Leave-Taking

Poul Anderson, The Boat Of A Million Years (London, 1991), Chapter XIX.

Sections 1-8: the eight Survivors' dissatisfactions.
Section 9: their agreement to leave the Solar System if possible.
Section 10: the decision to launch a spaceship.
Section 11: leave-taking.
Section 12: the launch.
Sections 13-34: still ahead.

What a long way we have come from Pytheas' exploratory voyage. En route, we have learned about Taoism, Islam, Nornagest, Starkadh, Kiev, Constantinople, Tibet, Richelieu, Native Americans, Quanah Parker, Voudun, slavery, bureaucracy, Stalingrad and Seattle.

The Survivors' intensely experience aspects of Earth before leaving it forever:

courteous people;
a sail-boat on an ocean;
wheat goldening, rustling and rippling;
bees buzzing;
cows by a chestnut tree;
candles, music, silver, champagne goblets, cream of leek soup;
sky above a canyon;
a shrine maintained without pilgrims;
a forest after rain;
a picture, a table and a book that henceforth will be experienced only as virtual realities;
places revisited to say goodbye to their dead.

Fields or mathematical functions perceive themselves as particles, forces and light (p. 484).