Pytheas

The Boat Of A Million Years, XIX, 12-13, pp. 498-501.

Pytheas leaves the Solar System.

"...the ship approached Jupiter..." (p. 498)

The ship crosses the orbit of Mars without necessarily passing close to the planet. However, she does approach Jupiter in order to swing around that planet and out of the ecliptic. 

Near Jupiter, Sol is:

"...scarcely more than the brightest among the stars." (ibid.)

Thus, Sol would not appear to be a sun. How would anyone out there know that they were in orbit around it? Saturn and Neptune are even further out.

Although we highlight descriptions of the Milky Way, Poul Anderson's views from space usually encompass:

innumerable stars;

the Milky Way;

nebulae;

the Magellanic Clouds;

at least one other galaxy.

This passage is no exception. The sister galaxy is said to beckon. Such galaxies are usually beyond reach but are visited in Anderson's World Without Stars and Tau Zero.

The Survivors mark the course change with a ceremony involving drum, dance and song. The physical universe and human consciousness interact. The song:

"...called to the spirits." (p. 500)

All eight Survivors know that the spirits are in their imaginations and aspirations. Any local nature spirits have been left behind! As a philosopher, I write "human consciousness" but could have written "human spirit."

(If a "spirit" is an invisible subject of consciousness, then the universe is conscious of itself through individual psychophysical organisms and is mostly invisible so it is the omnipresent spirit of the Upanishads. Thou art THAT.)

Robots leave the ship to deploy the ramscoop and fire chamber. Acceleration under torch drive generates enough speed for the scoop and the computer-controlled harvester fields to gather many hydrogen atoms. Laser beams separate electrons from nuclei. The fields sweep the plasma safely past the hull to the magnetohydrodynamic vortex of the fire chamber where mutual annihilation with a small amount of released anti-matter transforms particles into energy which starts fusion reactions which in turn power the fields to hurl plasma aft so that reaction drives Pytheas forward, restoring full Terrestrial weight to the crew. In less than a year, they will travel half a light-year and approach light speed.