"Did you make your prayers?" Grandpa wasn't a nervous sort, just well meaning enough to think about the preparations for any journey, routine or otherwise.

"Yes I did. My gear has been placed aboard and the backers are ready for departure. But I wanted to see you before I go."

"Are you ready?"

"More than ever. I've dreamed about this all my life."

"God knows your dreams will get you far." He chuckled. "Even to the very edge of earth. Where our dreams lead, our handiwork follows."

I'd forever known him full of advice, not that always he minded it. "Is that what keeps you climbing mountains Grandpa, at your age?" I indicated his legs, rebuilt now but still bandaged. "You're testing the capacity of these renewal facilities, you know that."

"You worry about your own legs. Armstrong and Aldrin didn't carry rockets strapped to theirs."

"The ship will go fast enough to near the surface but slow enough for my suit retros to handle after the drop. We've computed a safe approach. In fact I'll be landing only a short distance away from where their Eagle did." But as I spoke he was watching something else in his mind.

"Captain Kirk once tried something like that." To my blank face he suggested, "He was from a television show I enjoyed back before I was your age."

"A what?"

"Like a movie only smaller. Do you know what ..."

"Oh I know what a movie is. I had to construct one for art class. 'Small steps, giant leaps.' My teacher said it was very good."

He nodded. "In those days exploring space meant wealth and resources often misused by the nation states." I'm glad he didn't bother to explain what a nation state was. "Even the early stations, nothing like this one at all, were developed under such circumstances. When private enterprise began it took off much faster than anyone would have expected. Now see where we are."

We looked up as the planet loomed large before us. By stretching we could peer around the side of the portal in Grandpa's room; outside the rings of the rest station the long cylindrical drop ship was visible. My home for the next few hours before I tried to add one more frame to my film.

"Alright then movie star," he teased. "Break a leg."

"So we have something else in common to talk about?" For a moment we dreamed together, then smiled, and I got up to leave. "All for you."


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