Kesla Station is not somewhere that you intend to go to; it's somewhere you end up.

At least that is what Arnold would tell you, his words blurred slightly by the alcohol in his gut, and you would either solemnly nod or laugh.

Kesla Station, he would continue, is a whole heap of nowhere away from anywhere else. Just another tiny dot orbiting a main sequence star in the arm that hasn't been properly colonised yet, another waypoint on the way to somewhere else. Get out, get out while you can. Before you become like me.

And you would look at him, and ask him, so why don't you leave?

And he'd say with a grin, there's a strange gravity around here, it keeps some of us. And he'd laugh and buy some more drink, because on Kesla Station there is always more drink.

The truth, something that he would never tell no matter what you plied him with, is that he is in love; this is why he has never left, and the object of his love has no more idea than you do. And tomorrow you will be gone, on whatever sloop or cruiser took you here, and you would have no idea what happened next.