It's kind of like shooting skeet (not that I've ever done that, but.... it's kind of like it) or like commanding a missile defense battery. Except that this might actually work. (Maybe.)

As I said, we'll know when we get there. Though at this rate, we'll probably need Mitch's time distortion device to catch up with our scheduled performances. (Our contractual pot of coffee is probably cold as a stone by now.)