Poul Anderson

“ We had talked philosophy with a gross wallowing cephalopod on one world and been shot at by the inhumanly beautiful natives of another. We had come as gods to a planet to lift its barbaric natives from the grip of a plague that scythed them down and we had come as humble students to the ancient laboratories and libraries of the next. We had come near perishing in a methane storm on a planet far from its sun and felt then how dear life is. ”

“ We went out to our carplane, to fly to the landing field where the gypsies would meet. From there, a boat would take us to the Traveler. I still could not fully realize that I was captain—I, captain of the great ship which had been my world, it didn't seem real. I walked slowly, my head full of the sudden universe of responsibility.
Alanna touched my arm. "Look around, Erling," she whispered. "Look around at our land. You'll never see it again."
I shook myself out of my reverie and let my eyes sweep the horizon. It was early, the grass was still wet, flashing in the new sun. ”

“ Why, if a ship from Earth landed tomorrow, I don't think twenty people would leave with it.
"But you, Erling, you and your friends—you grew up in the ship, and you made a successful adaptation to it. You spent your formative years wandering. By now—you're cosmopolites. For you, a mountain range will always be more than it really is, because of what's behind it. One horizon isn't enough, you've got to have many, as many as there are in the universe.
"Find Earth? Why, you yourself admitted you don't care whether Earth is ever found. ”

“ The gaunt sun-seared crags of One, the misty jungles of Two, the mountains and deserts of Four, the great civilization of Five, the bitter desolation of the outer worlds—and beyond those the stars. But we were home now, we sat in a warm dry house and heard the wind singing outside. ”

“ In the end we won. Sixteen men and their wives, with half a dozen children, were wild to leave.
That summer blazed up into fall, winter came, spring, and summer again, while we made ready. Our last year on Harbor. And I had never realized how much I loved the planet. Almost, I gave up.
But space, free space, the open universe and the ship come alive again—!
We left the colony a complete set of plans, in the unlikely event that they should ever want to build a starship of their own, and a couple of spaceboats and duplicates of all the important automatic machinery carried by the Traveler. ”

“ There's air and wind and rain, sunlight, the sea, the woods and mountains—Cosmos ! Who wants more? Who wants to trade it for sitting in a sterile metal tank, riding from star to star, homeless, hopeless?"
"Nobody," I said hastily. "I was just trying—"
"The most pointless existence—simply to be a ... a spectator in the universe!"
"Not exactly," said Tokogama. "There was plenty we did, if you insist that somebody must do something. We brought some benefits of human civilization to quite a number of places. ”

“ The sea danced and glittered beyond the rustling trees, crying its old song to the fair green land, and the wind that blew from it was keen and cold and pungent with life. The fields were stirring in the wind, a long ripple of grass, and high overhead a bird was singing.
"It's—very beautiful," I said.
"Yes." I could hardly hear her voice. "Yes, it is. Let's go, Erling."
We got into the carplane and slanted skyward. The boys crowded forward with me, staring ahead for the first glimpse of the landing field, not seeing the forests and meadows and shining rivers that slipped away beneath us. ”

“ But we knew we never would. We would go traveling, and our children would carry the journey on after us, and their children after them, a whole new civilization growing up between the stars, rootless but tremendously alive. ”

“ Those natives had never left their world, and even with the technological impetus we were giving them in exchange for their metals they weren't ever likely to, the pressures they needed to live were too great. They weren't from Sol, or even some colony world—not only were the remains totally unlike our equipment, but the news of a planet like Harbor, almost a duplicate of Earth but without a native intelligent race, would have brought settlers here in swarms. So—somewhere in the Galaxy, someone else had mastered the hvperdrive and was exploring space. ”

“ But she often went out for long walks, alone on the beach or in the sun-dappled woods, and she started a garden which she would never harvest. Well—so it went, and I was too busy with preparations to think much about it.
The end came, and we embarked on the long voyage, the voyage which has not ceased yet and, I hope, will never end. The night before, we had Angus and Gustav in for a farewell party, and it was a strange feeling to be saying good-by knowing that we would never see them again, or hear from them. It was like dying. ”

“ But we've got a good home now, Einar, here on Harbor."
"I still don't understand how they ever lost Earth," he said.
"Nobody does," I said. "The Traveler was carrying a load of colonists to Alpha Centauri—that was a star close to Sol—and men had found the hyperdrive only a few years before and reached the nearer stars. Anyway, something happened. There was a great explosion in the engines, and we found ourselves somewhere else in the Galaxy, thousands of light-years from home. We don't know how far from home, since we've never been able to find Sol again. ”

“ Grown men don't risk their necks climbing the uppermost branches of trees, the way children do; they walk on the ground, and when they have to rise they do so safely and comfortably, in a carplane.
"What's the matter, Erling?" ”