Edge of Infinity by Jonathan Strahan [Editor]

manned ship has ever gone. They’ll find the design specs at the hole. Caitlin is smart. She’ll know to sell the design. She’ll have enough money to live like a queen for the rest of her life. He’s taken good care of her, anyway, if not himself.
    If he had control, he could reach the asteroid belt. He could go to the Jovian system and be the first person to walk on Europa and Ganymede. He isn’t going to, though. That’s going to be someone else. But when they get there, they will be carried by his drive.
    And the war! If distance is measured in time, Mars just got very, very close to Earth while Earth is still very distant from Mars. That kind of asymmetry changes everything. He wonders how they’ll negotiate that. What they’ll do. All the lithium and molybdenum and tungsten anyone could want is within reach of mining companies now. They can go to the asteroid belt and the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. The thing that kept Earth and Mars from ever reaching a lasting peace isn’t going to matter anymore.
    The pain in his head and his spine are getting worse. It’s hard to remember to tense his legs and arms, to help his failing heart move the blood. He almost blacks out again, but he’s not sure if it’s the stroke or the thrust gravity. He’s pretty sure driving blood pressure higher while having a stroke is considered poor form.
    The ship’s dirge shifts a little, and now it’s literally singing in his father’s voice, Hebrew syllables whose meaning Solomon has forgotten, if he ever knew. Aural hallucinations, then. That’s interesting.
    He’s sorry that he won’t be able to see Caitlin one more time. To tell her goodbye and that he loves her. He’s sorry he won’t get to see the consequences of his drive. Even through the screaming pain, a calmness and euphoria start to wash over him. It’s always been like this, he thinks. From when Moses saw the promised land that he could never enter, people have been on their deathbeds just wanting to see what happens next. He wonders if that’s what makes the promised land holy: that you can see it but you can’t quite reach it. The grass is always greener on the other side of personal extinction. It sounds like something Malik would have said. Something Caitlin would laugh at.
    The next few years – decades even – are going to be fascinating, and it will be because of him. He closes his eyes. He wishes he could be there to see it all happen.
    Solomon relaxes, and the expanse folds itself around him like a lover.

 
     
    THE ROAD TO NPS
     
    Sandra McDonald and Stephen D. Covey
     
     
    N OT THAT HE was paranoid, but in the forty-eight hours prior to departure, Rahiti Ochoa ate and drank only from the supplies he’d been stockpiling under his bunk. He compulsively checked the oxygen levels in his tiny quarters. He didn’t go near the crew bar on level four (someone might drug his beer), skipped working out in the gym (someone might rig the treadmill), and kept to himself on shift, glaring at anyone who got within ten or fifteen feet (because someone might just try the direct approach, a crowbar to the head). He warned Will Danton to keep the same precautions.
    “Crazy Samoan,” Will muttered. “Relax, will you? You won the contract. Orbital’s not going to try and sabotage you.”
    Better crazy than dead , Jovinta might say, if she were talking to him.
    Maybe Will didn’t take the threat seriously enough, or maybe he was distracted by someone on purpose, or maybe (just maybe) it was really an accident, but when the silver crate toppled over, smashing Will against a sled – when he began to scream, wild and raw, accompanied by the wail of the emergency siren – when all that happened, Rahiti’s first thought was: Son of bitches found a way to stop me.
    “Ra!” Will screamed.” Get it off me!”
    The Orbital arena supervisor, Hal Carpenter, shouted over Rahiti’s headset.”I’m on it! Someone shut him up!”
    Rahiti leaped twenty metres