Read "Starman's Quest" by Robert Silverberg online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The sound of the morning alarm rang out, four loud hard clear gong-clangs, and all over the great starship _Valhalla_ the men of the Crew rolled out of their bunks to begin another day. The great ship had travelled silently through the endless night of space while they slept, bringing them closer and closer to the mother world, Earth. The _Valhalla_ was on the return leg of a journey to Alpha Centauri.
But one man aboard the starship had not waited for the morning alarm. For Alan Donnell the day had begun several hours before. Restless, unable to sleep, he had quietly slipped from his cabin in the fore section, where the unmarried Crewmen lived, and had headed forward to the main viewscreen, in order to stare at the green planet growing steadily larger just ahead.