Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

visualizable goals and in its intimate details. Some of the passengers, and

many of the officers and crew, even became interested enough to feel

disappointed that the Javelin would not, after an, pass anywhere near the

grave of the old nova, which had played so crucial a role in history. (The

ship was, in fact, going almost directly away from that unquietly dead

star. Ertak was following a Great Circle in the galactic plane, counter to

the direction of rotation of the lens as a whole, hoping to take at least

a little advantage of the contrary motion to increase the number of systems

the Javelin might encounter. Since the ship had shared that rotation on

take-off, it would be a long time before any such gain could begin to

show.)

Steadily the new mood grew stronger. If leaving home had been death, then

perhaps this was rebirth, with all its hopes of avoiding past mistakes.

Those on the bridge also had the diversion of the Grand Log. It had been

agreed long ago that every ship should keep a common fleet log, as well as

a log of its own; so that when some ships were destroyed or Iost-which

everyone knew to be inevitable, though it would not happen to their

ship-the unique records might not be lost with them. This entailed a great

deal of inter-ship cbatter-much more, in fact, than was strictly necessary:

everyone involved realized that this kind of fraternization was not going

to be possible for more than a few years, even with the Ertak communicator.

The globe of ships was growing too fast.

86 fames Blish