From the time dilated Leonora Christine:
only nearby stars can be individually differentiated and they are seen to stream past;
the contracted galaxies fore and aft are shifted to blue and red, then to invisible wavelengths;
space is not black but a deep, bright, shimmering purple because interacting force fields and interstellar medium release quanta.
The viewscope, increasingly unable to compensate, is disassembled and rebuilt to avoid flying blind.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
It seems a bit surprising, once I thought of it, to use a VIEWSCOPE to help navigate. It seems more natural, from reading Sf--including works by Anderson--to think of instruments collecting astronomical data being processed by computers, as doing the real work of navigating. Or was this simply an oversight by Anderson?
Sean
Sean,
"The technicians took the instrument apart and rebuilt it for heightened capacity, lest men fly altogether sightless." (CHAPTER 13, p. 112)
I think it is just so that the crew can see out, not for navigation.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That makes sense. The viewscope was used for psychological reasons, so people could SEE something outside the "Leonora Christine."
Sean
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