Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 66: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

to be good and dead. But when she blasted off, back in the year 2100, she carried a crew of two hundred—one hundred men and one hundred women. Every schoolboy knows their Story. First question: Is it possible that anyone is still alive on that ship?” There was a long silence in Captain Kleberg’s room while the four men thought of that lonely ship, alone for centuries, dead and silent and outmoded. A heroic thing, reduced to tragi-comic dimensions by the onrush of technology, and yet Mark Langston put his cold pipe on the table and leaned forward. “My guess is yes,” he said carefully. “Yes, it’s possible.” “Air?” questioned Captain Kleberg doubtfully. “Water? Food? Gravity? The ship is dead, you know—there’s no question about that part.” Langston nodded. “Yes, I’ve taken that into account. Look at it this way: First of all, the Viking was not, of course, a faster-than-light ship. The trip to Capella was expected to occupy the better part of two hundred years, with the descendants of the original crew finishing the trip. The food would be synthetic, and there would of necessity be plenty. The air supply on the Wking was supplied by sealed hydroponic tanks, the valve of which, unless I’m greatly mistaken, were pressure affairs that operated independently of the main power source. | think the air supply would hold out—it’s at least possible. The water was carried in tanks and wouldn't be markedly affected by a power failure. Gravity? Well, there wouldn't be any, as far as | can see—” “Man is a very adaptable animal,” Stan Owens said, anticipating him. “He could survive—theoretically at any rate.” “That’s it, then,” McConnell said. “Until we find out differently, we'll have to assume that there is life of some sort still present in that hulk. Two hundred plus years isn’t a fantastic length of time; there may very well be people on CORniclooo SS CO