Ad Infinitum

by Jeff Baker

The Sun was setting in its usual haze and carmine could see it all through the apartment window. He smiled. It had just been a couple of days since he’d piloted the freighter past Mercury. Screens on, air cooler on full-blast but still knowing they were near Mercury had made him feel hot.

Carmine stretched back on the couch there in his Brother’s living room. He realized he could get to like this. There was nothing quite like the vista of stars or the variety of worlds that he visited on the job but still, getting a week to spend with family topped all that.

He considered himself lucky that Alberto’s family lived on this outpost which was located in the right solar system to have a regularly frequented spaceport and a few technical schools. Plus, shops and facilities for all the students and people who worked there. It was probably very Earth-like, from what Carmine had been told about Earth and from the visuals he had seen, a lot of them from their Mom and Dad.

Carmine smiled as he remembered the picture of his Mother as a little girl standing with her parents at an Earth national park taken before they had left Earth. She had grown up on a planet over a light-year away from Earth, several light years away from where Carmine was now. A while back, Carmine had seen that planet, during the years when he had taken “the long run,” being away from his own home almost a year at a time. He was glad he wasn’t on that run anymore, even with the cut in salary.

In the window he could see an incoming spacecraft arcing towards the spaceport. Carmine had loved watching the spaceships land and take off when he was a little boy; begging his Dad to take him out to the local landing strip.

That was probably how he wound up a pilot, Carmine mused.

And now his little nephew Nicky was fascinated by spaceships and wanted his Uncle Carmine to take him out to the spaceport while he was here.

Carmine wondered if it was about time he settled down with a nice girl or guy some place where he didn’t have to measure distances between stars. He smiled as he remembered Christmas with his Brother’s family then remembered the looks on the faces of colonists when he brought them much needed supplies.

He leaned back and closed his eyes and imagined the vast, beckoning starry void blending with the sounds of home.

—end—