“The endless void of space stretched out before it. Millennia had passed
as it roared through the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. The awesome
ellipse of its original path was continually altered by intermittent proximity
to myriad stars.
It gave off minute bits of itself as it rocketed silently through the
vacuum of space, but still, after all these millennia it was counted large
as such things were measured, and the fact that it had never collided
with anything else after such a tremendous interval of travel was a mute
testimony to the vastness and comparative emptiness of the universe.
Much as humans, on a molecular level, are comprised mostly of space
not of matter, so the universe, for all its galaxies and solar systems, is
comprised primarily of interconnecting emptiness.
Dark, colossal, mindless, and mighty in its mass and velocity, it came
on and on through space. The great alignment had set it on a new path.
Now, one last nudge from the Red Giant in the previous solar system
had fixed its new course, on a fateful rendezvous. Though it was oblivious
to its own destination and nothing in the universe with awareness
had yet detected it . . . Its path was set.”