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"Far Centaurus" is a 7000-word short story by A. E. Van Vogt, about a ship that takes a 500-year voyage to Alpha Centauri. It was first published in the January, 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.

Plot

A spaceship is launched from Earth to Alpha Centauri with four crewmen on board—Renfrew, Pelham, Blake, and the narrator of the story, Endicott. The trip is set to take 500 years, so each of the crewmen are put to sleep using some special pills, just enough to wake up each crewman at pre-ordained times, to check on the ship’s systems and make a report. The story opens when Endicott gets up for the first of his three waking assignments, some 53 years after launch. He finds that one of his shipmates, Pelham, has died in his sleep, so he ejects the body, and leaves a note for Renfrew and Blake, who are still asleep. He then takes enough pills to make him sleep for another 150 years. When he wakes up after 150 years, he finds a private note from Blake, expressing condolences at the death of Pelham, and concern that, since Pelham and Renfrew were such close friends, they might have to worry about the stability of Renfrew. Endicott performs his duties and then takes more sleeping pills.

Endicott next wakes up to the sound of alarms, and sees that a giant spaceship nearby is in flames, with no survivors. He concludes that it must be from a previously unknown alien civilization in the Alpha Centauri system. He takes his final dose of pills and sleeps for another 150 years. When he wakes up, he is greeted by Blake, who reports that Renfrew is so unbalanced that he had to tie him up. Blake reports that they have been in radio contact with Alpha Centauri for two weeks now, and that the spaceship which Endicott had seen burning was, in fact, an Earth ship which was more advanced than anything in their day.

They arrive in the Alpha Centauri system, and are greeted by a man named Cassellahat. Cassellahat says that Earth scientists developed faster than light travel more than a century after their ship left Earth, and that now the four inhabited planets in the Alpha Centauri system are named Renfrew, Pelham, Blake and Endicott, in their honor. The population of those planets is already in the billions. However, says Cassellahat, the three men will have to remain isolated from other humans, because they have a smell than modern day people would find very offensive.

The three men soon become bored, disillusioned, and frustrated in this new society, and Renfrew tries to solve this problem by purchasing a spaceship, so that they can explore the galaxy. For a few months this keeps them interested, but then they begin to realize that they are still bored and unfulfilled. Then Renfrew assaults and ties up both Blake and Endicott, and steers their spaceship into a ‘bachelor star’. By the time Blake and Endicott break free of their bonds it is too late, and Renfrew explains that this had all been Cassellahat’s idea. Cassellahat and Renfrew had considered both Blake and Endicott insane, and devised this solution to help them. When the ship reaches a particular point near the ‘bachelor star’ it travels back in time 498 years. They then agree to set a course back to Earth, where they can live out their lives normally, in their own time period.

Additional Notes

This story has been reprinted in Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 6 (1944).

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