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Barrier.

Some eighteen months ago, I with a six-man crew took off from Earth. Our mission was to travel as far as was possible with the new fuel. If one could call it fuel, in reality it was the heat from the sun. The theory is that each sun in the universe gives off warmth it was this warmth that was firing our motors. It did not look as if we would ever run out of fuel. Each galaxy had more suns than our scientists had provided for. At this pace and approaching the speed of light we would never run out of fuel it was possible for us to return home from this our suicide mission. For that is what this mission is a suicide. They even made new laws that for scientific purposes one could commit suicide.

How far this flight will take us in distances I have no idea. The crew are doomed men for we now know that no one will ever come back to the Earth. All seem to be cheerful enough, perhaps the knowledge that our families are being taken care of helps most of the men. Excitement has risen at the sight of a blue planet that is in front of us a few million miles ahead of us. Could this be the Earth, or could it be an identical planet. Would we be able to land on this planet that tantalises our feelings and shows our homesickness? Yes even space ship crewmembers can be terribly home sick. Slowly, much too slowly we gained on the planet that looked so much like the Earth. One day the speakers placed all over the ship made a cackling noise then in plain English a voice spoke. Space ship be warned we are an advanced civilisation and can and will defend this our home planet. Take advantage and turn back to where you have come from. We are at peace with all peoples of our home area. We do not and I emphasise this, we do not want any forms of alien life coming into this our territory.

Then the Captain speaking slowly and clearly into our own microphone, Hello Earth this is Captain James Fontague departed earth on the fourteenth of December on a mission to see how far our fuel would takes us we have been flying in this one direction and are now approaching an elliptical blue planet. We are Citizens of the earth and request permission to land on the moon. I await your instructions. Suddenly something stopped the spaceship. Fuel was not the cause of our stopping.  Again the loud speakers cackling then. This is the first warning you have been stopped at the barrier placed by our engineers and scientists to stop any Alien life forms from invading our territory. What date have you on board your ship? The Captain told the voice that we now had the date of two thousand and seventy six. A slight Gasp was heard then again we have the year two thousand five hundred and eighty five. Now it was our turn to gasp according to the voice we should all have been dead a very long time ago. Slowly a ship approached the Barrier. A voice told us to don our space suits and to come one by one to the waiting ship. The ship was huge as each man from our crew entered the ship from the earth we were taken separately by four heavily armed men to an isolation unit. Here we were told to strip off all clothes and personal jewellery then we were placed in front of a machine. Various needles entered our skin and although we could feel r see anything I knew that I had been x-rayed and tested for any and every kind of disease the knowledge of which had been gained over the years of our absence.

Next came films. A film of our entering the spaceship a picture of the Captain waving goodbye with a grin over his face I even saw a picture that I recognised as me I was twenty four at that time. I am a grey-headed old man now. We were the Heroes of the World as the space ship landed at the spaceport thousands of people were waiting to greet us the returning heroes that all had long given up for dead. We were strangely parts of certain school lessons. Explaining that time spent in space, slows down time whereas here on Earth time just seems to run away with one.

We are now all highly decorated men with all of the honours that the world can give. I myself have given a series of lectures on life in outer space. Lastly I was shown the Barrier. The idea was so simple that a child could comprehend its workings. Those that stayed on Earth have a different English to that of the crew that took off to see how long our fuel would last. It took me a couple of months to really understand what people were asking me. A detailed description of Bern’s trip into outer space.