The Sense of Wonder

By MILTON LESSER
Illustrated by HARRY ROSENBAUM
When nobody aboard ship remembers where it's going, how can they tell when it has arrived?
Every day for a week now, Rikud had come to the viewport to watch the great changeless sweep of space. He could not quite explain the feelings within him; they were so alien, so unnatural. But ever since the engines somewhere in the rear of the world had changed their tone, from the steady whining Rikud had heard all twenty-five years of his life, to the sullen roar that came to his ears now, the feelings had grown.
If anyone else had noticed the change, he failed to mention it. This disturbed Rikud, although he could not tell why. And, because he had realized this odd difference in himself, he kept it locked up inside him.
Today, space looked somehow different. The stars—it was a meaningless concept to Rikud, but that was what everyone called the bright pinpoints of light on the black backdrop in the viewport—were not apparent in the speckled profusion Rikud had always known. Instead, there was more of the blackness, and one very bright star set apart by itself in the middle of the viewport.
If he had understood the term, Rikud would have told himself this was odd. His head ached with the half-born thought. It was—it was—what was it?
Someone was clomping up the companionway behind Rikud. He turned and greeted gray-haired old Chuls.
In five more years, the older man chided, you'll be ready to sire children. And all you can do in the meantime is gaze out at the stars.
Rikud knew he should be exercising now, or bathing in the rays of the health-lamps. It had never occurred to him that he didn't feel like it; he just didn't, without comprehending.
Chuls' reminder fostered uneasiness. Often Rikud had dreamed of the time he would be thirty and a father. Whom would the Calculator select as his mate? The first time this idea had occurred to him, Rikud ignored it. But it came again, and each time it left him with a feeling he could not explain. Why should he think thoughts that no other man had? Why should he think he was thinking such thoughts, when it always embroiled him in a hopeless, infinite confusion that left him with a headache?