"On the Deck of the Starship?" was originally punished By Amazing in 1974 and reprinted in the German publication Science Fiction Story-Reader 14 in 1980. It was inspired by the song "Starship" on the Jefferson Starship album Blows Against the Empire.
The starship orbited Earth. It was being constructed around the shell of an asteroid whose orbit had neared that of Earth and been captured by a team of astronauts. It had been building for ten years, an ungodly collection of pods and experimental sections that would carry seven thousand gypsies past the sun, beyond Pluto, beyond the comet-spawning zone that marked the borders of the solar system, gathering speed as it gulped hydrogen atoms, sailing toward light-speed. It would take two years to get past Pluto's orbit, most of its crew in cryogenic sleep, reaching out in an attempt to lengthen the lifetime of humanity beyond that of its own solar system, a feeble attempt at immortality for Mankind.