-copied from here.
The Merseian crew of the cruiser, Brythioch:
"...had been long in the deeps between the stars. If they went straight back from here, they must travel a good 140 light-years - about ten standard days at top hyperspeed, but still an abyss whose immensity and strangeness wore down the hardiest spirit - before they could raise the outermost of the worlds they called their own."
-Poul Anderson, A Circus Of Hells IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 193-365 AT CHAPTER ONE, p. 198.
So 30 or 40 standard years at top hyperspeed to cross the galaxy? We approach generation ship territory even with FTL. It would be interesting to read an account of a ship that did travel to the far side of the galaxy during the Terran Empire period. The nearest approach to this is the flight of the Aenean rebels whose descendants became the Kirkasanters.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
We do see mention in the stories about reports from explorers who went extremely far in earlier days. Perhaps even as far as half way across the Galaxy?
Ad astra! Sean
Point to point transit times are often less relevant that possible volumes of destinations, considered as a fan/cone of possibilities. What makes it possible for the rebels to vanish is the sheer vastness of the possible -volume- of destinations, which makes any practical sun-by-sun search impracticable. Especially since there's no FTL equivalent of radio, and electromagnetic signals travel so slowly over those distances and attenuate so rapidly.
In fact, if you were very careful, you could probably hide -inside- the Empire, simply by looking up a planet that had been visited once and not since and going there.
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