Starborne

He finds it difficult, at first, to locate the proper words. It is not a matter of stage fright — he of all people wouldn’t worry about that — but rather of a sense of inadequacy, of fundamental awkwardness. The year-captain’s dispassionate nature is perhaps not the one best suited, aboard this ship, for the task at hand. But he is the captain, chosen overwhelmingly by their vote at the time of departure, and ratified again a year after that. He is the one who must speak to this issue.

“Friends—” he begins, as his hesitation begins to pass from him. Every face is turned toward him. “Friends, we are all greatly wounded by the loss of Marcus, and now we must all pray for healing. But where do we turn when we go to pray? To whom do we address our prayers? We are a race that has outlived its gods. We are proud, I think, that we are beyond all superstition, that we live in a realm of the altogether tangible, the accurately measurable. But yet — yet — at a time like this—”

They are staring at him intently. Wondering where he’s heading, perhaps.

“Marcus is dead, and no words will bring him back. Prayer itself, even if there were gods and the gods were listening to us, would not be capable of doing that. If there are gods, then it was the will of the gods that Marcus be gathered to them, and we would have no choice but to bend to that will. And if, as we are all so confident, there are no gods—”

He pauses. He looks from one to another to another, from Heinz to Huw to Paco, from Elizabeth to Noelle to Celeste, looks at Leila, looks at Roy, Zena, seeking for signs of restlessness, puzzlement, irritation. But no. No. He has their attention completely.

“In ancient times,” he goes on, “this might have been easier for us. We would have said it was the will of the gods, or the will of some particular god, perhaps, that Marcus should die young in a strange and hostile place, and then we would have gone on about our work, secure in the knowledge that the workings of the gods are so mysterious that we need not seek explanations for them beyond the circular one that says that what has happened was fated to be. That was in a simpler era. We modern folk have dispensed with gods; we are left with the problem of finding our own explanations, or of living without explanations entirely. I urge the latter choice on you.

“Marcus’s death was an accident. It needs no explanation. There have always been risks in any venture of exploration, and even though most of the human race has forgotten that, we of all people should keep it constantly in mind. Courageously Marcus came out here to the stars with us to help in the task of finding a new home for the human race. Courageously he went down with Giovanna and Huw to the surface of the world we see out there; and there he encountered a force too strong for him to understand or handle, and it destroyed him. So be it. The simplest explanation is the best one here. Humanity is no longer, in general, a risk-taking race. But we are the exceptions. We fifty human beings have chosen to revive the willingness to take risks that most of us have lost. Marcus is only the first victim of that willingness. He is gone, and we mourn his loss. We mourn that loss because he was young, someone who had great contributions to make in the world we will someday build and who will not now make those contributions; and because he has been deprived of knowing the joy that the fulfillment of our mission ultimately will bring us; and because he was one of us. Mainly, I think, we mourn him because he was one of us.

“But is that a reason to mourn, really? Hestill is one of us. He always will be. As we go onward among the stars, to Planet B and Planet C and, if necessary, Planets X and Y and Z and beyond, we will carry Marcus with us — the memory of Marcus — the first of our martyrs, the first to give his life in this great quest on which we all are bound. It wasnecessary for some of us to go down to the surface of that planet. Marcus went. Marcus died. He was performing his function as one of us, and he died because of it. Others of us, I very much suspect, will meet with similar fates as this voyage goes along. So be it. We willingly embraced all risks when we left home and friends and family and world behind to undertake this voyage across the universe. We gave up the assurance of a long and safe and comfortable life on Earth in return for the rewards — and perils — of a venture such as no human beings have ever undertaken before. And as our work unfolds, we are not likely, any of us, to find it altogether comfortable, and certainly not very safe.