The Astral Mirror Read Free Page A

crew’s going to get bored? Spending 20 or 30 years traveling isn’t going to be much fun. And they’ll be getting older...”
    A polite cough from the other side of the table turns everyone’s head toward the biochemist.
    “As long as we’re stretching things,” he says, “we might as well consider the possibility of letting the crew sleep for almost the entire flight—slowing down their metabolism so that they don’t age much at all.”
    “Suspended animation?” the writer asks.
    With a slightly uncomfortable look, the biochemist replies, “You could call it something like that, I suppose. I’m sure that by the time we’re ready to tackle the stars, a technique will have been found to freeze a human being indefinitely. You could freeze the crew shortly after takeoff and then have them awakened automatically when they reach their destination. They won’t age while they’re hibernating.”
    “This is the idea of freezing them at cryogenic temperatures, isn’t it?” the medical doctor asks.
    Nodding, the biochemist says, “Yes. Temperatures close to absolute zero. Nearly 400 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit thermometer.”
    “That simply can’t be done,” the doctor says firmly.
    “Not now,” the biochemist agrees. “But by the end of this century, we might have learned how to quick-freeze live human beings without damaging their cells.”
    The doctor looks unconvinced and shakes his head.
    “I must point out,” the psychiatrist says, “that you still have the basic problem of motivation on your hands. Who would want to leave the Earth, knowing that he would return to a world that’s several thousand years older than the one he left?”
    “It would be a one-way trip, wouldn’t it?” the writer muses. “Even if the crew comes back to Earth, it won’t be the same world that they left. It’ll be like Columbus returning to Spain during the time of Napoleon.”
    “Or Leif Ericson coming back to Scandinavia, next week.”
    “The crew members will want to bring their families with them,” the writer points out. “They’ll have to.”
    “Nothing man has ever done comes even close to such an experience,” the psychiatrist says.
    “Oh, I’m not so sure about that,” objects the anthropologist. He has been sitting next to the psychiatrist, listening interestedly and smoking a pipe through the whole discussion.
    Now he says, “The Polynesian peoples settled the islands of the Pacific on a somewhat similar basis. They started in one corner of the Pacific and expanded throughout most of the islands in the central regions of that ocean. And they did it on a somewhat haphazard basis—a mixture of deliberate emigrations into unknown territory plus accidental landings on new islands when ships were blown off course by storms.”
    “That’s hardly...”
    “Now listen,” the anthropologist insists quietly. “The Polynesians ventured out across the broad Pacific in outrigger canoes. Their travels must have seemed as dark and dangerous to them as interstellar space seems to us. They left their homes behind—purposely, in the case of the emigrants. Usually, when they were forced to emigrate because of population pressure or religious differences, they took their whole families along. But they knew they’d never return to their original islands again. That’s how Hawaii was first settled, and most of the other islands of the central Pacific.”
    “That is somewhat similar to starflight,” the psychiatrist agrees.
    “So we can reach the stars after all,” the science fiction writer says. “It’s not fundamentally impossible.”
    “It won’t be simple,” the engineer insists.
    “Yes, but imagine a time when we can travel with interstellar ramjets from star to star.”
    “You’ll never be able to go back to the same place again,” the physicist reminds him. “Too much time will have elapsed between one visit and the next.”
    “I understand,” the writer answers. “But consider