Captain Sam Wiley nodded, very slowly. "Yes. Alpha Centauri. _Alpha_
Centauri."
His eyes began to twinkle, and then he smiled....
----
Onward sped the _Wanderer_, onward through cold, silent infinity, on and
on, an insignificant pencil of silver lost in the terrible, brooding
blackness.
Yet even greater than the blackness was the flaming hope in the six men
who inhabited the silver rocket. They moved in hope as fish move in
water. Their lives revolved in hope as planets revolve in space and
time. They bore their hope like a jeweled crown, and it was as much a
part of them as sight in their eyes. Hope was both their brother and
their god.
And there was no loneliness.