Each beat of Captain’s twin hearts took half a day in the
universe outside. When the Sumerians came down from their mountains to
invent the city on the Persian plateau, Captain was invited to
participate in the forthcoming anniversary talk. As he prepared his
guest list, Sargon built an empire. While he instructed his machines
with the program for the meeting small, shivering men hewed blue stone
into menhirs to form Stonehenge. Columbus discovered America while
Captain was fretful over last-minute cancellations and changes; he
finished his evening meal while the first human rockets tottered into
orbit and decided to stretch his legs before retiring as a human
explorer, wild with surprise, broke into the first Heechee tunnel on
Venus. He slept through the time of Robin Broadhead’s growth, puberty,
voyage to Gateway and voyages from it, the discovery of the Food
Factory, the decision to explore it. He half woke just as the
Herter-Hall party was starting its four-year climb to orbit, and went
back to sleep-to him it was the equivalent of less than an hour-through
all their wearying trip. Captain, after all that, was still relatively
young. He had the equivalent of a good ten years of active, energetic
life ahead of him-or what the outside universe would see as a quarter of
a million years.
From "Beyond the blue event horizon" by Frederik Pohl,
From the chapter "The place where the Heechee went".
