A common housefly!  Not a bluebottle or a horsefly or anything exotic like a tsetse fly----Just a common house fly.  It was shocking enough by itself.

Really, he ought to catch it and snuff out its life.  Yet sentiment overcame him.  That wretched little fly was a tiny living portion of the earthly biosphere---and it was about to leave solar space forever and ever.  As such, it seemed uniquely precious.  

"I have a pet!" he thought in amazement.  "A pet fly, of all things!"

Bringing out a little plastic box of spacesickness gum, he emptied the contents carefully back into his zippered pocket and secured them.  A gentle push, and a few seconds later he caught the fly in a box with all the neatness of a deep orbit station receiving the docking of a supply drone.  He shut the lid.  The bug could gain some purchase now.  The box zizz-zizzed in his fingers as the fly flopped and somersaulted, wings vibrating feverishly.

"My pet," he addressed the box. "I name thee Pandora."  He tucked it on a smaller zippered pocket.  "I mustn't forget that it's you in there!  Butterflies in the stomach are one thing---but a fly? That's something else...."280Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡL3lwIq2Avm
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A moment later his continuing trajectory carried him up against the thick radiation-proof plasticrystal---stronger than steel---that formed the transparent hull of the pod.  Gripping the nearest handhold, he hung just a few centimeters away from hard vacuum and gazed at the three-quarters-lit Earth.  It was a fine day over the Indian Ocean and much of Asia.  What little he could see of the Russian Federation was up near the visible North Pole.

"They'll think I'm cuckoo, talking to a fly when we're about to set off for the stars!  But it's this kind of thing that makes a man a man...

"....and a woman a woman," he reflected. For his wife and Astrogator, Ila Adamavich, had just poked her brunette curls up through the hatch from the Bridge.  Her hazel eyes regarded him coolly:  those same eyes which would soon pick out a suitable star with a habitable world orbiting it a couple of hundred or couple of thousand light years towards the antapex of the Sun's motion---Right Ascension ninety-nine degrees, Declination thirty-six degrees South---far beyond the stars composing the visible constellation of Kobol....

How far, of course, depended on how many times they would have to jump through the Flux before they found themselves close enough to a suitable new sun.

"We're nearly ready, Milan.  I thought I heard you calling."

"No, no.  I was just wondering aloud whether they'll ever build a second Redstar."  The less said to her about pet flies, the better.

"Who are 'they'?"

"Us, of course.  The Russian Federation.  Unselfish, isn't it?  Sending out a colony when you can never receive news of it."

Ila was beautiful, but she was very literal minded.  "But wouldn't there be a paradox of cause and effect, if they could hear from us?  We jump 100 years back through time, and this puts us a hundred light years downstream of the Sun's motion around the Galaxy.  Anything less, and a radio message could reach the Earth before we even set off!"

"What bothers me," remarked Adamavich flippantly, "is what exactly happens if we don't find a suitable star?  Shall we just keep on jumping back along the Earth's worldline?  If we go far enough, we'll circle the Galaxy, and catch up with Earth a couple of hundred thousand years ago---and we'll colonize it in desperation!"

"And become our own ancestors?" Ila looked affronted.

"And my pet fly, the ancestor of a mighty dynasty of flies..."

"The Universe doesn't allow such things.  The Principle of Cosmic Censorship absolutely forbids subversion of cause and effect.  We'll find our star, don't worry.  Humanity will colonize the cosmos!"

"A little bit of it, anyway....Hmmm, it's a pity the Flux-Field has a one-track mind. If we could go anywhere that we wished...."

"But the Principle of Worldline Constancy strongly dictates...."

"Yes, yes.  I was just wishing, that's all."

"It's a far nobler use we're putting the Flux to than the Americans."

Captain America's Shield:  she was right, there....

The official reason for the Flux-Shield, which could be switched on at a moment's notice to blanket the continental United States, was that if any giant meteor or comet-head came zooming in on a collision course with U.S. territory, the Shield would bat it on its way---zipping it ten years into the past and ten light years in the direction of Kobol, a piece of symbolism which no doubt appealed to the powerful men of Washington D.C.....

But likewise with any Russian or Chinese satellite or missile platform overflying U.S. territory.  With a flick of the wrist, these, too, could be knocked out of the stadium.  Any war, now, would simply leave Earth's path through space ten billion kilometers hindwards littered with missiles and satellites and Russian servicemen staring glumly out at the wilderness of space---like a trail of bear cans bobbing far to the rear of the liner, Earth.

Ila drifted to Milan's side; together they peered along the ship.  All supply drones had departed some hours ago, leaving the Galactica alone in deep orbit a safe distance beyond the reach of Captain America's Shield----should any malicious soul in Cheyenne feel timed to send them on their way, untimely.  Why should anyone do so?  Maybe out of sheer annoyance.  Since there was no reason at all why a starship should be streamlined, their ship was built in the vague shape of a five-pointed starfish, hence the classification "Redstar."

The white disc on the "starfish's" middle surface housed the fusion reactor jets capable of carrying them up to half a light year, once Ila decided they were close enough to a friendly star system.  Underneath that was the "stomach," which contained the storage bays, and the "spines" radiating from the central point of the Galactica was the ship's vast array of solar power cells.  At the very middle of the ship, where all five "arms" intersected, was the Flux-Drive. And above that, housed in a geodesic dome, were the bridge and crew quarters; directly beneath these a thousand hypnotized colonists lay in a yogic trance rack upon rack, their body functions ticking over at a hundredth the normal metabolic rate.

How very provoking to the Americans to see the Red Star, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union sixty-nine years ago, still the symbol of Russian power, thus floating above their heads in space!  But in another hour or more it would vanish forever, to become the little moon of another planet. The onboard shuttles would descend ten times over, until the moon was empty.  Thereafter the great redstar Galactica would shine down forever more upon New Earth as an orbiting monument, the only possible link---a symbolic one---with the Russian Federation.

Being alone with his wife, with only the stars staring in, Milan thought of kissing her impetuously to celebrate.  But husband or not, she might slap him for impertinence.  It wouldn't do to start the greatest voyage of all time with a red handprint on one's cheek.