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.Lee pulled a deep breath into his lungs and tried to get himself started.The overhead light panels, on full intensity now, made him want to squint.Standing was something of an experiment.No shakes, Lee thought gratefully.The room was large and circular, with no viewports.Each of the twenty hibernation couches had been painted a different color by some psychology team back on Earth.Most of them were empty now.The remaining occupied ones had their lids off and the life-system connections removed as Pascual, Tanaka, and May Connearney worked to revive the people.Despite the color scheme, the room looked uninviting, and it smelled clinical.The galley, Lee focused his thoughts, is in this globe, one flight up.The ship was built in globular sections that turned in response to gee-pulls.With the main fusion engines firing to brake their approach to final orbit, “up” was temporarily in the direction of the engines’ thrusters.But inside the globes it did not make much difference.He found the stairwell that ran through the globe.Inside the winding metal ladderway the rumbling vibrations from the ship’s engines were echoing strongly enough to hear as actual sound.“Sid! Good morning!” Aaron Hatfield had stationed himself at the entrance to the galley and was acting as a one-man welcoming committee.There were only a half-dozen people in the galley.Of course, Lee realized.The crew personnel are at their stations.Except for Hatfield, the people were bunched at the galley’s lone viewport, staring outside and speaking in hushed, subdued whispers.“Hello, Aaron.” Lee didn’t feel jubilant, not after a fifteen-year sleep.He tried to picture Ruth in his mind and found that he couldn’t.She must be nearly fifty by now.Hatfield was the expedition’s primary biochemist, a chunky, loud-speaking, overgrown kid whom it was impossible to dislike, no matter how he behaved.Lee knew that Hatfield wouldn’t go near the viewport because the sight of empty space terrified him.“Hey, here’s Doris!” Hatfield shouted to no one.He scuttled toward the entrance as she stepped rather uncertainly into the galley.Lee dialed for coffee.With the hot cup in his hand, he walked slowly toward the viewport.“Hello, Dr.Lee,” Marlene Ettinger said as he came up alongside her.The others at the viewport turned and muttered their greetings.“How close are we?” Lee asked.Charnovsky, the geologist, answered positively, “Two days before we enter final orbit.”The stars crowded out the darkness beyond their viewport: spattered against the blackness like droplets from a paint spray.In the faint reflection of the port’s plastic, Lee could see six human faces looking lost and awed.Then the ship swung, ever so slightly, in response to some command from the crew and computers.A single star—close and blazingly powerful—slid into view, lancing painfully brilliant light through the polarizing viewport.Lee snapped his eyes shut, but not before the glare burned its afterimage against his closed eyelids.They all ducked back instinctively.“Welcome to Sirius,” somebody said.Man’s fight to the stars was made not in glory, but in fear.The buildings on Titan were clearly the work of an alien intelligent race.No man could tell exactly how old they were, how long their baffling machines had been running, what their purpose was.Whoever had built them had left the solar system hundreds of centuries ago.For the first time, men truly dreaded the stars.Still, they had to know, had to learn.Robot probes were sent to the nearest dozen stars, the farthest that man’s technology could reach.Nearly a generation passed on Earth before the faint signals from the probes returned.Seven of the stars had planets circling them.Of these, five possessed Earthlike worlds.On four of them, some indications of life were found.Life, not intelligence.Long and hot were the debates about what to do next.Finally, manned expeditions were dispatched to the Earthlike ones.Through it all, the machines on Titan hummed smoothly.“They should have named this ship Afterthought,” Lee said to Charnovsky.(The ship’s official name was Carl Sagan.)“How so?” the Russian muttered as he pushed a pawn across the board between them.They were sitting in the pastel-lighted rec room.A few others were scattered around the semicircular room, reading, talking, dictating messages that wouldn’t get to Earth for more than eight years.Soft music purred in the background.The Earthlike planet—Sinus A-2—swung past the nearest viewport.The ship had been in orbit for nearly three weeks now and was rotating around its long axis to keep a half-gee feeling of weight for the scientists.“We were sent here as an afterthought,” Lee continued.“Nobody expects us to find anything.Most of the experts back on Earth didn’t really believe there could be an Earthlike planet around a blue star.”“They were correct,” Charnovsky said.“Your move [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]