THE SAGAN SERIES - Per Aspera Ad Astra

Through Hardship to the Stars

It's easy to imagine skeins

of historical causality

there were many possible historical paths.

Our ancestors walked from East Africa

to Novaya Zemlya

and Ayers Rock and Patagonia,

they hunted elephants with stone spearpoints,

they walked the Moon a decade after entering space.

It is beyond our powers to predict the future.

Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us,

of catching us unaware.

Your own life,

or your band's,

or even your species'

might be owed to a restless few-drawn,

by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand,

to undiscovered lands and new worlds.

Each victory is only a prelude to another,

and no boundaries can be set to rational hope.

Our particular causality skein

has brought us to a modest and rudimentary,

although in many respects heroic,

series of explorations.

But it is far interior

to what might have been

and what may one day be.