BY DR. AGONSON
I once dreamed that I could be more than I am. Gazing out the round porthole, I saw the infinite wealth of stars shining defiantly in the horrible blackness of space. Yet it was all a momentary flicker, I knew. Time and death and darkness would conquer all—even these ancient lights—as they had conquered my dreams. The halcyon days of man were over; a cosmic winter would shortly break upon our little sphere. Who would survive the coming storm? My home, so far, distant, it looked just like any other star now. Indistinguishable but for the many hours I had spent searching for it. I was fairly sure now that that one little dot among the millions was mine.
We, I am told, were rushing headlong into the void, racing forward at speeds unimaginable, and yet the stars stood still about us as though we were frozen in glass.
One of the engineers, I saw his ghostly reflection in the windowpane, was approaching me. He looked the worst for drink. He was stumbling nearer, and I gritted my teeth. If there is one thing I can’t stand, it’s a drunk engineer, but I was saved. A cabin boy, the figure of his white jacket gliding over the stars like spilt milk, intercepted the bore, and the two faceless figures in the glass shrunk away.
I would die out here, trapped in this little buoy helplessly puttering its way through space, and I would never be the man I thought I was. The life I would have had on earth—and where was earth? I had lost sight of that little speck, my gaze distracted by the dim reflections. It was just one more star now. Sighing, I turned away from the window, turned toward the cramped celebration of officers in our little club.
Here was the rest of my life: uniforms and parties and nothing but empty laughter and worn out jokes. We would never see the end of this journey; neither would our children. The hapless crew who would reach that distant star we sought, bred out in the coldness of space, will be too frail to leave heaven. Their bones will be too weak, their eyes and skin unaccustomed to any light but this pale, clinical glow.
I saw my assigned spouse among the other women and tried not to think of my home, of that little blue star, and of the pale blue eyes I had once loved.
No, we would not live on the world we sought, neither we nor our descendants, but we would husband it, make it livable. One day, the frozen corpses below our feet would be thawed and brought to life again on an alien world remade into a new earth.
And what will our descendants do then? Set out for another star and play the whole game again? Find some quiet orbit and sit as counselors and judges over the new world? Or tyrants? Who knows what man may become out here, hurtling through the dark heaven? What will space make of him? What might it take? What will be left?
I smiled at the woman, searching for her name while desperately praying I’d forget the love I had left behind.
Tale Told 