Tau Zero

by Poul Anderson

For indeed, any planet is a world, infinitely varied, infinitely secret. And this world appeared to be so terrestroid that the strangenesses it must hold would be yet the more vivid and enlightening.

Reymont said like winter.

We had this one man, however, Mr. Melikot, an Abyssinian, I don’t know how he ended up in our hellhole of a school, but he lived for us and for what he taught, we felt it and our brains came awake … I’m not certain if he did me a favor. I got to thinking and reading, and that got me into talking and doing, and that got me into trouble till I had to skip for Mars, never mind.

People grew older at the ancient rate of sixty seconds per minute, sixty minutes per hour. Yet those hours were always less related to the hours and years which passed outside. Loneliness closed on the ship like fingers.

“A being that concerns itself with everything from quanta to quasars can spare attention for us.

If we must return, surely enough continuity would have persisted that we didn’t come back as utter aliens.

“An old principle,” he said. “Works in military and paramilitary organizations. I’ve been applying it here. The human animal wants a father-mother image but, at the same time, resents being disciplined. You can get stability like this: The ultimate authority-source is kept remote, godlike, practically unapproachable. Your immediate superior is a mean son of a bitch who makes you toe the mark and whom you therefore detest. But his own superior is as kind and sympathetic as rank allows.

“I can’t go on any more. It’s that simple. I can’t.” “Why not?” Reymont persisted. “What jobs we have aren’t hard, physically. Anyhow, you’re tough. Weightlessness never bothered you. You’re a machine-era boy, a practical chap, a lusty, earthy soul. Not one of those self-appointed delicates who have to be coddled every minute because their tender spirits can’t bear a long voyage.” He sneered. “Or are you one?”

“I don’t mean your damned measurements, computations, course adjustments, equipment modifications. That’s from nothing but the instinct to stay alive. A lobster trying to climb out of a kettle has as much dignity. I ask myself, why? What are we really doing? What does it mean?”

heroism. We have the sweat, tears, blood”—his grin flashed—“in short, the unglamorous bodily excretions. And what’s bad about that? Your trouble is, you think a combination of acrophobia, sensory deprivation, and nervous strain is a metaphysical crisis. Myself, I don’t despise our lobsterish instinct to survive. I’m glad we have one.”

“We’ve come farther than we knew. In space and time. More than a hundred billion years. The astronomers began suspecting it when—I don’t know. I only know what they’ve told me. Everybody’s heard how the galaxies we see are getting dimmer. Old stars fading, new ones not being born. We didn’t think it would affect us. All we were after was one little sun not too different from Sol. There ought to be many left. The galaxies have long lives. But now—

“Did you ever read Moby Dick?” she whispered. “That’s us. We’ve pursued the White Whale. To the end of time. And now … that question. What is man, that he should outlive his God?”

“I wonder if the biggest surprise in these next months isn’t how stubbornly ordinary life will keep on being.”

Black Sabbath.

On the fringes of creation, through billion-year cycles which passed as moments, the ship of man flew.

less well-endowed