Amazing...
Whenever Jozu was on Pilot duty and got the chance, he always tried to swing the ship around to point coreward at the galaxy's center. And tonite was one of those nights.
"As long as we get to the Jump Point, Jozu," the Captain told him. And he took his duties seriously.
But the view of the Galaxy amazed him.
The Milky Way was what the people of Old Terra called it. The Sagittarius Galaxy. The Celestial River. The Sky Path. Many other names for it across Charted Space.
The filaments of dark, nebulous, gas and dust being lit from behind by the dense starfield around the Galaxy's singularity. The bright stars and other interstellar material - an edge-on look through the disk of our Galaxy from the inside.
Jozu could interpose and overlay information on the viewport to enhance his view.
Borders of interstellar governments. The Capital of the Star Confederation. Trade Lanes in green. Communication Routes in yellow. The locations of important Worlds. The Institute for Advanced Human Development...
Home.
Changing the view to a near-infrared overlay, he could see giant stars and dust more clearly. A change to gamma-rays showed him the neutron stars and x-ray binary stars better. He pressed another button and it changed to show him hot supernova remnants. A far-infrared view showed him the concentration of old stars in the center bulge of the Galaxy.
That strip of dust and starlight in the interstellar medium. What was out there in that concentration of stars? Jozu always wondered.
A note chimed indicating they were at the Jump Point. Jozu wiped all of the overlays off of the viewport and took one more look.
It was beautiful. It was mysterious. It was where he wanted to go, what he wanted to see.
Then Jozu pressed a button and the universe turned into JumpSpace.