Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 68: what you’re looking at

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

light-year per year in terms of unit distance.” “It wouldn't have just failed,” Mark Langston added. ‘It must have been tampered with.” “Well, that’s all conjecture,” Owens said slowly. “The important point is that at best the ship has been dead for a good hundred and fifty years, otherwise it would have been contacted by the first faster-than-light ships that tried to hunt her down. That gives us a span of four or five generations living under those upsetting and difficult conditions.” The other men remained silent, watching him. Jim McConnell shook his head. “O.K.,” he said. Stan Owens spun the bottle on the table with one hand. “We've got two possibilities,” he explained. “One, they know full well what the score is. In that case, their whole lives, their very reason for being, is tied up with the VWiking—that Ship reaching Capella under her own steam_= and through her own efforts is the only thing that can make their living hell mean anything. Take that away from them and they are broken, dead. Take that away from them and you are murderers.” “And if they don’t believe?” suggested Captain Kleberg. The second possibility is tougher,” said Stan Owens. “If they have completely adapted to their new environment, then the shock of putting them on this ship would probably be fatal. The change would be too much; their whole culture, the very fabric of their lives, would be shattered with one blow. Ignoring that little point meant the extinction of more people than | like to think about, on Earth and elsewhere, to say nothing of butcher-wars and revolutions. We are smarter now, or at least we like to think that we are.” Mark Langston nodded at his friend. He had seen enough in his life to back up everything Owens had said, with interest. When you were dealing with human beings, you ignored the human element at your risk. “There’s the question of gravity, too,” he said. CORniclooo SS CO