Peter Conroy had been born in deep space and the starship was the only home he knew. It was a good reason why he must fight for this—

Voyage To Procyon

By Robert Silverberg

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy June 1958 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

In the deepest level of the mighty Starship I, Peter Conroy lay hidden in a cornfield. Around him waved the tall stalks of ripening corn; high overhead, near the distant ceiling of the level, blazed the actinic lights that irradiated the broad field.

And nearby, Conroy could hear the stealthy footsteps of Bayliss Kent and his men, searching desperately for him. They had to find him—and Peter Conroy had to keep from being found.

Crouching low, he edged forward between the bending stalks. Kent thought he had Conroy hemmed in, that he had the entrance to the cornfield guarded. Conroy grinned. He had been brought up in the Agronomy section; Kent and his men hadn't. It made a difference.

He looked around carefully, then began moving slowly away from them on his hands and knees. If I can only reach the irrigation tube in time, he thought. If—

It had been over fifty years since the Starship I had left Earth. For more than half a century, the great ship had been headed toward the star Procyon and the planets around it—habitable planets, detected by the Lunar telescope. Fifty years, and there was still a hundred years of flight yet to come before the huge ship reached her destination.

Conroy and all the others of his generation had been born on the ship, as had most of their parents before them. The ship, with its vast farms, its great factories, and its clusters of living centers, was all the world they knew.

But Bayliss Kent and his little party of malcontents wanted to change all that. They wanted to go back to Earth.

Suddenly, something crackled under Conroy's knee, and he froze. A dry leaf—nothing more. But had the others heard it?

He couldn't be sure. The searchers were making quite a bit of noise themselves, and perhaps they might have thought it was one of their own group who had made the sound. He decided to risk 

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