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sun will be a red giant, on its way to becoming a white dwarf. It will have swallowed Earth. The net drift of Alpha Centauri toward Sol means that by the time you got there, the solar system will be part of a multiple star system with four stars—a red giant on the way down the Main Sequence to becoming a white dwarf, a white dwarf that had enough original mass to beat it there, and a K-type star that was small enough and long-lived enough to survive as a viable sun, only somewhat dimmer than Sol was in its prime. With Proxima Centauri circling the whole shebang at a distance. The Oort clouds of the three other stars will have merged to become a forest of comets. Not to mention that just about now”—Karn pretended to look at an imaginary wristwatch—“the Andromeda galaxy will have collided with the Milky Way.”
    â€œThe Milky Way is still our home,” Joorn protested, with anguish in his voice. “The cradle of the human race, even though we didn’t know the First Ones already owned it. There’ll still be plenty of real estate there. Maybe one or two of the planets of the Centaurian system will have survived. Maybe Earth will have solidified enough to form a crust that life can be planted on. We planted it here, didn’t we? Maybe enough of Jupiter’s atmosphere will have boiled away to leave a rocky core we can terraform. The Others must have gone extinct in the two and a half billion years that have already passed. We own our home galaxy again.”
    When Karn spoke again, he didn’t bother to disguise his pity. “Fairy tales, my friend. You’re telling yourself fairy tales.”
    â€œI’m only an unemployed ship’s captain, not an astrophysics genius like you. But I’ve done all the math too—the life span of G3 and K5 stars, the rate of Alpha Centauri’s drift toward Sol, the consequences of the collision with Andromeda—I’ve run and rerun the old computer models that show the gravitational distortion of both galaxies and two spiral galaxies becoming one big elliptical galaxy. And I’ll tell you this. There’s one thing you’ve left out of all your calculations.”
    â€œWhich is?”
    â€œThe power of the homing instinct. The yearning. It trumps everything else.”
    â€œGive it up, Joorn. Between the two of us, we could bring the Council around. Otherwise …”
    â€œOtherwise what?”
    Karn became evasive. “I’m going to bring my case before the Council one last time. Then we’ll see.”
    With a faint sense of alarm, Joorn said, “Don’t do anything rash, Delbert.”
    â€œRash? Don’t trouble yourself about it, Joorn. Just go on dreaming your dreams, and I’ll dream mine.”
    Without another word, they both triggered their altitude jets and spun on their vertical axes, turning together to watch as the habitat module maneuvered into position for atmospheric entry, carrying yet another twenty thousand inhabitants to the growing settlement on the ground.

CHAPTER 6
    Only a few hundred people were left in a habitat module that had been home to thousands for most of their lifetimes. Joorn could almost feel its emptiness as a tangible presence as he propelled himself through the vast echoing corridors with a small handheld fan—the most practical way to travel now that there was no more up and down.
    He passed only a half dozen people on the way to his quarters, swimming like him through the stagnant air with the help of their little propellers. Most of them didn’t bother to stop. They gave him a negligent wave—or in the case of the older ones, an actual salute—and perhaps a “Hello, Captain,” or “How goes it?” One old shipmate, pulling his wife along with a hand at her elbow, pointed his fan in the opposite direction long enough to say, “It’s going to feel strange to leave the old thing, but the rep from the