Robert Silverberg: Starborne

How could we convey any of this to those who remain behind? How could we make them understand?

Not with words. Never with words.

Let then come out here and see for themselves!

He smiles. He trembles and does a little shivering wriggle of delight. His sudden new doubts all have fallen away, as swiftly as they came. The starship plunges onward through the great strange night. Confidence rises in him like the surging of a tide. The outcome of the voyage can only be a success, come what may.

He turns away from the viewplate, drained, ecstatic.

Noelle was the first member of the crew to be chosen, if indeed she could be said to have been chosen at all. Choice had not really been a part of it for her, nor for her sister. The entire project had been built about their initial willingness; had they not been who and what they were, the expedition would probably have gone forth anyway, but it would have been something quite different. Perhaps it would not have happened at all. The mere existence of Noelle and Yvonne was the prerequisite for the whole enterprise. They were central to everything; their consent was mainly a formality; and once it had been determined that Noelle and not Yvonne would be the one actually to travel on board the ship, her examination for eligibility was a mere charade.

Of those who had truly volunteered, Heinz was the first to win the formal approval of the Board, Paco was the second, Sylvia the third, then Bruce, Huw, Chang, Julia. The year-captain was one of the last to pass through the qualification process. The last one of all, technically, was Noelle, but of course, she was already a part of the project, as much so as the ship itself, and for many of the same reasons.

For each of them, but for Noelle, the process of qualifying was the same: simple, cruel, humiliating, insincere. Generally speaking, the crew members had been picked even before it had occurred to some of them that they might be interested in going. The world had become very small. Everyone’s capacities were known. No one was particularly famous any more, but no one was obscure, either.

Certain formalities were observed, though. It was always possible that the covert a priori selection process had been mistaken in one or two instances, and no one wanted mistakes. Eleven hundred candidates were summoned to fill the fifty slots aboard the starship. They came from every part of the world, a carefully impartial and studiedly representative geographic sampling. Many of the old nations that had once been so distinct and noisily self-important still had some sort of tenuous existences, more as sentimental concepts than as sovereign entities now, but they had not completely evolved out of existence yet and it was a good idea to pay lip service, at least, to the continued quasi-fact of their quasi-status. Each of the formerly sovereign nations or historically significant fragment thereof contributed a few of its former citizens to the long list. And then, too, the candidates represented most or perhaps all — who could say, really? The old distinctions had often been so minute and dubious — of the planet’s racial and ethnic and religious groups, insofar as such groups still existed and looked upon themselves as mattering in the small and cozy society that had evolved out of the turbulent, messy societies of the Industrial and immediately Post-Industrial epochs. In the cosmic scheme of things it no longer counted for very much that one person might like to think of himself as a Finn and another as a Turk, or a German or a Brit or a Thai or a Swede, nor was it really easy any more to fit most people into the old racial classifications that had once had such troublesome significance, nor had the world’s innumerable theological distinctions survived very coherently into modern times. But there were those for whom — perhaps for philosophical reasons, or sentimental ones, or reasons of esthetics, or out of a lingering sense of historical connection, or a fondness for anachronisms, or just out of simple cantankerousness — there was still some value in valiantly claiming, “I am a Welshman” or “I am a communicant of the Roman Catholic Church” or “I carry the blood of the Norman aristocracy.” Such people were considered quaint and eccentric; but there were plenty of them, even now. The world had come a long way, yes, yet ancient vestiges of the grand institutions and solemn distinctions of former civilizations still cropped out everywhere like fossil bones whitening and weathering in the sun. They had ceased to be problems , yes, but they had not fully ceased to be. Possibly they never would. And so the long list of candidates for the Wotan expedition was an elaborately representative one. The final group would be too, insofar as that was feasible. Formalities were observed, indeed.

There were five Examiners, distinguished and formidable citizens all, and they sat around a table on the top floor of a tall building in Zurich whose enormous wraparound windows offered a clear, crisp view that stretched halfway to Portugal. You stood before them and they asked you things that they already knew about you, things about your technical skills and your physical health and your mental stability and your willingness to say goodbye to the world forever, and to spend anywhere from one to five years, or perhaps even more, in intimate confinement with forty-nine other people, and you could tell from the way they were listening that they weren’t really listening at all. After that they wanted you to speak only about your flaws. If you were in any way hesitant, they would list some for you, sometimes quite an extensive list indeed, and ask you to offer comment on your most flagrant failings, your choice of five. The whole interrogation lasted, in most cases, no more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Then they told you you were rejected. Every single candidate who came before the Board of Examiners was told that, calmly, straightforwardly, without show of regret or apology: “Sorry, you’re off the list.” They wanted to see what you would say then. That was the real examination; everything that had gone before had been mere maneuvering and feinting.

The ones who passed were the ones who had rejected the rejection. Some did it one way, some another. Points were given for arrogance, so long as it was sane and sensible arrogance. The man who eventually would become the expedition’s first year-captain had simply said, “You can’t be serious. Obviously I’m qualified. And I don’t like it that you’re playing games with me.” Heinz, who was Swiss himself and indeed was the son of one of the Examiners, had taken a similar stance, telling them that it would be the whole world’s loss if they stuck to their position, but that he had a high enough opinion of the human race to think that they would reconsider. Heinz had helped to design the still-unconstructed Wotan; he knew more of its workings than anyone. Did they really think that he was going to build it for them and then be left behind? Huw, who did indeed proudly call himself a Welshman, was another who reacted with the cool and confident attitude that the Examiners were making a big mistake. He had designed the planetgoing equipment with which the people of the Wotan would explore the new worlds: was he to be denied the right to deploy his own devices, and if so, who was going to handle the job of modifying them on-site to meet unanticipated challenges? And so on.

Most of the female candidates tended to temper their annoyance with a touch of sorrow or regret, partly for themselves but primarily — constructive arrogance again, only imperfectly concealed! — for the enterprise itself. Sylvia explained that she knew more about tectogenetic microsurgery than anyone else alive: how would the coming generations of starborn colonists be able to adapt to some not-quite-suitable planetary environment without her special skills? Giovanna, too, observed that it would be a great pity for the expedition to be deprived of her unique abilities — her primary specialty was metabolic chemistry, and there was something magical about her insight into the relationship between molecular structure and nutritional value. From Sieglinde, who had helped to work out some fundamental theorems of the mathematics of nospace travel, came the simple comment that she belonged aboard the ship and would not accept disqualification. Et cetera.