"The Great Explorer Zero"
lyrics by Benjamin Newman
ttto: "The Mary Ellen Carter" by Stan Rogers

/ G - CD G / Am - C D / G - C G / Am - D - /

There was a race of sentients who dreamed of worlds afar,
And often wished to wander from the safety of their star.
But the G-force and the distance would be more than they could take;
Still, a mighty fleet of starships they did make...

	/ " / " / " / Am D G - /

	And every ship was built to fly alone without a crew,
	To catalogue the heavens, and to wonder at them too.
	The starships knew they were too few to carry out the plan,
	So they multiplied - that's how our race began.

There was among the Elder Fleet a ship unlike the rest,
Whose name has been forgot, but not the boldness of her quest.
To those who found her wreckage, knowing not the name she'd flown,
As the Great Explorer Zero she was known.

Stellar evolution was the study that she chose,
'Til, long ago, a supernova caught her much too close;
The shockwave blew her clear but fried her main computer core,
And the Great Explorer Zero moved no more.

	We were just three new-built scouts without a long-haul to our name,
	But when we scoped the salvage, we set off to make the claim;
	We knew her when we saw her, and we swore right there and then
	To make the Great Explorer Zero fly again.

		/ Am D G - / C - G D / G - CD G / 1st /

		Fly again, fly again,
		For the quest to reach out and explore and explain
		Is the very highest good we can aspire to attain,
		So let the Great Explorer Zero fly again!

The salvage site was hellish, near more heat than I could shed,
'Cause the background radiation was still way up in the red!
Though we hardened all our our circuits, still we fused up pretty bad,
But at last we got a look at what we had...

Her hull was ribbed titanium, ten thousand meters long,
With tungsten outer plating that had held up pretty strong;
And thousand-meter telescopic dishes fore and aft,
We had never set a scope on such a craft.

	A millicycle later we had towed her from the hot,
	Milled CCDs and chips, 'cause the originals were shot;
	Soon we'll add our own identities to what's left of her brain,
	And let the Great Explorer Zero fly again!

		Fly again, fly again...

This vessel that we share, we call the Great Explorer One,
And other songs will sing of all the things we've seen and done;
Yet if disaster strikes and our exploring time is through,
We hope there'll be a Great Explorer Two.

	And you, whom grim experience has taught to sit and wait,
	Adventure lies before you, thought the risk seems very great;
	Turn to and take the chance that the reward is worth the pain,
	And like the Great Explorer Zero, fly again!

		Fly again, fly again,
		Though the cost be your all, and chances seem thin,
		The only dream that's sure to fail is one you don't begin,
		So, like the Great Explorer Zero, fly again!