"I´m so far away from home… Maybe further than every other one before. I saw the Sun, Mars even Pluto… this little wannabe planet. But what I can´t see right now is earth, home. It´s so far away… I´m missing home so much.

The blue oceans, the green willows and even the dark and grey cities. But it was my dream to be here… And it seems like I´m paying the price for it right now. Dammit. I just wish it wouldn´t be that high. I wish…"

"Commander Puppy, this is mission control. Do you read me? OVER."
Dudley pushed the little green button under the microphone to activate it. "Yes I do, mission control. OVER."

"Thank god! We thought we lost contact completely! Transmit your telemetry data to us and define your status. OVER."
Tired typed Dudley the command for the telemetry transmission into communication module and explained mission control in every detail what have happened since he lost contact to them.

After he confirmed his massage with OVER and let go the button no one answered for a long time. Time in which Dudley used to remember how that all begun.

10 months earlier. Dudley, the white canine and T.U.F.F. agent, sat with a cup of coffee in the apartment of Kitty Katswell´s. She was a tan cat girl that wasn´t even Dudley´s partner at T.U.F.F., she also has been his girlfriend since two years. A fact which he highly appreciated.

It was very early in the morning, almost still night, so not the usual time when someone would get up. But Dudley had a good reason to be awake. It was the 25th of October and the night was clear and cold, perfect conditions to watch the sky from the balcony of Kitty´s apartment.

And tonight was also a special night, too. Halley´s comet was passing the earth´s orbit again and this was something Dudley definitely wanted to see. Even if this comet passing the earth´s orbit every 20 years it´s just every 75 years so close that you can see it with your own eyes.

So if you´re not Methuselah you will probably see it just once in your lifetime… And if you´re not so lucky you´ll maybe never see it.
Dudley tiptoed towards the balcony door and opened it quietly. He stepped out into the cold night air and breathed it in.

"Excellent." He remarked as he checked the sky for clouds which were nonexistent. Also the switched off street lamps made it considerably easier to watch the stars. The city council has decided to turn off all lights for the moment when the comet was expected. It was mainly Keswick´s idea.

A year ago Keswick has been elected after a violent election campaign into the city council and since then he had carte blanche about everything the council did. He maybe was a small stammering spectacled scientist but he had the guts and the voice to assert himself.

Excited scanned Dudley´s eyes the sky for the comet. Here and there he stopped on some particularly good looking star formations that shined in all kinds of colors.

"Dudley?" a voice from behind him ripped him out of his focus. It was Kitty who stood in the balcony doorframe rubbing her eyes.
"Hey Kitty, changed your mind?"

"No, the noise you were making woke me up."
"You and your sensitive hearing." In this case sensitive was even understated. Kitty could hear a pin falling down in the heavy noise of a nightclub. You could whisper while a bomb beside her would explode and she would understand it.

Dudley sometimes thought that she could hear so good that she was able to eavesdrop his thoughts. Nonsense of course, Kitty just knew him good enough by now to know what he thought. But it was sometimes a little creepy.

"Does it help if I tell you that I really tried to be as silent as even possible?"
"Maybe, if you can give me the last 40 minutes of sleep back."
"No I can´t but maybe I can fill the next minutes with a unique memory. Look up!" Dudley pointed at the sky where finally the comet had appeared.

Like a blue-white sparkling diamond rose the colossus made from ice and dust on the horizon. It´s tail left a little white scar on the face of the night-sky which was immediately healed by the darkness of space. A beautiful sight. Kitty and Dudley watched the comet on his way for almost an hour until Kitty said. "Okay… Now I have to say thanks for waking me up."

The next morning wasn´t far away and the two stood tired but happy in the T.U.F.F. office where they listened to the chief´s morning speech. "Last item of agenda." He announced after he has listed over sixty other points.

"We´re testing a new kind of T.U.F.F. single person shuttle soon… Thanks to our budget shortenings, and of course of the budgetary consolidation, we had to search for a sponsor who helped us handling the enormous costs of a space-travel program. I now pass the microphone to Wolf Spitzer from KPET news."

Kitty and Dudley exchanged confused glares. A news channel had enough money to sponsor a space travel program? Even if KPET was the most popular T.V. channel in Petropolis they couldn´t imagine that they were able to raise enough money.

"Hello everybody!" called Spitzer with his sovereign way in the micro. "I proudly present you today KPET´s latest project. Hyperspace! We bring space travelling to the next level. An interactive space traveling experience for the viewers. They can vote who will be on the spaceship. They will decide which route the ship will take… I could go on with this but I think you got my point."

Kitty raised her arm to ask a question. "So you´re want to produce the first space big brother reality T.V. shit show?"
"That is summarizing it pretty good." Spitzer cleared his throat and averted from Kitty back to the audience. "Well, if anyone is interested in being a star between real stars, yeah I invented this, just sign up in the list on the noticeboard. Thank you."

Under the noise of the applauding audience Spitzer left the office. Kitty could just nod about this whole thing. "Which shameless idiot would want to get involved into that? I mean you have to be really stupid to sell your soul to KPET, right Dudley? … Dudley?!"

Kitty gazed around, Dudley was gone. "Oh great… it´s of course my idiot!" With her hand pinned on her forehead by the shame she just felt about Dudley´s decision she walked towards noticeboard.
Dudley was meanwhile already a step ahead. He was the first one on the list and had left an untidy signature on the white empty list.

Then he ran straight to Keswick´s lab. Keswick was in charge for the old T.U.F.F. shuttle so he definitely had a hand in building the new shuttle. Dudley hoped that he could derive a benefit out of any information Keswick could give him.

"Hey Keswick." He panted as he built himself up in front of Keswick.
"Oh, good morning Agent P..P..Puppy. What can I do for you?"
"Easy. Tell me everything about the new shuttle."

Keswick was first surprised but then he shined. Dudley really wanted him to give a talk about a scientific topic. You hadn´t have to say that to him twice.

"I have no p..p..presentation ready… Ah, what am I talking of course I have." Keswick clapped his hands twice and all lights in the room went off. The total darkness was lighted by the collimated ray of the projector which hung from the ceiling like a spider.

"Well, what can I say about the X-prime?" Keswick clapped his hands again and a picture of the new shuttle was thrown at the wall. The spaceship looked like an arrowhead. It was just one big piece except the three big main engines that overhang the back part of the ship. "She is…"
"She?"

"Yes D..D..Dudley, she. She is a lady! Well, equipped with a new k..k..kind of SSME, before you ask that means space shuttle main engine, that p..p..provides the lady with thrust of 25,000 kilo Newton. That means we can waive the SRB. By the way, SRBs are solid rocket boosters. The two s..s..smaller rockets which always fall away when the old shuttle left the atmosphere."

Keswick clapped his hands again and a blueprint of something that looked like a parabolic antenna flashed up on the wall.

"This is the KCom-8. Or how I call it, the revolution of interstellar c..c..communication. Developed by me by the way. This w..w..wonderful device allows you to establish a constant hyperspace communication between you and the one you want to talk to.
The c..c..carrier signal moves through the 4-dimesional-Hyperspace. So a new coordinate adds to our Cartesian coordinate system. It´s no longer X, Y, Z it´s now X, Y, Z and T. And when we c..c..choose T right we… "

Keswick stopped his remarks because Dudley look at him in a way which meant that his brain has already shut down. So instead of continue talking he clapped his hands again. Again a blueprint was projected on the wall but Dudley knew this time nothing with what he could compare it.

"Here you see the reason why someone gets send up there at all. The Möbius Mk II. A completely new drive System. Developed by Doctor Johann Willhelm Möbius who isn´t just a genius but also my former Professor."

"I thought we just wanted to test the new shuttle?" interjected Dudley.
"Also that, but the main r..r..reason is the Möbius Mk II. If it works we are maybe able to travel with the speed of light… or even faster." Keswick paused his speech because he waited for an amazed loud of Dudley. But nothing came.

Dudley wasn´t so into science that he could understand the implications of this invention. "Well I expected more enthusiasm...But, why do y..y..you even ask me about all of this?"
"I sign up on the list and I want be the one sitting in that shuttle. So I thought I should get to know... the lady."

"Huh." Meant Keswick pensively.
"Huh?"
"Yes, huh. Usually I would be in a..a..agreement with your idea. But with the T.V. on your neck, which is even a great b..b..beauty spot in this all… I don´t know if I could s..s..sell my soul to the T.V. … I just hope that you really want that." Explained Keswick to him.

"It´s somehow a dream of me to explore space. And I can feel how this dream becomes real." Dudley smiled and looked heroically towards the ceiling.
Kitty finally followed all of Dudley´s steps and arrived in the lab seeing her boyfriend in this pseudo cool position.

The hand which she let had sunk down by now she smacked against her forehead again.
"This guy, my guy, wants to do a highly complicated single space mission… Wonderful. Just wonderful!"

-Well, that was the pilot-chapter. I´m planning to make this to a bigger story. I´m also trying to publish chapters of this story continuously... even if I´m not sure about the frequency. What do you think? Just write it into the reviews. And Thanks for reading :D-

-By the way, the next time Halley´s comet will appear is 2061… So, very soon ;D-