SAM JOVIAN - PERSONAL LOG ABOARD THE M.M.V ANTLION

ENTRY DATE: 56.03.29

Let me tell you, you absolutely cannot appreciate the raw strength of a torch drive until you're sitting in the engineering deck of a full scale industrial ship belting out a plume at max throttle like there's no tomorrow. "A good burn to loosen up ya joints!" Katrina (she's the Chief Engineer) likes to say. I can't say she's wrong about that.

We're en route to the belt now, its a half-month trip out but by the time we're due to head home it'll be more like a month to get home because of the orbits. I've sat here by the main window on the bridge for the past three hours or so, watching as Mars gets further and further away. A part of me doesn't really want to go to sleep. I'd rather sit here and watch until my home becomes just a small lavender tinted dot in the starry expanse.

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But duty calls of course, the ship won't ready itself in fifteen days — and chief Karlson assures me there will be plenty to do at the break of the next day.

So, once again, with Mars growing ever smaller in my vision:

this is Sam Jovian, Second Gunner of the M.M.V Antlion — signing off.