Not with the ship, but with the people in it. The books had been fed into the converter.
The Myth had risen and Earth had been entirely forgotten.
The knowledge had been lost and legend had been substituted.
In the span of forty generations the plan had been lost and the purpose been forgotten and the Folk lived out their lives in the sure and sane belief that they were self-contained, that the Ship was the beginning and the end, that by some divine intervention the Ship and the people in it had come into being and that their ordered lives were directed by a worked-out plan in which everything that happened must be for the best.
They played at chess and cards and listened to old music, never questioning for a moment who had invented cards or chess or who had created music. They whiled away not hours, but lives, with long gossiping and told old stories and swapped old yarns out of other generations. But they had no history and they did not wonder and they did not look ahead —for everything that happened would be for the best.[2]
For year on empty year the Ship was all they had known. Even before the first generation had died the Earth had become a misty thing far behind, not only in time and space, but in memory as well. There was no loyalty to Earth to keep alive the memory of the Earth. There was no loyalty to the Ship, because the Ship had no need of it.
The Ship was a mother to them and they nestled in it. The Ship fed them and sheltered them and kept them safe from harm.
There was no place to go. Nothing to do. Nothing. to think about. And they adapted.
Babies, Jon Hoff thought.