Atop a tower of steel and frozen oxygen, I wait.

The mad dash to the moon holds nothing to mankind’s cooperation in preparing this mission. For two years rocket after rocket has been lifted into orbit by every national space agency and private enterprise capable of doing so. Now for me and my six comrades it was time to begin a trip even more historic than Armstrong’s.

We face three days to high orbit, to meet with Earth Ship One, to match her vector, and to start the long acceleration. Then we’ll coast, and finally slow down at the Jovian Lagrange-3 point. There is a cargo craft, already on the way, filled with the hydrogen and oxygen we need to get home.

The giant’s L3 is a good place to meet; a frontier between Earth and… well… it seems so colonial to foist the names of some Roman Gods, mere millennia old, when these beings have had their own names for millions of years.

I go to meet the people of icy Aesith, to introduce mankind, in front of the amazing backdrop of the planet Naa. I made a pie.