The first few days were peaceful enough as the last few colonised worlds fell behind and I pushed roughly southwards towards the rim. I had the chance to practice my exploration skills at a few systems I passed through. In the past, trading amongst the worlds of the Bubble, I usually picked up the information I needed from the system beacon near the star, or had the information already loaded into my star charts.

All the stars I visited had been found before, and all the worlds in them discovered and usually fully mapped. But all the same after a few jumps I decided to get to grips with the FSS, the Frequency Signal Scanner thingie. This meant after a jump I could quickly scan the system for planetary bodies (called a 'honk' colloquially in the literature), then use the dials and joystick to narrow in on the electromagnetic signals unique to each planet and then identify the planet type and basic mineralogy from the frequencies of those emissions. I broke out the manual as I spent a while getting used to the controls and the analysis process and soon, pleased, I had the whole system mapped completely, at least in astrometric terms.

As I moved over 500ly from Sol, I started to find systems that had planets that had not been completely surface mapped. So after my refuel-honk-FSS routine was complete, I made a beeline for the unmapped bodies. I had to hold a parking orbit somewhere between 0.1 and 0.3 light seconds from the planet, and fire probes to the surface which would contour map the surface and send the data back to my ship. I pored over the manual again to try and improve this, and it took some attempts to learn how to use the gravity of the planet to arc the probes down on the far side of the world, without having to manouevre the ship around to tackle the blind side, which I did once or twice before getting used to it all.

I was intrigued by the efficiency target for each world. A probe only had a finite radius of distance that it could map, and larger planets needed conequentially more probes to fully map their surfaces. A target would appear next to each, to try and minimise the amount of probes needed to gain 90% coverage. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to map the surface using that target number of probes, and later seeing if I could beat it, by one or two. The gas giants were a challenge, some of the early ones I encountered were very large with efficiency targets of 19 or even 22 probes. I must say in those early stages it would sometimes take me almost 30 to fully map those great beasts.

As for sights, I did see a few that made me stop in wonder. I would pause in an interesting system and savour the views while I prepared a meal and watched it as I ate. A system with five suns was spectacular, even if a couple of those suns were quite distant. It was only beaten a day later by a system with no less than six stellar bodies!

The planets so far had been mainly rock or ice, with the occasional gas giant or high metal world. As I approached the edge of the Orion spur, near the Perseus gap I was beginning to wonder if I would ever find an Earth-Like world. I knew they were rare and accordingly afforded a sizeable bounty if discovered, or even if just resurveyed.

I was about to make the crossing into the gap then, a region between two of the spiral arms of the galaxy where the star density decreases sharply, the stars fewer, and further apart. I could have travelled turnwise (west in this case) a thousand or more light years and crossed where the gap barely existed, but I was still in a hurry to make straight for the rim. I did however have a moment of caution. It had been now 4 days or so since my last docking at civilisation and though I was planning weeks travelling alone at the edge of the galaxy, this was still the longest I had been away from my fellow man. So I looked around on the star charts to see if there had been any reports of a fleet carrier being in the vicinity. There was! it was about 140ly widdershins (east!) and higher in the galactic plane, but it was but 4 jumps away.

I plotted a course and began my progress, I gave the systems just the astronomical survey, in my hurry to get there before the carrier might move before I arrived.

But, I dallied, for on the way on my second jump to the carrier I finally found a system with a water world, and was terraformable. And more, there was another in the system as well, what bounty! I paused to get in close and fully surface scan, wishing my trusty Asp had the ability to get in and see the surface close at hand. But alas my ship was not yet equipped to do so. One even had signs of a primitive water borne life forms.

The next system I also dallied at, for there I finally found an Earth-like world. As I analysed the frequencies and saw the resultant system map unfold, my excitement mounted, there were no less than two Earth-like worlds, a double planetary system at that! the two planets looking so like Earth, yet not Earth, revolved around each other, a tight orbit, each dependent on the other. I came in close and spent some care in mapping each, marvelling at the views from space of each, the vibrant colours, the weather systems at play on their surfaces. I didn't hurry on to the carrier just 2 jumps away now, but instead parked up in orbit, and fell asleep watching the two worlds revolve around above me while the strains of some beautiful symphony played over my loudspeakers.

It has now been 5 days since I began my first sojourn of exploration across the vast Galaxy. But how did it all begin?

A week ago I was at the edge of the 'Bubble', as the region of human-occupied space a few hundred light years (or ly for short) across is known, refitting my doughty ASP explorer class ship from being a cargo hauler to one more suited to interstellar travel. Indeed I had purchased the secondhand Asp to ultimately be used to explore, placing my trusty old Cobra mk III, the Antigone into storage. I had used the larger Asp to make some good profits for a few weeks and provide a nice little nest egg for the future, or in case things took a downward turn.

I had read about advancements by legendary engineers to Frame Shift technology, for the right price and materials, and indeed I had only recently returned from a trek to visit one, out in the sparsely populated rimward side of the bubble. Combined with advancements from reverse engineered alien (Guardian) technology, I could have had a jump range in excess of 60 light years. But that would have meant weeks bumbling around the edge of the Bubble, acquiring rare components, and having to visit Guardian ruin sites on distant worlds in search of rare components. However, the sites were often guarded by automated defences and my experiences with landing rovers and shooting drones on some missions for the Federation had not been a successful one so far.

No, my feet were itchy, I needed to see what was 'out there' and taste what it was like to be alone in vast deeps of space. I arranged what I could at a reasonably well stocked shipyard, using off-the-shelf technology, choosing most components for the minimum mass while still providing acceptable service and utility. I managed almost 33 light years at full fuel. I could have shaved some more mass from the ship to increase the range a few more ly, but I kept large fuel tanks rather than trusting to finding fuel stars to scoop regularly, and a hangar bay for 2 rovers as I felt I would at some point want to land on a world at the edge of the galaxy and just... drive.

Suitably ready and stocked with supplies, the question was now where to go? I wanted at some point to visit some of the sites, the so-called Points of Interest that other intrepid explorers had already discovered, often with sights that would simply take ones breath away, or be barely conceivable that the universe would create such things. But I thought to leave that until i was more experienced, for now I wanted to visit the Rim. Being already on the rimward side of the Bubble, I had a few hundred light years towards that edge under my belt. I opened my star charts picked a star in the direction of the Perseus spiral arm, and made ready for the first jump of many...