Back along the Solar rim, the Collector remained linked to Planet Pluto for two decades following the Extractor's departure. Its schedule along Pluto's orbit provided sufficient time for the Collector's transit to its permanent station along the rim, to track the Extractor's position via spunnel to refine details for integrated operations, and for positioning and calibrating the thousands of networks that coordinate the solar and interstellar arrays. The citizens of the Solar community tuned in to witness the release of the Interstellar Spunnel Signal from the hand of the President of the newly formed United Nations of the Solar System. It would be the final signal to synchronize and activate the collective controls of the Extractor and Collector. The President keyed the Signal. ## Remote spunnel nodes and boosters along the route from the Solar System to Alpha Centauri monitored the Signal and the response. Rings of laser arrays along the edge of the Extractor's hopper flashed alive and focused their beams on a large, slowly tumbling planetoid hundreds of kilometers across its minor dimension. Sensors, analyzers, siphons and beam-guides paralleled the lasers' signals along an incandescent column of plasma from the dissolving planetoid into the Extractor's processes and, when ready, into the hopper. The truncated apex of the Extractor's teleport gate cone glowed red, then violet, and thirty meters of its length disappeared into its new hyperspace home. The invisible nozzle hurled a concentration of elemental substance across hyperspace to its sister station four and a half light-years distant. The first sign of incoming was a churning, expanding mass of violet bubbles around the apex of the Collector. Shifting colors as it cooled and solidified, the mass transformed into a huge brown globe. The globe separated from the nozzle and drifted off, replaced by another mushrooming bubbling mass at the nozzle's tip. A fleet of robot tugs clamped mag-beams on the free-floating globes and hauled them off. Another fleet of giant space tugs moved into position for the next gift of crude but treasured substance teleported across interstellar space from a distant star. The cornucopia was in flow and humankind's first outbound and inbound highways to the greater universe were complete and working. Afterwords An overview of the times prepared by Level 2 students, Luna Middle School, based on records and commentaries in the official archives of The Interstellar Mining and Teleport System. (Reference: Index, Capsule V67 The Interstellar Historian, Third Millennium, Interstellar Era.)