Tau Zero

by Poul Anderson

In spite of that, these mounting dates have meaning. They make us absolute exiles. Already. Irrevocably. No longer simply our kinfolk must be extinct. Our civilization must be. What has happened on Earth? Throughout the galaxy? What have men done? What have they become? We will never share in it. We cannot.”

By a grotesquely improbable chance, the ship passed near enough to one that he identified it—a dim, ancient red dwarf—and could show that it must have planets, from the glimpse his apparatus got before the system was swallowed anew by distance. It was an eerie thought, those icy shadowy worlds, manyfold older than Earth, perhaps one or two with life upon them, and never a star to lighten their nights. When he told Lindgren about it, she said not to pass the information any further.