He stood there, stumpy and stolid, against the background of the engines, but there was something vital in him, some driving force within him as there was in the engines.
"Nor is it right," he said, "to condemn the Folk to a fate that was not intended. It is not right to let a purpose go by default and ignorance."
He asked: "The purpose of the Ship? It is a good purpose?"
"I do not know," said Jon. "I can't be sure. But at least it is a purpose. A purpose, any purpose, is better than none at all."
He raised his head and brushed back his hair, plastered down with sweat across his brow.
"All right," he said. "I'll go along with you. I've taken one life. I'll not take any more."
Joshua spoke slowly, gently. "No lad. I am the one who goes along with you."
TO SEE the great depth of the emptiness in which the stars blazed like tiny, eternal watch-fires, was bad enough when one looked out a blister port. To see it from the control room, where the great glass plate opened out into the very jaws of space, was something else again.
You could look down and down and there was no bottom and you could look up or out and there was no stopping, and one moment you would swear that a certain star could be reached out for and plucked and the next moment it was so far away that your brain spun with the very thought of distance.
The stars were far.