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one individual the name would be made public and the mistake openly reviewed. No one ever wanted to be another Cadet Hansen, who was single-handedly responsible for the accidental destruction of the Oak Forest colony and the nearly three thousand residents on board. His name was now synonymous with being a major screw up; "to pull a Hansen" was one of the worst insults an instructor could hand a cadet.
    "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