 What is the overall shift in tone from the start of the passage to the end of the passage?
In the last hours the star ahead had grown brighter by many magnitudes, and had changed its color from a dazzling blue through white to the normal yellow, of a GO sun. The great chamber, a full cross-section of the vessel, had been at first a fuel hold. That was the foreshortening along the time axis of a space ship approaching the speed of light. We go on to Capella; its spectrum, so like our own Sun's, beckons. "One week since we passed close enough to Aldebaran to ascertain that that system, too, is devoid of planets. "Looked at historically, such super-human outbursts of energy are the result of a population's outgrowing its room and resources, and therefore signalize the beginning of the end.
 From calm to frantic
 From calm to frantic  From happy to calm  From frenzied to calm  From depressed to hopeful