"You are the best and I expect the best from you at all times," Thorsson continued. "This is a dangerous life you've signed on for, but as they used to say, 'it goes with the territory.' Our territory is space, die endless frontier, the beginning of an adventure that will take us outward into the eternal sea of stars. No frontier has ever been settled without a price and you are the ones who will, more often than not, have to pay that price. We lost eighty-seven cadets last year, and a hundred and twenty-nine were seriously injured. Now, there are some on Earth who whine that the price we expect of our next generation is too high and you know what I have say about that."
He smiled and many in the room chuckled, remembering the famous and rather scatological statement made before a hearing committee which had been convened to investigate the so-called "unacceptable risks and casualties" associated with the Academy.
"No society in the history of the human race has ever advanced without taking risks. In your history classes you learned about the great Chinese explorers of the 14th and early 15th centuries who sailed as far as Zanzibar aboard three- masted ships. They were on the very edge of leaping outward, of sweeping the world, but then their new emperor lost his nerve and declared that the risk, the lives, and the money involved were too great. And so it was that less than a hundred years later the Portuguese came to them instead, with disastrous results for that ancient empire.
"My own ancestors sailed the open seas in then-longboats and perished by the thousands in the doing of it. All of you have learned that most basic of principles taught by history, that they who do not explore, expand, and achieve will be replaced by others who do. I remember one of my favorite quotes, from Scott of Antarctica, the great British explorer who perished on his quest to reach the South Pole. One of his last diary entries made when he knew he was dying stands, in its simple eloquence, as a guiding beacon for the spirit of what we are, in both triumph and defeat. He wrote, " We took risks, we knew we took them, and things have come out against us, therefore we have no need for complaint.'"
Thorsson stepped from behind his podium and began to pace the stage.
"That is what we are! Stoic both in defeat and in triumph. That is the spirit which must shape us, and, in the shaping, lead us onward to the stars."
He smiled softly.
"For the stars await us. You all know what I have done, where I have been. I first went into space over forty years ago, aboard the last flight of the old United States Shuttle Two. I even witnessed a flight of the original shuttle when I was a boy back in 1997.1 was on the first team to go to Mars and the second team to orbit Jupiter. And yet I would trade all of that, all of it, to be where you now are. And that's not just an old man wishing to be young again. Not at all. For I believe that before much longer you young men and women will lead the way on the journey to the stars.
"If Earth is our nursery, then the solar system is our playground, our backyard realm of adventures. But pretty soon, far sooner than anyone dares imagine, we will be setting sail for Alpha Centauri, Wolfs Star, Betelgeuse and Sirius. I'm not giving away any great secrets here. Maybe we'll crack the secret of that alien ship we are reassembling and master light speed, or maybe we'll go the long slow way at a fraction of light speed aboard Ark ships, but one way or the other we will go!"
Justin found himself nodding excitedly. Thorsson had just alluded to the greatest non-secret of everyone involved in space. Nine years back the mysterious raiders, known simply as the Tracs, had staged an attack and destroyed several colonies. Thorsson himself had managed to bag one of the Trac ships, and even now it was reported that recovery teams were scouring a billion cubic kilometers of space looking for wreckage and parts in a painstaking effort to put the ship back together, piece by piece.
Mankind had known that someone or something else was out there for forty-five years, ever since the SETI project, the "Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence," had confirmed a clear signal being detected from Proximus Gemini. Ten years later the first of three Trac raids had occurred. Who they were, where they came from, what they even looked like was a complete mystery. No one even knew if the SETI programs decision to beam a signal back had been the trigger for the attacks.
All humanity had to go on was the scattered wreckage of a ship the task of reassembling it equivalent to putting together a million-piece three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle without even knowing what it would look like once it was done. If the machine was ever put back together, and someone could then figure out how to activate it, mankind was on its way to the stars. But even if that failed there was still the Ark ship program of building habitats to accommodate twenty thousand people for journeys of thirty years or more until the nearest star was reached.
It was one of Thorsson's favorite programs; during scrub summer he had lectured about it to Justin's class. He compared the journey to that of 19th-century colonists and whalers braving the Horn on trips lasting up to a year or more into the South Pacific.
Thorsson slowly scanned his audience as if he were already searching for volunteer crews who would leave Earth forever, and in spite of the fears and anxieties he had yet to completely ditch about space flight, Justin knew he would go if Thorsson asked him.
"There is one thing, though, one thing that can stop us from fulfilling our destinies," Thorsson said at length, interrupting Justin's thoughts. "And it is not the Tracs. Oh, they're out there that's one of the reasons we must go forward, to meet them in their backyard, and not ours. Perhaps we can make an arrangement with them, but history shows that more often than not when two cultures collide, the weaker one will suffer. For that reason alone we must forge ahead. But that is not my fear, not now. Rather it is the events sweeping our system the separatist movements."
Justin looked over at Matt and saw his friend shift in his chair. Matt was in quiet support of the movement, and he feared that maybe the UN had issued some sort of decree or was about to require an oath of some sort. If they did, he knew Matt would refuse, if only as a matter of principle, being a very pig-headed solar sailor.
"As you all know, two weeks ago the Mars Assembly issued a decree of noncompliance with the United Nations and Colonies Space Commission, and also with the USMC. The Assembly has called for and I quote, 'A First Continental Congress of Space to decide whether these colonies shall declare themselves free and independent states.'
Matt smiled and nodded his head, and Justin saw more than one of his classmates doing the same.
"I want to emphasize right now that this is not a declaration of rebellion, no matter what the holo newscasters might be shrieking about, either from Earth or anywhere else. When you've been around awhile, you learn that if you've heard it on the news, chances are you better not believe it especially when it's one of those blow-dried fools doing the pronouncing rather than the people who are actually involved in the story.
"Those of you who were here for scrub summer know we lost a dozen cadets from Mars and two instructors who decided to return home. Now I want to make something damn clear to all of you."
The mere fact that Thorsson had just used the mildest of profanities caused a stir in the audience and the entire hall became as silent as a tomb.