The Road to Bluehorse

Clay Gilbert is hired for a job, and he has to leave home and travel and live with his co-workers, and it's not shocking that he falls in love with one of them, then another, then another, and they with one another, trying and trying and hoping to get it right, while still doing their jobs.

But his job is to pilot a Ghost 201 "explorer pod," helping find a place for possibly the first Human colony beyond the Solar System. Clay's Ghost is not, of course, a space fighter, until it is--and there are no aliens to shoot at--or are there?