Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

month, but there was no visible change in mood to go with it. If anything,

the silence became even more intense. In part, jorn was sure, each man and

woman was thinking of the tragedy at Salt Flats, and the single enormous

fact that all those had died so that these should live. They were the

elect, and jorn at least could not rid himself of the feeling that many of

them, surely including himself, owed their election to chance … or worse.

Though he had never understood the meaning of the Ertak affair, the very

presence of the Director constantly hinted at some still-uncauterized

corruption; and if corruption were there, where else might it not be found?

And elected for what? No one could say. The Javelin was outward bound for

an unknown destinatfon, on a journey of unknown length in both time and

space: a frail steel bubble which might be washed up on any shore… or

burst tracelessly, so far into the wastes that not even a fragment would

ever reach any beach, without even the dim solace of a sea-bottom grave to

sink to, but only nothing, nothing at all … For this they had given up

everything that had given their lives continuity and meaning up to now; and

even where, as with jorn, those lives had seemed unrewarding to the point

of meaninglessness already, there was something about being uprooted

forever

84 fames Blish

that made even the stoniest of soils worth mourning. There was a song, a

very old one:

When I was a pup, I lived in a hut,

My father was a drunkard, my mother was a slut,

And oh, my love, how the rains came down,