Frosty Cataract

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 7.

The omniscient narrator tells us that no one was watching the Leonora Christine in interstellar space:

"...there was no watcher anyhow: only night, bestrewn with multitudinous remote suns, the frosty cataract of the Milky Way and the rare phantom glimmer of a nebula or sister galaxy. Nine light-years from Sol, the ship was illimitably alone." (p. 64)

Until 1925, it was thought that sister galaxies were nebulae within this one galaxy. See Significant Dates, here. Again, in this text, sister galaxies are more than mere background. The Leonora Christine will soon accelerate between them.

Nine light years from home, in the tenth year of their journey but only the third year of ship's time, the crew have already celebrated two Christmases. Will the Leonora Christine become a "generation ship"? (I know the answer but part of the idea is to (re)read the book as if for the first time.)

Onward and outward.