Electrodes to power. Turbines to speed. Our sorry asses to perdition. Prepare for launch sequence start. Roger! Roger! Stay away from that engine nozzle! Man, that guy’s an idiot. I don’t understand how he ends up on every mission.

Well, we’re about to launch our spring Interstellar Tour, which we’ve dubbed the Ned Trek Live Springtime Extravaganza Tour 2019.  Not a moment too soon, I should add. It’s getting pretty strange down here on planet Earth, and we’d just as soon watch the various developments from a safe distance of maybe 75 light years. From that remote prospect, all of the cares and woes of human kind are reduced to a mere point of light. A sobering thought … unless you’re drinking that basement hooch Mitch Macaphee has been working on recently. Not one of his better experiments. Speaking as someone who’s about to embark on a perilous deep space excursion in a ramshackle craft, I can say I’m more afraid of imbibing that noxious beverage.

Yes, we did secure transport. It’s a used saucer someone abandoned in exchange for something much, much better.  Mitch picked it up from some used car dealer, caulked up all of the gaps, and it appears to hold air pressure for the most part. Then there’s the engines, and well … they’re a little vintage. There are some rudimentary sleeping quarters, a kitchenette, strangely one of those snack fridges where you get charged five bucks for a Snickers bar. (It shows up on your bill.) There appear to be navigational controls, some direction-finding devices, a few dozen flashing lights, and an old reel-to-reel machine done up to look like a computer. We’ve loaded our gear in and we’re going through a list of final checks before liftoff. (Hey … I never saw that check before!)

So … we’ve got two days to get to Neptune. And really, we shouldn’t merely arrive on time. It’s awfully hard to find the venue down in that mass of impenetrable atmosphere. Oh, and the Neptunians don’t appreciate tardiness. Come to think of it, they don’t appreciate much of anything … including our music. Why they keep hiring us I could not say. I think it’s because we’re cheap and we provide our own transportation. As you can imagine, being one of the outer planets, they go to great expense to import just about anything, and that includes music. In any case, just a short stop there, then it’s off to the next solar system over … Proxima something or other. Can’t miss it. Just take a right at the Kuiper Belt.