“Now,” said Joe, “I’m going to show you the Stars!”
In the darkness, Joe-Jim’s right hand slid over another pattern of eight lights.
Creation.
Faithfully reproduced, shining as steady and serene from the walls of the stellarium as did their originals from the black deeps of space, the mirrored stars looked down on him. Light after jeweled light, scattered in careless bountiful splendor across the simulacrum sky, the countless suns lay before him; before him, over him, under him, behind him, in every direction from him. He hung alone in the center of the stellar universe.
“Oooooh!” It was an involuntary sound, caused by his indrawn breath. He clutched the chair arms hard enough to break fingernails, but he was not aware of it. Nor was he afraid at the moment; there was room in his being for but one emotion. Life within the Ship, alternately harsh and workaday, had placed no strain on his innate capacity to experience beauty; for the first time in his life he knew the intolerable ecstasy of beauty unalloyed. It shook him and hurt him, like the first trembling intensity of sex.
It was some time before Hugh sufficiently recovered from the shock and the ensuing intense preoccupation to be able to notice Jim’s sardonic laugh, Joe’s dry chuckle. “Had enough?” inquired Joe. Without waiting for a reply, Joe-Jim turned the lights back on, using the duplicate controls mounted in the left arm of his chair.
Hugh sighed. His chest ached and his heart pounded. He realized suddenly that he had been holding his breath the entire time that the lights had been turned out. “Well, smart boy,” asked Jim, “are you convinced?”
Hugh sighed again, not knowing why. With the lights back on, he felt safe and snug again, but was possessed of a deep sense of personal loss. He knew, subconsciously, that, having seen the stars, he would never be happy again. The dull ache in his breast, the vague inchoate yearning for his lost heritage of open sky and stars, was never to be silenced, even though he was yet too ignorant to be aware of it at the top of his mind. “What was it?” he asked in a hushed voice.
“That’s,” answered Joe. “That’s the world. That’s the universe. That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you about.”
Hugh tried furiously to force his inexperienced mind to comprehend. “That’s what you mean by Outside?” he asked. “All those beautiful little lights?”
“Sure,” said Joe, “only they aren’t little. They’re a long way off, you see; maybe thousands of miles.”
“What?”
“Sure, sure,” Joe persisted. “There’s lots of room out there. Space. It’s big. Why, some of those stars may be as big as the Ship, maybe bigger.”
Hugh’s face was a pitiful study in overstrained imagination. “Bigger than the Ship?” he repeated. “But … but …”
Jim tossed his head impatiently and said to Joe, “Wha’d’ I tell you? You’re wasting our time on this lunk. He hasn’t got the capacity.”
“Easy, Jim,” Joe answered mildly; “don’t expect him to run before he can crawl. It took us a long time. I seem to remember that you were a little slow to believe your own eyes.” “That’s a lie,” said Jim nastily. “You were the one that had to be convinced.”
“O.K., O.K.,” Joe conceded, “let it ride. But it was a long time before we both had it all straight.”
Hoyland paid little attention to the exchange between the two brothers. It was a usual thing; his attention was centered on matters decidedly not usual. “Joe,” he asked, “what became of the Ship while we were looking at the Stars? Did we stare right through it?”
“Not exactly,” Joe told him. “You weren’t looking directly at the stars at all, but at a kind of picture of them. It’s like… Well, they do it with mirrors, sort of. I’ve got a book that tells about it.”
“But you can see ’em directly,” volunteered Jim, his momentary pique forgotten. “There’s a compartment forward of here…”
“Oh, yes,” put in Joe, “it slipped my mind. The Captain’s veranda. He’s got one all of glass; you can look right out.”
“The Captain’s veranda? But–“