“i want to go with you,” Ash said.



The lead scientist working on the mother ship was named K. D. Bazinga.  She was familiar with the experience of space travel from early childhood, as her father had been an astronaut.  

Everything she knew about technology had been learned while Flash lay in suspended animation, so together they were a seamless storehouse of knowledge.  She talked Flash Meridian and Ash Lander through the finer points of the large craft and explained how the refurbished TNI would dock with it, allowing excursions to the surface of planets without landing the mother ship.



“You would be the perfect person to round out our crew,” the men said, and K. D. happily consented to join them. 



“What’s our time frame?” Flash asked.

“The mother ship had to go up in pieces and be assembled in orbit.  We’ll rendezvous with it in the TNI.  We should be ready to launch soon.” She replied.

“Where to?”  Ash asked. 

“I thought we’d head to the planet Olo,” Flash said. “the sonic pulses have intrigued me for a long time.  I’d like to know if there is any life there.”



“That’s in the Griz-boom region, said K. D., though it’s not really called that anymore. It’s just a speck in the Cornerstone constellation.”

“it was downgraded about the same time as Pluto.” Flash chimed in, impressed at K. D.’s knowledge of the heavens. 

“We’ll have to do a system scan on the TNI”, Ash added, “I have some questions about the electrical system.”



“We have a lot of work to do,” Flash agreed, anxious to move ahead with their launch. 

The following weeks went by quickly as the ground crew and astronauts performed tests on the equipment and readied themselves for the journey that lay before them.

Ash traced an intermittent electrical failure to an auto start component which left hired mechanics perplexed. “Tear it out”, Ash said. “We don’t need it”. A jumble of wire was removed from under the control panel, and the problem was solved. “It’s that much less weight we’ll be carrying, too”, he said, knowing that this would only be an issue until they were free of Earth’s  gravity.

“Auto start?” he muttered, shaking his head.  No one in the hangar claimed it as their idea. 

K. D. charted the route to Olo, scanning for asteroid concentration. The near-Earth debris would be trickier to navigate than the vastness of space along the rest of their path. 

MEANWHILE



A thriving community was established on Mars. Ash and his team had been instrumental in setting up Nomicon’s operation there a decade earlier.