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Buchwald and MacDonald looked at him unblinkingly. It was fifty years to a day since the Pedagogue had first gone into orbit about Rigel. Five decades have passed. Half a century. Of the original crew of the Pedagogue, six now gathered in the lounge of the spaceship. All of them had changed physically. Some of them softer to the point of flabbiness; some harder both of body and soul.
In spite of Mayer's poorly founded opinions, it is quite obvious that only a collectivized economy is going to enable these Rigel planets to achieve an industrial culture in as short a period as half a century." Amschel Mayer reacted as might have been predicted. "Look here, Plekhanov, we have our own history to go by. Man made his greatest strides under a freely competitive system."
I hear them singing in the tents. I hear the children singing and the women singing of the stars, of Atair, Antares, Rigel, Aldebaran, victory! and the song will never end. Well done! Home to-morrow, under the black tent home! On, Antares! The tribe is waiting for us, and the master is waiting! 'Tis done! 'tis done! Ha, ha! We have overthrown the proud. The hand that smote us is in the dust.
But it was soon found that we cannot conclude that because a star is bright, therefore it is near. The most striking example of this is afforded by the absence of measurable parallaxes in the two bright stars, Canopus and Rigel, showing that these stars, though of the first magnitude, are immeasurably distant.
We might put at the head of the scale of crimson stars the one known as Hind's, which is four degrees west of Rigel; we might make a scale of orange stars, beginning with Betel as orange red; then we should have Betelgeuze, Aldebaran, ß Ursae Minoris, Altair and a Canis, a Lyrae,
They were dangerously close to the steamship, but too weak to shout a warning loud enough to reach the bridge. The boat might not have been seen were it not for the sharp barking of Rigel, who was swimming ahead of the craft, and valiantly announcing his position.
And then that pea diminished until the spaceship from Krim, Walden, Cetis, Rigel and the Nearer Rim had become the size of a dust mote and then could not be seen at all. But one knew that it was going on to Lohala and Tralee and Famagusta and the Coalsack Stars. Hoddan shrugged and began to trudge toward the warehouses. The durya-drawn landing ramp began to roll slowly in the same direction.
"The point is well taken, my dear Martin, however you'll recall that our training was deliberately made such that each man spreads over several fields. This in case, during our half century without contact, one or more of us meets with accident. Besides, the Pedagogue's library is such that any literate can soon become effective in any field to the extent needed on the Rigel planets."
But when I took my continued flight away from the solar system of Sirius and was privileged to get a passing glimpse of many other solar systems, I was overawed a thousand-fold at the myriad motions of the myriad worlds, each serving its little part through the passing cycles to carry out the plan of the Infinite Mind. My next pause was at the glorious constellation of Orion on the star Rigel.
Then I can return to Earth, show them what I have done, offer to make a demonstration flight to Rigel and back in days, perhaps "Why is it that Earth so tortures its few of original mind? Why has my life been one unending persecution, ever since I declared there was a way to shortcut through space? There are no answers.
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