mean no harm to anyone. All we want is our life back. We
don't want to live forever like lumps of ice circling around a dead
heart. What we plan may kill us all, but we feel it is worth the risk.
We have thousands of ionic power reactors. We have blasted out Venturi
tubes. We found life still deep in the center of this planet. It is all
ready now. With all the power we have we will break the hold of our dead
sun and send this planet off into space! We ..."

I said, "You're insane! It can't ..."

"But it can, Commander. It's a great risk, yes, but it can be done, my
calculations are perfect! We want to leave this dead system, go off into
space and find a new star that will bring life back to our planet! A
green, live, warm Nova-Maurania once again!"

Rajay-Ben was laughing. "That's the craziest damned dream I ever sat
still for. You know what your chances of being picked up by another star
are? Picked up just right? Why ..."

Portario said, "We have calculated the exact initial thrust, the exact
tangential velocity, the precise orbital path we need. If all goes
exactly, I emphasize, _exactly_, to the last detail as we have planned
it we can do it! Our chances of being caught by the correct star in the
absolutely correct position are one in a thousand trillion, but we can
do it!"

It was so impossible I began to believe he was right. "If you aren't
caught just right?"

Portario's black eyes watched me. "We could burn up or stay frozen and
lifeless. We could drift in space forever as cold and dead as we are now
and our ionic power won't last forever. The forces we will use could
blow the planet apart. But we are going to try. We would rather die than
live as walking dead men in this perfect United Galaxies we do not
want."

The silence in the room was like a Salaman fog. Thick silence broken
only by the steady hum of the machines deep beneath us in the dead
planet. A wild, impossible dream of one thousand lost souls. A dream
that would destroy them, and they did not care. There was something
about it all that I liked.

I said, "Why not get Council approval?"

Portario smiled. "Council has little liking for wild dreams, Commander.
It would not be considered as advancing the future of United Galaxies'
destiny. Then there are the ionics." And Portario hesitated. "And there
is the danger of imbalance, Galactic imbalance. I have calculated
carefully, the danger is remote, but Council is not going to take even a
rem