Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 71: what you’re looking at

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

McConnell’s crew set the cutters with meticulous care. There was a brief whine and the lights dimmed. That was all. “Let’s go,” said Mark Langston. Cautiously, ready for anything, the men moved through the air lock one by one into the black interior of the dead Viking. Four “days” passed. A class was taught and a battle fought, and an old man spoke with his son... Floating through the dark tunnels, smelling the cold metal all around him, Collins thought of destiny. Destiny, so the books would have you believe, was what you made of it: fate was up to you. But it was a strange destiny, surely, that had placed him in this dark asylum, protected for the moment against the frigid death outside, even deluded into a kind of comfort, but sinking, always sinking, into a living death in the black shadows below. Sometimes, it did seem hopeless. Without the captain, he knew, they would be lost—the captain would lead them to Safety if anyone could. He thought of the early days of the Viking, the early halcyon days that he had read about, when the scientists had lived in a veritable artificial paradise, with unlimited time at their disposal and the company of intelligent, congenial friends to make the long hours pass quickly. Collins wished fervently that he might have lived then, in the golden age-Ruthlessly, he thrust the thought from his mind. What was it that the captain had said? Man could not move backwards and survive. He must go forward, not to the good old days, but to the good new ones. But how much science had they managed to keep alive? Was it enough? Time was running out, and the problems yet to be solved were staggering. What was wrong with the engines? Even if they knew, could they fight their way through the world of the other men to the engine room? Where was the ship? If they could manage somehow to bring her to life again, would they have time to go CORniclooo SS CO