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against your better judgment. I'd rather have you back alive than marooned permanently in Jupiter orbit. I'm a man who likes to think and dream big--but not at the expense of other peoples' futures. I'll wait to hear from you all. And I will support whatever final call is made."
    The screen went black, this time for good.
    Debra closed her eyes again, and waited for sleep to take her. Certainly it had been an exhausting few days since the initial accident. She should have faded right out. But when she didn't, and when the silence of the sleeping compartment became more than Debra could stand, she decided to pay the ship's tiny observatory a visit.
    Debra found that she had not been the only one with the same idea. Almost everybody aboard had come--against Pakinski's orders. They were all staring at zoomed-in images of Jupiter, and Jupiter's many moons. This far from Earth, the pictures were spectacular. Better than anything any telescope on Earth could capture, and also better than anything any space probe had yet sent. The color in the banded clouds was stunning. The Great Red Spot was more distinct and impressive than it had ever been before. The surfaces of Callisto, Europa, and Io beckoned.
    Nobody was arguing. They weren't even talking. They were all just staring.
    Debra chose to look out a porthole. To the naked eye, Jupiter was a uniquely bright point of light, the chief star in
Determination's
sky. Debra kept her eyes on that unmoving, unblinking point until she turned away and pulled out one of the keyboards attached to the observatory's main computer array. She rapid-typed, ordering one of the
Determination's
many telescopes to face back the way they'd come. Searching on automatic for a pale, blue dot.
    Having acquired the target, Debra overrode one of the biggest screens in the observatory, thus showing a magnified image of the Earth and the Moon together in space. Small. Delicate. A unique pair in the solar system. Perhaps, even, in all the galaxy?
    In ones and twos, the heads of the crew turned away from the images of Jupiter and focused on their mutual home. Like before, there was no sound. Peoples' faces slowly passed through a range of different expressions, and a few tears began to leak from the corners of several different pairs of eyes.
    A voice suddenly broke the calm. It was Pakinski's, from the open hatch at the back of the observatory. How long he'd been there, nobody knew. He'd come upon them silent as a cat. His face was sad.
    "Well . . . we sure did give it one hell of a try," the captain said.
    Debra found herself nodding vigorously, her vision obscured by tears, her heart breaking.

    Debra had been right. Viewers and advertisers did drop off. And yes, there were people who called the crew of the
Determination
quitters. But these voices were few and far between. Even the most die-hard space exploration enthusiasts couldn't bring themselves to criticize the crew for turning away from probable suicide. Coming back was the sane man's choice. And during the long, slow deceleration, alteration of trajectory, and acceleration burn--to hasten the
Determination's
flight toward its ultimate arrival--there was a new conversation happening back home. A conversation nobody had expected. Least of all Debra herself.
    "I was approached by a consortium of industrial investors," Ben Groomer's message said, this time, to the whole
Determination
crew while they ate in the ship's small galley. "These aren't bit players, either. They're people with serious money and serious assets at their disposal. I think your crisis aboard the
Determination
finally got these folks off the fence. They said they want to arrange for a second, even more ambitious trip. With a bigger, even better ship. Using all the lessons we've learned from the
Determination's
voyage.
    "I've already got engineers doing back-of-the-envelope sketches. We're putting a nice, wide, thick bow shield on the front of the new ship. Stupid that we didn't think of