Orphans of the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein Page B

no-weight, he would be heading either for Main Drive, or the Control Room—more probably the Control Room. The place held a tremendous fascination for Hugh. Ever since the earlier time when Joe-Jim had almost literally dragged him into the Control Room and had forced him to see with his own eyes that the Ship was not the whole world but simply a vessel adrift in a much larger world—a vessel that could be driven and moved—ever since that time and throughout the period that followed while he was still a captured slave of Joe-Jim's, he had been obsessed with the idea of moving the Ship, of sitting at the controls and making it go!
           It meant more to him than it could possibly have meant to a space pilot from Earth. From the time that the first rocket made the little jump from Terra to the Moon, the spaceship pilot has been the standard romantic hero whom every boy wished to emulate. But Hugh's ambition was of no such picayune caliber—he wished to move his world. In Earth standards and concepts it would be less ambitious to dream of equipping the Sun with jets and go gunning it around the Galaxy.
           Young Archimedes had his lever; he sought a fulcrum.
     
           Joe-Jim paused at the door of the great silver stellarium globe which constituted the Control Room and peered in. He could not see Hugh, but he knew that he must be at the controls in the chair of the chief astrogator, for the lights were being manipulated. The images of the stars were scattered over the inner surface of the sphere producing a simulacrum of the heavens outside the Ship. The illusion was not fully convincing from the door where Joe-Jim rested; from the center of the sphere it would be complete.
           Sector by sector the stars snuffed out, as Hugh manipulated the controls from the center of the sphere. A sector was left shining on the far side forward. It was marked by a large and brilliant orb, many times as bright as its companions. Joe-Jim ceased watching and pulled himself hand over hand up to the control chairs. "Hugh!" Jim called out.
           "Who's there?" demanded Hugh and leaned his head out of the deep chair. "Oh, it's you. Hello."
           "Ertz wants to see you. Come on out of there."
           "O.K. But come here first. I want to show you something."
           "Nuts to him," Joe said to his brother. But Jim answered, "Oh, come on and see what it is. Won't take long."
           The twins climbed into the control station and settled down in the chair next to Hugh's. "What's up?"
           "That star out there," said Hugh, pointing at the brilliant one. "It's grown bigger since the last time I was here."
           "Huh? Sure it has. It's been getting brighter for a long time. Couldn't see it at all first time I was ever in here."
           "Then we're getting closer to it."
           "Of course," agreed Joe. "I knew that. It just goes to prove that the Ship is moving."
           "But why didn't you tell me about this?"  
           "About what?"  
           "About that star. About the way it's been growing bigger."  
           "What difference does it make?"  
           "What difference does it make! Why, good Jordan, man—that's it. That's where we're going. That's the End of the Trip!"
           Joe-Jim—both of him—was momentarily startled. Not being himself concerned with any objective other than his own safety and comfort, it was hard for him to realize that Hugh, and perhaps Bill Ertz as well, held as their first objective the recapturing of the lost accomplishments of their ancestors in order to complete the long-forgotten, half-mythical Trip to Far Centaurus.
           Jim recovered himself. "Hm-m-m—maybe. What makes you think that star is Far Centaurus?"
           "Maybe it isn't. I don't care. But it's the star we are closest to and we are moving toward it. When we don't know which star is which, one is as good as