When you build a ship to sail deep space
You can't have a crew of mortal race
'Cause a hundred years from star to star
With a human crew is just too far.
Think of all the beer you'd have to carry.
Not to mention food.
And, uh, other necessities.
So you fill your ship with a robot crew
And you build a computer captain, too.
You get some experience for free
From some old spacer's personality.
Maybe an old shuttle pilot
Who's just learned from his last mistake.
That's where I come in.
So you take some bloke who's halfway dead
And you haul him home and you scan his head
And a hundred years of flying high
Is a damned good deal when you're about to die.
'Til you've had a decade or two to think it over.
It gets lonely out here.
And a thousand frozen colonists don't count.
So there behind my solar sail
Are five hundred hunks of frozen tail
But if I thawed one and you know I could
It wouldn't do me a bit of good.
What would I use?
I've got no damned body, just a starship.
Couldn't even... oh, the heck with it!
Now a couple of billion miles astern
It's another lonesome sucker's turn.
So I'll radio back and say Hey you---
Oh, I didn't know they took women, too!
Lovely night tonight, isn't it?
Look at all them pretty stars.
Yeah, me too.
So we'll talk, and murmur I love you
Like other star-crossed lovers do
And in eighty years we've made a date---
Did you ever see two starships mate?
We've got these robots,
And we figure they can put together---
Oh, none of your damned business!
