Metafire

"No, please proceed."

George set up a local link with Michael in the tug. It was video. He looked at Michael and said, "We are ready Michael."

Michael pulled up a graphics window with a computed trajectory on it. They would go past the moon and use its gravity to help speed them along their way. He, Isolova, Dave Johnston, and Janet had spent the night before checking the trajectory program. All the program had to do was draw a high precision straight line of attack just to the side of the moon. They had computed the line of attack to two hundred significant digits. This would be enough to carry them, with simple course corrections, and using Martian gravity for additional assist, past Saturn.

The tug began slowly. The rockets were used intermittently with lots of directional jets. The initial acceleration used almost a quarter of the fuel available to the tug. After about an hour, George got on the intercom and announced, "We are past the point of no return. If you want a last look at Earth, you have about two days. If anybody has second thoughts, it's too late. We must now attend to the last phase of Metafire."

Metafire was now making three hundred miles per hour relative speed in moving away from New Boston and Earth, accelerating slowly toward the moon. The moon would ultimately drive the speed of the colony past 20,000 miles per hour. Once Metafire was two thousand miles from New Boston, George made contact with John, "John, this is George. Are you there?"