Not counting the Magellan and what’s left of the two alien vessels, the nearest ship, the nearest colony, in fact the nearest anything is ten thousand light years away. I’ve still got plenty of juice left in my EV suit, though, and my oxygen tanks are almost full. Plus there’s a fresh voice spool in my recorder. Before turning off my suit’s heater coils, I want to leave behind a record of what happened. There sure as hell won’t be one in the Magellan’s computer log. Besides, I’m in no hurry to freeze. So here goes. What I’m about to say may be hard to swallow, but I swear it’s true. All of it. One thing before I start, though, and this is really, really important: Whoever finds me, do not, repeat, do not attempt to download any of Magellan’s computer files. Everyone says begin at the beginning, right? Okay, here’s how things began. I’m Lieutenant Dennis McGuire, communications and cybernetics officer aboard the Federation Starship Magellan. We left Lunar orbit eight days ago to investigate a subspace disturbance in the Horsehead Nebula. It was my first jump. Having spent three dreary years on Lunar Orbiter 7, I was overjoyed to hear that I had finally drawn starship duty. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining about orbiter work; somebody has to keep the photonic brains on the mining robots operational, and it got me offplanet. Nonetheless, it was a big comedown from the theoretical stuff I had been exposed to at the Academy—which I guess is what got me out here in the first place.
