by Jim Bessey

Created on: June 11, 2008

[This story is an homage to one originally crafted by the late, great Isaac Asimov (1920-1992). The idea was his, but the words are mine. This account has been translated into English for readability.]

Their craft was small but incredibly powerful. Cramped quarters did not overly disturb the occupants. They were serene beings of extraordinary intelligence and infinite endurance. The two had become accustomed to traveling vast distances and suffering interminable spans of time in the lonely vacuum of deep space. They had not seen "home" in so long that their memories of that place had become stylized and suspect.

The elder, and leader of the team, was Sthon-ghta. Her name could be roughly translated as "Master Gardener." Her teammate, eternal partner, and pilot was called Gsainmht. Even he was not completely sure what that moniker signified, but it rolled off the tongue well and conveyed a feeling of trust and safety. He was a superb navigator who displayed an almost uncanny calm in the face of the most calamitous situations. Sthon-ghta could hardly have invented a better companion for their journey. They traveled enormous distances together, stopping only infrequently at pre-arranged destinations.

The duo maneuvered their nimble vehicle along a series of waypoints highlighted in an immersive, interactive map of sorts. Colors defined distances and orientation within the craft extrapolated direction based upon incredibly complicated calculations involving time and relative motion. Neither wayfarer had any idea how that worked, nor did they need to have any such knowledge. They were travelers and surveyors, not astrophysicists.

Much of the time aboard was spent in a dreamlike state which they shared by something akin to telepathy. This sharing allowed them to interact in a physical world that did not actually exist, based upon their memories or the inventions of one another's fertile minds. What they experienced as the passage of time was actually an artifice developed by other great thinkers of their home world to compensate for the nearly incomprehensible velocity of their small ship.

On their current tour the pair had already made several fruitful layovers at interesting planets scattered many light-years apart throughout the region of space assigned to them. The team's next contact was just ahead, relatively speaking.

After traversing a vast section of featureless space they entered a familiar region. Familiar because others had passed this way before and those

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