Two Tales and Eight Tomorrows by Harry Harrison

Author:Harry Harrison [Harrison, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780722144336
Google: cj0VHAAACAAJ
Publisher: Sphere
Published: 1983-09-14T23:00:00+00:00

‘It is possible’, Liem said, speaking for the first time. ‘I am informed that our biologists agree with you. Our points of difference are minor when compared to the points of similarity. Where is this Earth you come from?’

Hautamaki pointed at the sky above them, at the star-filled sweep of the Milky Way, burning with massed stars.

‘There, far out there on the other side of the core, roughly halfway around the lens of the galaxy’.

‘The core explains partially what must have happened’, Gulyas said,. ‘It is thousands of light-years in diameter and over ten thousand degrees in temperature. We have explored its fringes. No ship could penetrate it or even approach too closely because of the dust clouds that surround it. So we have expanded outwards, slowly circling the rim of the galaxy, moving away from Earth. If we stopped to think about it we should have realised that mankind was moving the other way, too, in the opposite direction around the wheel’.

‘And some time we would have to meet’. Liem said. ‘Now I greet you, brothers. And I am sad, because I know what this means’.

‘We are alone’, Hautamaki said, looking at the massed trillions of stars. ‘We have closed the circle and found only ourselves. The galaxy is ours, but we are all alone’. He turned about, not realizing that Liem, the golden alien—the man—had turned at the same time in the same manner.

They faced outwards, looking at the infinite depth and infinite blackness of intergalactic space, empty of stars. Dimly, distantly, there were spots of light, microscopic blurs against the darkness, not stars but island universes, like the one at whose perimeter they stood.

These two beings were different in many ways: in the air they breathed, the colour of their skins, their languages, mannerisms, cultures. They were as different as the day is from the night: the flexible fabric of mankind had been warped by the countless centuries until they could no longer recognise each other. But time, distance and mutation could not change one thing: they were still men, still human.

‘It is certain then’, Hautamaki said. ‘We are alone in the galaxy’.

‘Alone in this galaxy’. They looked at each other, then glanced away. At that moment they measured their humanness against the same rule and were equal.

For they had turned at the same instant and looked outward into intergalactic space, towards the infinitely remote light that was another island galaxy.

‘It will be difficult to get there’, someone said.

They had lost a battle. There was no defeat.

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