Procurando pelo título de um antigo livro de ficção científica,
Não é um livro, um conto: "Estrelas, você não vai me esconder?" por Ben Bova , publicado pela primeira vez em Worlds of Tomorrow , janeiro de 1966 , disponível em Arquivo da Internet . O título é da música "Sinner Man" que é citado na história; Acredito que as citações são da versão Les Baxter de 1956, disponível em YouTube .
tenho certeza que é uma marca Baen ou Del Rey.
Não parece ter aparecido em uma coleção de Baen ou Del Rey. Alguma de essas capas parecem familiares?
Basicamente, a humanidade atingiu as estrelas e expandiu-se por toda a galáxia. De repente, uma raça desconhecida aparece e começa uma guerra de extermínio contra o homem.
The Final Battle had been lost. On a million million planets across the galaxy-studded universe, mankind had been blasted into defeat and annihilation. The Others had returned from across the edge of the observable world, just as man had always feared. They had returned and ruthlessly exterminated the race from Earth.
It had taken eons, but time twisted strangely in a civilization of light-speed ships. Holman himself, barely thirty years old subjectively, had seen both the beginning of the ultimate war and its tragic end. He had gone from school into the military. And fighting inside a ship that could span the known universe in a few decades while he slept in cryogenic suspension, he had aged only ten years during the billions of years that the universe had ticked off in its stately, objective time flow.
Finalmente, a galáxia está desolada e um homem permanece.
Holman's mind pictured the blood-soaked planets he had seen during his brief, ageless lifetime of violence. His thoughts drifted back to his own homeworld, his own family: gone long, long centuries ago. Crumbled into dust by geological time or blasted suddenly by the overpowering Others. Either way, the remorseless flow of time had covered them over completely, obliterated them, in the space of a few of Holman's heartbeats.
All gone now. All the people he knew, all the planets he had seen through the ship's electroptical eyes, all of mankind . . . extinct.
Ele está em uma nave com uma IA e fica ferido na batalha.
O homem não foi ferido fisicamente. Seu navio foi danificado:
The ship was hurt, and Holman could feel its pain. He lay fetal-like in the contoured couch, his silvery uniform spider-webbed by dozens of contact and probe wires connecting him to the ship so thoroughly that it was hard to tell where his nervous system ended and the electronic networks of the ship began.
Holman felt the throb of the ship's mighty engines as his own pulse, and the gaping wounds in the generator section, where the enemy beams had struck, were searing his flesh. Breathing was difficult, labored, even though the ship was working hard to repair itself.
O IA do navio assume o controle e acelera para o desconhecido, seguido pelo último membro restante da raça alienígena desconhecida.
SELF-PROTECTION MECHANISMS INCLUDE THE CAPABILITY OF PREVENTING THE HUMAN COMPONENT OF THE SYSTEM FROM IRRATIONAL ACTIONS. A series of clicks and blinks, then: IN LIEU OF SPECIFIC COURSE INSTRUCTIONS, A RANDOM EVASION PATTERN WILL BE RUN.
[. . . .]
Holman slept as the ship raced at near-lightspeed in an erratic, meaningless course, looping across galaxies, darting through eons of time. When the computer's probings of Holman's subconscious told it that everything was safe, it instructed the cryogenics system to reawaken the man.
Como todas as velocidades estão em tremendos múltiplos da velocidade da luz, o homem não pode fugir, mas o alienígena não pode alcançá-lo.
Relativista, não FTL:
He knows what is following him. Their words echoed in his brain. Are the Others following me? Have they picked up my trail? They must have. They must be right behind me.
He could feel the cold perspiration start to trickle over him.
"But they can't catch me as long as I keep moving," he muttered. "Right?"
CORRECT, said the computer, flashing lights at him. AT A RELATIVISTIC VELOCITY WITHIN LESS THAN ONE PERCENT OF LIGHTSPEED, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THIS SHIP TO BE OVERTAKEN.
"Nothing can catch me as long as I keep running."
Finalmente, a comunicação é aberta, momento em que o homem pergunta "por quê?" O alienígena diz a ele que o homem havia descoberto a imortalidade, mas que isso exigia a morte de um membro de uma raça conhecida como o Povo da Flor por todos os humanos que alcançaram a imortalidade. O alienígena diz que o homem teria encontrado a resposta eventualmente,
Essa revelação não vem do inimigo Outro, mas de um observador neutro:
Your knowledge of the truth is imperfect. Mankind could have achieved immortality in time. Most races evolve that way eventually. But you were impatient. You stole immortality.
"Because we did it artificially, with chemicals. That's stealing it?"
Because the chemicals that gave you immortality came from the bodies of the race you called the Flower People. And to take the chemicals, it was necessary to kill individuals of that race.
Holman's eyes widened. "What?"
For every human made immortal, one of the Flower Folk had to die.
mas esse genocídio era tão intolerável que os alienígenas vieram de outra dimensão, à qual nunca poderiam retornar, para deter o Homem, o que resultou na guerra de extermínio.
O inimigo perseguidor falando agora:
Finalmente, as velocidades da luz tornam-se tão grandes que os dois seres vivos restantes no universo se aproximam do Big Crunch.You can flee to the ends of the universe to no avail.
You have forced us to leave our time-continuum. We can never return to our homeworlds again. We have nothing to do but pursue you. Sooner or later your machinery will fail. You cannot flee us forever.
The galaxies were clustering in now, falling in together as though sliding down some titanic, invisible slope. The universe had stopped expanding eons ago, Holman now realized. Now it was contracting, pulling together again. It was all ending!
He laughed. Coming to an end. Mankind and the Others, together, coming to the ultimate and complete end of everything.
Quando o homem começa a mergulhar na singularidade, com o alienígena em seus calcanhares, ele diz que talvez haja espaço no próximo universo para que ambas as raças vivam em paz, e a linha final é " não com um gemido, mas com um rugido de triunfo "!
"The end of the world. The end of everything and everybody. We finish in a tie. Mankind has made it right down to the final second. And if there's another universe after this one, maybe there'll be a place in it for us all over again. How's that for laughs?"
The world ended.
Not with a whimper, but a roar of triumph.