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.He stood staring down thelong paths that ran between the great machines.There was one machine that spun, and he recognized it a gyroscope, a stabilizer hanging in itsgimbals, humming to itself.How long, he wondered, how long would it take a man to understand all there was to know about allthese massive, intricate machines? How far, he wondered, have we fallen from the knowledge of athousand years ago?And the thing he carried dangled on his shoulder, and he heard the slow, deliberate dripping of thewarm, sticky liquid splashing on the floor.Horror and wonder a going back.A going back through a thousand years to a knowledge thatcould build machines like these.A going back much farther to an instability of human emotions that woulddrive one man to kill another man.I must be rid of him, Jon Hoff thought bitterly.I must be rid of him.But I never will be.When he hasdisappeared; when he has become something other than what he is, when the substances of him havebecome something else, I still shall not be rid of him.Never!He found the converter door and braced himself in front of it.He tugged at the door.It stuck, and hejerked at it and it came free.The maw gaped, large enough to take a human body, and from behind thebaffles he could hear the roaring of the power and imagined that he caught the hellish flicker of theravening fire.He balanced the body on his shoulder and slid it off as gently -as he could, feeding it to themaw.He gave it a final push and closed the door and trod hard upon the feeder mechanism.The deed finally was done.He reeled back from the converter's face and mopped his brow and now the burden was gone, but itstill was with him.As it always would be, he thought.As it always would be.The footsteps came at him, and he did not swing around to face them, for he knew whose thefootsteps were the ghostly footsteps that would dog him all his life the footsteps of guilt walking in hismind.A voice said, "Lad, what have you done?"Jon said, "I have killed a man.I have killed my friend." And he swung around to face the footstepsand the voice, because neither was a ghost.Joshua said, "There was a reason for it, lad?""A reason," said Jon Hoff."A reason and a purpose.""You need a friend," Joshua said."You need a friend, my boy."Jon nodded."I found the purpose of the Ship.And the destination.He found me out.He was goingto denounce me.I I " "You killed him.""I thought, One life or all? I took only one life.He would have taken all."They stood for a long moment, facing each other.The old man said, "It is not right to take a life.It is not right nor proper."He stood there, stumpy and stolid, against the background of the engines, but there was somethingvital in him, some driving force within him as there was in the engines."Nor is it right," he said, "to condemn the Folk to a fate that was not intended.It is not right to let apurpose go by default and ignorance."He asked."The purpose of the Ship? It is a good purpose?""I do not know," said Jon."I can't be sure.But at least it is a purpose.A purpose, any purpose, isbetter than none at all." He raised his head and brushed back his hair, plastered down with sweat acrosshis brow."All right," he said."I'll go along with you.I've taken one life.I'll not take any more."Joshua spoke slowly, gently."No, lad.I am the one who goes along with you."To see the great depth of the emptiness in which the stars blazed like tiny, eternal watch fires wasbad enough when one looked out a blister port.To see it from the control room, where the great glassplate opened out into the very jaws of space, was something else again.You could look down and down and there was no bottom, and you could look up or out and therewas no stopping, and one moment you would swear that a certain star could be reached for and plucked,and the next moment it was so far away that your brain spun with the very thought of distance.The stars were far.All but one of them.And that one blazed, a flaming sun, off toward the left.Jon Hoff flicked a glance at Joshua, and the old man's face was frozen in a mask that was disbeliefand fear and something touching horror.And, he thought, I knew.I knew what it might be like.I had some idea.But he had none at all.He pulled his eyes from the vision plate and saw the banks of instruments, and his stomach seemed toturn over and his fingers were all thumbs.No time to live with the Ship, he told himself.No time to get to know it as it really is.What must bedone he must do by intellect alone, by the sketchy knowledge impressed upon his brain a brain thatwas not trained or ready, that would not be trained and ready for many years."What are we to do?" Joshua whispered."Lad, what are we to do?"And Jon Hoff thought: What are -we to do?He walked slowly forward and mounted the steps to the chair that said NAVIGATOR on the backof it.Slowly he hoisted himself into the chair, and it seemed that he sat on the edge of space itself, that hesat upon a precipice from which at any moment he might slip off and tumble into space.He put his hands down carefully and gripped the chair's arms and hung on tight and fought to orienthimself, to know that he sat in a navigator's chair and that in front of him were trips and buttons that hecould press or trip, and that the pressing and the tripping of them would send signals to the pulsing engineroom."That star," said Joshua."That big one off to the left.The burning one.""All the stars are burning.""But that one.The big one.""That's the one we headed for a thousand years ago," said Jon.And he hoped it was.He wished hecould be certain that it was the one.Even as he thought it, bells of alarm were ringing in his brain.There was something wrong.Somethingvery wrong.He tried to think, but space was too close to think, space was, too big and empty and there was nouse of thinking.One could not outwit space.One could not fight space.It was too big and cruel.Spacedid not care.It had no mercy in it.It did not care what happened to the ship or the people in it.The only ones who had ever cared had been the people back on Earth who had launched the Ship, and, for a little while, the Folk who rode the Ship.And finally, he and one old man.They two against allspace.The only ones who cared."It's bigger than the others," said Joshua."We are closer to it."That was what was wrong! That was what had rung the alarm within his mind [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.He stood staring down thelong paths that ran between the great machines.There was one machine that spun, and he recognized it a gyroscope, a stabilizer hanging in itsgimbals, humming to itself.How long, he wondered, how long would it take a man to understand all there was to know about allthese massive, intricate machines? How far, he wondered, have we fallen from the knowledge of athousand years ago?And the thing he carried dangled on his shoulder, and he heard the slow, deliberate dripping of thewarm, sticky liquid splashing on the floor.Horror and wonder a going back.A going back through a thousand years to a knowledge thatcould build machines like these.A going back much farther to an instability of human emotions that woulddrive one man to kill another man.I must be rid of him, Jon Hoff thought bitterly.I must be rid of him.But I never will be.When he hasdisappeared; when he has become something other than what he is, when the substances of him havebecome something else, I still shall not be rid of him.Never!He found the converter door and braced himself in front of it.He tugged at the door.It stuck, and hejerked at it and it came free.The maw gaped, large enough to take a human body, and from behind thebaffles he could hear the roaring of the power and imagined that he caught the hellish flicker of theravening fire.He balanced the body on his shoulder and slid it off as gently -as he could, feeding it to themaw.He gave it a final push and closed the door and trod hard upon the feeder mechanism.The deed finally was done.He reeled back from the converter's face and mopped his brow and now the burden was gone, but itstill was with him.As it always would be, he thought.As it always would be.The footsteps came at him, and he did not swing around to face them, for he knew whose thefootsteps were the ghostly footsteps that would dog him all his life the footsteps of guilt walking in hismind.A voice said, "Lad, what have you done?"Jon said, "I have killed a man.I have killed my friend." And he swung around to face the footstepsand the voice, because neither was a ghost.Joshua said, "There was a reason for it, lad?""A reason," said Jon Hoff."A reason and a purpose.""You need a friend," Joshua said."You need a friend, my boy."Jon nodded."I found the purpose of the Ship.And the destination.He found me out.He was goingto denounce me.I I " "You killed him.""I thought, One life or all? I took only one life.He would have taken all."They stood for a long moment, facing each other.The old man said, "It is not right to take a life.It is not right nor proper."He stood there, stumpy and stolid, against the background of the engines, but there was somethingvital in him, some driving force within him as there was in the engines."Nor is it right," he said, "to condemn the Folk to a fate that was not intended.It is not right to let apurpose go by default and ignorance."He asked."The purpose of the Ship? It is a good purpose?""I do not know," said Jon."I can't be sure.But at least it is a purpose.A purpose, any purpose, isbetter than none at all." He raised his head and brushed back his hair, plastered down with sweat acrosshis brow."All right," he said."I'll go along with you.I've taken one life.I'll not take any more."Joshua spoke slowly, gently."No, lad.I am the one who goes along with you."To see the great depth of the emptiness in which the stars blazed like tiny, eternal watch fires wasbad enough when one looked out a blister port.To see it from the control room, where the great glassplate opened out into the very jaws of space, was something else again.You could look down and down and there was no bottom, and you could look up or out and therewas no stopping, and one moment you would swear that a certain star could be reached for and plucked,and the next moment it was so far away that your brain spun with the very thought of distance.The stars were far.All but one of them.And that one blazed, a flaming sun, off toward the left.Jon Hoff flicked a glance at Joshua, and the old man's face was frozen in a mask that was disbeliefand fear and something touching horror.And, he thought, I knew.I knew what it might be like.I had some idea.But he had none at all.He pulled his eyes from the vision plate and saw the banks of instruments, and his stomach seemed toturn over and his fingers were all thumbs.No time to live with the Ship, he told himself.No time to get to know it as it really is.What must bedone he must do by intellect alone, by the sketchy knowledge impressed upon his brain a brain thatwas not trained or ready, that would not be trained and ready for many years."What are we to do?" Joshua whispered."Lad, what are we to do?"And Jon Hoff thought: What are -we to do?He walked slowly forward and mounted the steps to the chair that said NAVIGATOR on the backof it.Slowly he hoisted himself into the chair, and it seemed that he sat on the edge of space itself, that hesat upon a precipice from which at any moment he might slip off and tumble into space.He put his hands down carefully and gripped the chair's arms and hung on tight and fought to orienthimself, to know that he sat in a navigator's chair and that in front of him were trips and buttons that hecould press or trip, and that the pressing and the tripping of them would send signals to the pulsing engineroom."That star," said Joshua."That big one off to the left.The burning one.""All the stars are burning.""But that one.The big one.""That's the one we headed for a thousand years ago," said Jon.And he hoped it was.He wished hecould be certain that it was the one.Even as he thought it, bells of alarm were ringing in his brain.There was something wrong.Somethingvery wrong.He tried to think, but space was too close to think, space was, too big and empty and there was nouse of thinking.One could not outwit space.One could not fight space.It was too big and cruel.Spacedid not care.It had no mercy in it.It did not care what happened to the ship or the people in it.The only ones who had ever cared had been the people back on Earth who had launched the Ship, and, for a little while, the Folk who rode the Ship.And finally, he and one old man.They two against allspace.The only ones who cared."It's bigger than the others," said Joshua."We are closer to it."That was what was wrong! That was what had rung the alarm within his mind [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]