A Candle In The Wind

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 19.

More Latin:

"'Et tu, Brute,' Reymont muttered." (p. 166)

"'We are rounding the whole curve of space.'" (ibid.)

Does this answer my question here?

"'Our sun died long ago. It swelled and brightened till Earth was devoured; it became a variable, guttering like a candle in the wind;  it sank away to a white dwarf, an ember, an ash. And the other stars followed. Nothing can be left in our galaxy but waning red dwarfs, if that. Otherwise clinkers. The Milky Way has gone out. Everything we knew, everything that made us, is dead. Starting with the human race.'" (pp. 166-167)

The sun is like a candle, "to compare great things with small," as Milton wrote.

I would consider it an honor to represent our race long after its death.

When Reymont says that the human race is not necessarily dead, Freiwald, the main speaker here, replies that, if humanity has survived, then it has become incomprehensible.

"'We are ghosts.'" (p. 167)

As he speaks, they hear the ship pass through another galaxy, a hundred thousand years in less than a second, faster than the Time Traveler ever reached. It could drive a man mad. That is what is happening to Freiwald. He thinks that by now they could crash through a star and not notice and that they might have destroyed several worlds when passing through a spiral arm. Anderson maintains the pace and the suspense right to the end of the novel.