Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

born and raised in one where he had been something not much better than

trash. That kind of deep, irrational conviction is notably difficult to

unlearn, and in fact is never unlearned entirely.

Nevertheless shipboard society, as a new society in itself, was showing

increasing signs of strain from this source. The passengers were the first

to feel it, since they had relatively less to do with their time (though

they were by no means idle-no one could be). The first sign was a sudden

surge of covert and then open promiscuity, followed by an equally sudden

outbreak of family realignments, the latter usually signalled in advance by

midnight scuffling and snarling and morning black eyes. At this stage the

strain was not so noticeable on the bridge and in the control barrel, but

it was there, and growing.

It grew steadily as time went by, daylessly, nightlessly, but without let

or surcease. In the five yearscould that be right? Yes, incredibly, it had

been that long-since the light barrier had been broken, not a ship in the

armada had made an even slightly promising planet-fall. There had been

false alarms, but even those were growing rarer, as the ships’ computers

learned by experience. The keeping of the Grand Log became a duty, and

then, finally, a positive cbore, there simply was no longer anything

interesting to report, except for scraps of astrophysical data which held

meaning only for Kamblin and his counterparts

96 fames Blish

elsewhere in the fleet. Otherwise, what each ship found to say was very much