Chapter 1 

I never felt the velocity as I did that first time. As if the body was a rocket and the thrust was coming from an unknown source and the air passed and vibrations hit me and I felt the sensation of being elongated, so fearful, so expecting a monster or demon to leap out at me, so wanting to know if it were real or not. “I’m alive out here in the universe, so real!” Everything passed quickly. Then I was lingering somewhere.

I explored the planets and they were exactly as science and various probes had said they were. Some solid, some gaseous, some of the moons had ice and water. Science and documentaries had prepared me for these places and except for the extraordinary feeling that I was there, on the surface next to a great mountain in stillness a still mind can’t deal with, nothing was really interesting. I could look out and spot earth, sometimes I could see the polar caps, sometimes there was a little green or blue flashing and it would scare me for a while to be so far away from her.

David Eide
January 24, 2014