The Salutem coasted majestically toward its final destination. The gold of its fuel tanks glittered in the distant remnants of sunlight, and its broad, curved windows reflected a warped image of the ringed planet in all its beige glory. Hues of silver and purple banded the gas giant, and the rings shone pristine white in the sunlight. A dusting of moons lay scattered around the disk of the ring system.

The spaceliner would swing around the huge planet over the next day or so, sending it back towards the sun. Earth was two uneventful weeks away. But the coming hours would be the most spectacular of all, as the Salutem few between the rings of Saturn, among the myriad moons, and skimmed the honey-colored atmosphere.

The tour guide spoke, providing its contextual facts. Saturn, it hummed, was the last stronghold of the UDS before the no man's land of the ice giants and the Kuiper belt. Its moon system was arguably even more diverse than that of Jupiter, sporting such astronomical oddities as Iapetus and Titan. The latter was considered the capital world of the system, and held most of the economic and administrative power. Despite daytime temperatures exceeding minus one hundred degrees Celsius and occasional showers of methane and benzene, the moon was rather successful, profiting heavily on the last extensive hydrocarbon industry in the solar system. The most exciting part of Titan, however, was the booming tourist industry. With a thick atmosphere and low gravity, sports on Titan were unique. One could ski down slopes of methane snow and sail oceans of briny water, pushed by winds of orange haze. Best of all, the Exonavis corporation has recently opened the first wingsuit facility on Titan's surface, allowing those with the courage and the money to fly under their own power. This miracle was only possible on Titan, where the atmospheric conditions allowed humans to generate sufficient thrust for flight with only their arms. Here, men could don wings like those of legendary Icarus, and take to the alien air gliding and swooping like monstrous, rubber birds.

But the Salutem hadn't the time to make any stops on its breakneck sprint around the solar system. There was only enough to let its passengers observe the glory of the cosmos and wonder.

Theodora was quite content with this arrangement as she watched the frozen orb of Saturn from behind several inches of quartz glass. The window was cold.

She turned away and saw John Brannon, reading. He looked up.

"The Yangtze AD has started mobilizing its air forces. There's talk of war!"

"Finally. It's high time for a good war."

"They're claiming the UDS has been limiting freedom of expression in their borders and are prepared to use force to gain independence. There are rumors that the MIAD is prepared to join any conflict that comes up."

"I always loved watching drama unfold. So how is the UDS reacting?"

"They're attempting to pacify the Yangtze military, changing policies and such, but it's near certain at this point that some fighting is going to happen. I'm looking forward to something big!"

"Wonderful."

John smiled in agreement and walked off to his room. The sounds of amazement took his place, emanating from the three dozen other tourists.

The Salutem was quick to traverse the Saturn system, dashing between the moons and asteroids and closer to the giant at their center. It was soon passing by some of the inner moons, and made a close flyby of Iapetus.

Iapetus was simultaneously dull and interesting. Like most celestial bodies this far from the sun, it was covered in ice, and pockmarked with craters. In this, it was unremarkable. However, Iapetus was unique among the celestial bodies due its dichotomous coloration. One hemisphere was grey-black, while the other was white. The two sides were cleanly separated. Explanations for the anomaly varied greatly. Some geologists suggested that it was due to a huge collision event in the past, that stripped the darker materials off one hemisphere. Others thought it was some artifact of the Saturnian magnetic field, or some unknown factor deep within the undiscovered bowels of Iapetus. Either way, the moon made for an intriguing tourist destination, and attracted a small crowd as it slid past the larger disk of Saturn.

John appeared next to Theodora, looking ecstatic. He glanced distractedly for at the distant globe of Iapetus, before speaking.

"We've got ourselves an official war! The Yangtze and the Mississippi have assaulted Republic military bases on Earth and Luna. They say they won't stop until they get what they asked for. It could go on for months!"

"I didn't expect them to actually go for it. Is it going to be like the Congo a few years back, do you think?"

"Looking like it is. The space naval forces are on standby, as always. It doesn't seem likely they're going to see any action, though."

"Still, better than nothing."

The black half of Iapetus was all that could be seen from Salutem's great bay windows. It was almost invisible, but for the glints of exposed ice and the occasional human settlement.

The next few days were filled with unbridled excitement as the first VR clips from the frontlines began trickling in. It was a heady experience, watching soldiers die and mortars explode all around, in stark and refreshing contrast to the silence of open space. The number of passengers on the observation deck and the promenades dropped suddenly, as more and more of them chose to stay inside and partake in vicarious. Battle from within the intricate fabrications of their own minds. The scenes were always open desert or dense, dripping jungle, or the stony outcrops of lunar maria. Otherwise, people would be in danger, and that would be no fun.

The economic results of the war were slightly more sobering, because several airspaces and mining regions were now made too dangerous for normal activity. Many lost their fortunes in those few weeks of fighting. Some did not. Some profited on the spectacle, selling munitions to all involved parties.

But Saturn was too far away to be directly influenced by the happenings on Earth. The planet and its entourage of moons would continue to travel around the sun, carrying with them the vestiges of human civilization. They would remain forever beyond the grasp of terrestrial worry.

Instead, they had their own worries. While falsehoods raged on the ancient, tired soils of Earth, a real conflict boiled below the serene rings. From the surface of Rhea, for example, Earth was only a blue speck in the dark, just one of infinite stars. I was easy to see how the inhabitants would gaze upon the planet's insignificance and ask why it could hold such total power, even from such a distance.

The UDS itself was well aware of these protests to its rule. They were indeed the more pressing issue, easily overshadowing the war, where all parties were willing to play by a rule book. While the population of all the other planets was just a fraction of Earth's, those few people had much more to lose.

The day of closest approach was one tense with excitement. Everyone had been looking forward to it, and the liner was awake well before it usually was. Even before the artificial day had officially begun, most of the passengers were up and gazing up at the graceful arc of Saturn.

Theodora was one of them, floating in the middle of the common area. She had already seen Saturn from this proximity before. She had, indeed delved within the thick envelope of the gas giant's atmosphere and gazed in wonder as mountainous clouds, lit from within by flashes of lightning, swept across the pale blue sky. She had seen the sun shining through the gossamer strands of those beautiful rings as it set behind the walls of the polar storm. But all this was far in the past, when she was young. Theodora was quite happy to see the planet from the safety of space.

With the full freedom of view that the observation windows allowed, it was possible to consider Saturn as it truly was, a sphere so massive it boggled the senses. From here, it was possible to pick out the tiny shadows of clouds that hung above the deeper, uniform layers of atmosphere. The shadows of the rings, massive and blurred with distance, interrupted the endless brown, slicing through the sea of clouds.

Theodora squinted at Saturn's gaseous surface to zoom in. She could pick out much greater detail, and could see the minute spurs and wisps of vapor as they were swept away by the breakneck wind. As she watched, an upwelling seemed to rise from below, disturbing the surface layers and creating bulge in the cloud deck. Of course, Saturn appeared much quieter than Jupiter did, from a distance. But this close, it was possible to catch glimpses of the turmoil raging below the planet's serene mask.

Suddenly, a streak of light burst out through the cloud deck. It left behind it an ugly patch of dark brown, and quickly climbed out of view, into space. Theodora guessed it was an atmospheric diving vessel, either for scientific purposes or for sightseeing. Either way, it was a jarring sight. Frightening, in fact.

Theodora's ventures into the gas giant's atmosphere had been shallow and cursory. She had never allowed herself to fall below the cloud deck, and was quick to leave, spending no more than a few hours at a time within the atmosphere. The thought of going any further was simply unbearable.

The Earth's sky, despite all its vast, open grandeur, was very limited. At best, it was only about one hundred kilometers thick, and most of it condensed in those first few. This was not the case on Saturn. The sky is all that that existed. No matter how deep a probe went, it would encounter no ground. The mixture of gases that comprised the Saturnian atmosphere only grew denser as one descended. At first, the experience had been familiar, even enjoyable. The air pressures near the cloud deck were at or below sea-level equivalents. While the air was cold and the winds were biting, the clouds were the traditional puffy shape, off-white in color, and the open sky above them a natural blue. Further down, it became much harder to differentiate one layer from the next. First, water condensed and rain fell in torrential downpours that never completely ended. The rain fell until it reached a layer of gas warm enough to boil it into steam. This was as far as any artificial craft could ever venture. Yet further, the pressures were so high that light gases become liquid, flowing with a viscosity that seemed utterly impossible for such substances. The heat, too, was substantial, and would quickly destroy any spacecraft. Even deeper, the pressure forces hydrogen into an exotic metal, the heart of Saturn's magnetic field as well as the source of its inner warmth.

That depth was one of the few things that scared her. Her fear was similar, in a way, to thalassophobia; that feeling of endless volume, a sea dark and opaque and massive. It could hide anything in its infinite depths.

The fact that people were willing to dive into that nightmare, for enjoyment no less, somehow infuriated Theodora. It was mindless, taunting something so much larger and deeper than humanity's own puny world.

The same terror sat also within the depths of space, of course. Looking now at the perfect blackness, outside Saturn's sphere, it was difficult to comprehend truly how great its expanse was. It was, indeed impossible. With Saturn and its gaseous ocean, all was within the realm of human understanding. Distances were quantifiable, if staggering. Space broke the concept of distance entirely, so it was difficult to feel much of anything when gazing out at it. The only tangible artifact of the cosmic ocean, the one set of objects that could be understood, were the stars. Even they were innumerable, and yet so dispersed and distant, rare, that the universe would be much the same in their absence.

That was why she did it. Out of all the careers she could have chosen, spacecraft design was the one thing that could bring mankind any closer to conquering the infinite depths of the cosmic ocean.

But perhaps there was no understanding to be had out there. Maybe one could only hope to find generalized half-truths, a mathematical relation here and there, but no genuine understanding. There would always be too much to survey.

Theodora took one last glance at the mighty sphere of Saturn, then drifted back towards her room. She wanted to sleep.

And so the Salutem flew. It continued on its parabolic arc around Saturn, swinging further and further away from the planet with each passing hour. Once again, it sailed between the rings and through the blizzard of small moons. On the second day after periapsis, the Salutem passed near Enceladus, one of the myriad ice balls orbiting the gas giant. Like Jupiter's Europa, it had shown promise of life, but proved to be sterile.

On that day, with the blue-white sphere rolling by the observatory windows, that the war came to a very abrupt end.