The man behind the desk, quite a bit older but equally well-fit did not stand to greet his guest. His position did not require him to do so before the major. “You know why you are here?” the man with the short black hair asked firmly.

“Yes, sir, General, sir,” Shilling replied.

The general did not smile. Many speculated that he never did. He had a reputation of being as tough as nails and not prone to showing any sort of emotion. Word had it that he had been shot a number of times in the line of duty and never once flinched. “Why do you believe you are here, Major?”

Shilling was tough too but not nearly as cold. Some would call him cocky, but he always delivered the goods. “Rumor has it that NASA was looking at some of the best and brightest pilots for a special mission,” he said plainly. He then smiled. “I happen to be one of the best in the Air Force.”

“Confident,” General Peterson said. “Good, you will need that.”

“Can I ask what the mission entails?” the Major asked.

“You can ask,” the General said, “but you won’t get the full briefing until I am certain you are up to the task.” He raised a curious eyebrow. “You think you’re up to the task, boy?”

Shilling smiled again. “I’m sure I am, sir.”

Peterson nodded. “Well see.”

The next few weeks were rigorous, but Tom Shilling never showed any signs of fatigue or weakness. From a battery of examinations by doctors to long hours of zero gravity training to detailed instructions on high-tech equipment, the Major took everything in and continued to keep his positive, can-do outlook. It almost seemed the more demanding the tasks became, the more at-ease he was doing them. He relished the challenge and became more energized from it.

All the way, General Peterson monitored the results with an ever-present, watchful eye. He would nod silently, write notes in cryptic shorthand he had devised and only he understood, but very rarely provided any detailed verbal feedback to the young Major directly.

The only way that Shilling knew he was achieving the desired results was that his participation in the program continued at a steady pace.

After a few months, while Shilling was being fitted for a rather elaborate flight suit fit for a space mission, the General approached him. Shilling knew this the moment; Peterson had barely said two words to him directly since the start of the process. He fought hard to contain himself as the anticipation filled him.

After dismissing the technicians, the General finally spoke to him. “It is time to talk, Major,” Peterson said.

“I figured as much, General, sir, seeing as I’m probably blasting off fairly soon,” Shilling said with a bit of sarcasm in his voice.

“This is serious, boy,” the General snapped. “I expect you to treat it as such.”

Shilling straightened a bit, assuming a more respectful military stance. “Yes, sir. I’m just anxious to know what my mission is to entail.”

“You will be participating in a flight into space,” the General said.

“I concluded as much, given everything from the past few weeks. But why me, sir? We’ve already sent men to the moon nearly a decade ago.”

“This is much more than a moon mission. This is an exploratory mission beyond the reaches of our solar system. One man – you – and the stars. We need to know what is out beyond our own stellar backyard.”

The Major thought for a second, taking in what he had just been told. Something wasn’t clicking completely with him. “But, General, we’ve already had visitors from the stars,” Shilling then said. “Some reside here on Earth today, like members of the Justice Gang, for instance. Surely we can glean a great amount of information from them.”

“Outsiders,” the general said with some resentment in his voice. “Even if they profess to help us, their very presence here brings about threats to the planet. Consider this, Major: how many ‘invasions’ has our world seen since they took up residency in the past two decades? Compare that to the number prior to their arrival, and I think you’ll get my point. We can’t have that. We need to take control of our destiny. We need to know what is out there and present the Earth as the inhabitants of our world. We need to be the face of the planet, not them.”

“And that face needs to be an American face, General?”

“Exactly,” Peterson said firmly. “You will be that face. Think you can handle that, Major?”

Shilling smiled. “Most definitely, sir.”

***

The days leading up to the mission launch were a blur of activity – in-depth briefings, continuous system checks and even interviews. It was the later that Major Tom Shilling was soaking up the most.

All three television networks and many of the major radio and print reporters were in attendance to the pre-launch press conference. General Peterson did most of the talking. The Major just smiled confidently, nodded a bit and took each photo flash in stride. His name was plastered across the headlines in many newspapers across the country and mentioned on the lips of all the known national news anchors. It seemed like every where he went he was known and greeted with handshakes and well wishes.

Before too long all that was behind him. Soon enough, it was just him alone in the launch capsule atop the rocket on that Florida airfield, strapped in to his seat and communicating to ground control through a radio headset. “All indicators online and green,” Shilling said as he glanced at the multi-buttoned console before him. “Are we a go for launch?”

“Confirmed,” a voice over the radio said. “All systems are a go.”

Shilling glanced over the console, noticing one light flicker from green to red briefly and then back again to green. It was odd. Were they supposed to do that? “Ground control? Did you notice that?”

After a moment, the voice came back. “Yes. Stand by.”

There was a few moments of silence, something Shilling hadn’t had much of in the past few months. It was eerie and unsettling. His usual confidence actually faltered for a second, much like that one light on the console.

Then the radio sparked back to life. “Just a slight fluctuation in the navigation system. It has been checked. We are a go.”

The Major eased back slightly in his chair and let out a breath. He felt stupid, having worried about nothing. This was NASA, after all. They were the best and brightest in the world. And he was one of the best pilots, if not the very best. He smiled. Nothing to worry about.

The countdown soon began.

When the count reached zero, the rocket that carried the capsule lifted away from its scaffolding and reached to the sky with a thunderous roar.

Below him the world shrunk back to become less detailed. It was everything he imagined it would be – the adrenaline rush, the sheer awe and wonder of space, all of it.

As weightlessness began to kick in, the second stage of the rocket dropped away.

Major Tom brushed the controls of the capsule and kicked in the pod’s engines as he had been trained to do for weeks in the simulator training. He smiled to himself. It was all his show from this point on. Success or failure was in his hands.

Soon ground control was in his ear once more, a voice from many miles away and getting further all the time. “Are all systems responding?”

The Major glanced over the control panel. “All systems are responding perfectly,” he said. “Following flight plan to reach outer limits of the solar system.”

The thrusters of the capsule ignited once more, pushing the small man-made object deeper into space.

A light on the console, the one from during the pre-launch checks, flickered from green to red, then to green and then to a solid red.

“Ground control, are you reading that?” the Major asked. He waited.

No immediate response.

“Ground control, are you reading that?” he repeated himself, this time with some concern in his voice.

This time there was a response, but it was garbled. It was as if he were trying to tune in a radio station in his car that was way far out of distance. Barely every five or six words could be made out.

“Ground control, we have some interference,” the Major said. “Repeat transmission.”

More static.

“Again, repeat transmission!”

More static.

Then nothing at all.

The silence weighed heavy on Tom Shilling. He was alone and on his own. For the first time in his life, the feeling of sheer panic hit him and engulfed him completely.

Suddenly, a number of lights on the console lit up and the capsule was filled with an audible alarm. He jolted suddenly in his chair. This was not a good sign.

Major Shilling pressed various switches and knobs in an attempt to find out what was going on. He tried to remember his training sessions, tried to remember what the sounds or the lights meant. But it was all a sudden blur. He couldn’t think clearly.

Glancing out the front window of the capsule, he saw what the systems were trying to warn him about.

A rift of some sort was opening in the space before him, directly in his flight path.

The Major did not know what it was, but he knew that was not where he wanted to be. Quickly, he went for the navigational controls, trying desperately to reverse the direction of the thrusters. He tried to get them to respond, to do anything to change his course of flight.

No response.

He gritted his teeth as the inevitable loomed closer and closer. All he could think of was that he was alone, abandoned. NASA couldn’t help him. He was going to die, and it was their entire fault! They should have found any problems with the system and corrected them! What had they been doing for weeks prior to launch?

The rift opened like a hungry mouth, swallowing up the space capsule.

And then, as if satiated, it folded in on itself and was gone.

So was Major Tom Shilling.

***

Time no longer had any meaning for him, as did much of his other senses.

He had ceased to be and yet was reborn anew.

He was no longer a man. He was something different, something else, and something more.

Hurdling through space in a construct of pure energy, he only had two thoughts:

I’m coming home and revenge!