The dull, pounding, overwhelming roar of the retrorockets, which had been firing for the last forty-five minutes, was finally calming down as the shuttle approached its destination. There were no windows near Devin's seat, and he felt an instinctive grip of anxiety; though he had full confidence in the pilots of Shuttle<em>Gamma</em>, he still didn't like the fact that he could see nothing.<br/><br/>There were two rows of passenger seats in the shuttle, five in the front and six in the rear, and each was divided from the others by a thin partition, the purpose of which Devin was at a loss to explain. Eye contact was impossible, and conversation nearly so; he hadn't even attempted it over the roar of the rocket engines.<br/><br/>As he sat in the deafening silence, he couldn't think of anything but the numbers and calculations and massive distances involved in the journey ahead of him. At maximum acceleration, about 1.2 m/s<sup>2</sup>, the ship would take four years to accelerate to full potential. Until then, there would be a barely-noticeable slant to the floor. They would be within ten light-minutes of Earth for the first week. The maximum fuel potential on board the ship was enough for only those four years of acceleration and four of deceleration. Relativistic warping would reduce perceived time by a considerable factor; it would feel like thirty-five years, but relative to Earth, eighty-one years would pass.<br/><br/>His thoughts were interrupted by the pilot's voice over the intercom, a comfortable and easy Southern drawl. "I hope y'all ain't gettin' too antsy back there, 'cuz we got 'bout 'nother half-hour to go." The voice cut off with a little click of static.