It was was an AE van Vogt story, Far Centaurus. Took me a while to track this down, as all I remembered was the general plot and an orange cover showing a flying astronaut filming a giant sea monster, which I don’t think even happens in the book. Van Vogt originally wrote the short story, about a spaceship on a 500-year voyage to Alpha Centauri with a sleeping crew. They arrive to find Earth people who routinely make the trip in hours using FTL, who decided to let the sleeper ship finish its journey. Van Vogt later combined this story with two others into a novel called Quest for the Future - one of the first Science Fiction Book Club books I bought in high school.
It was was an AE van Vogt story, Far Centaurus. Took me a while to track this down, as all I remembered was the general plot and an orange cover showing a flying astronaut filming a giant sea monster, which I don’t think even happens in the book. Van Vogt originally wrote the short story, about a spaceship on a 500-year voyage to Alpha Centauri with a sleeping crew. They arrive to find Earth people who routinely make the trip in hours using FTL, who decided to let the sleeper ship finish its journey. Van Vogt later combined this story with two others into a novel called Quest for the Future - one of the first Science Fiction Book Club books I bought in high school.