IX Sagan 2
57 The Voices of Time The starship Magellan was still no more than a few light-hours distant when Kumar Lorenson was born, but his father was already sleeping and did not hear the news until three hundred years later. He wept to think that his dreamless slumber had spanned the entire lifetime of his first child. When he could face the ordeal, he would summon the records that were waiting for him in the memory banks. He would watch his son grow to manhood and hear his voice calling across the centuries with greetings he could never answer. And he would see (there was no way he could avoid it) the slow ageing of the long-dead girl he had held in his arms – only weeks ago. Her last farewell would come to him from wrinkled lips long turned to dust. His grief, though piercing, would slowly pass. The light of a new sun filled the sky ahead; and soon there would be another birth, on the world that was already drawing the starship Magellan into its final orbit. One day the pain would be gone; but never the memory.