at
the vibrating bulkheads of the deserted little mail ship. For a moment
his conscious barriers against reality were so completely down that he
felt mortally terrified and overwhelmed by the vast emptiness about him.
For a moment the mad idea swept into his mind that perhaps the universe
was just another illusion, an echo of man's own inner loneliness.

Realizing his danger, Burnett quickly undid the restraining safety
straps, sat up and propelled himself outward from the edge of his bunk.
The sudden surge of physical action swept the cobwebs from his mind.

He thought of his father--and there was bitterness in his heart and
frustration, and a rebellious, smouldering anger. The old man would
never know how close he had come to cracking up.

For a moment he wondered fearfully if his father's cold and precise
appraisal of his character and courage had been correct. Suppose he
_was_ unable to stand the rigid strains and pressures of a real
emergency. Suppose-- He tightened his lips in defiant self-justification.
What did they expect of a twenty-year-old kid anyway? He was, after all,
the youngest and probably the greenest mail pilot in the entire
Universal Run.

Suddenly the defensive barriers his mind had thrown up against the
grievous flaw in his character, which made him feel uncertain of himself
when he should have felt strong and capable, crumbled away completely.
He could no longer pretend, no longer deceive himself. He hated his
father because the elder Burnett had never known a moment of profound
self-distrust in his entire life.

He remembered his father's favorite line of reasoning with a sudden,
overwhelming resentment. "Fear can and must be controlled. If you have
your objective clearly in mind a new experience, no matter how
hazardous, will quickly become merely a routine obstacle to be
surmounted, a yardstick by which a man can measure his own maturity and
strength of purpose. You'll find peace of mind in doing your work ably
and well and by ignoring all danger to yourself."

It was so easy to say, so hard to live up to. How, for instance, could a
twenty-year-old kid on his _first_ mail run hope to completely outwit
fatigue, or even forget, for a single moment, that it _was_ his first
run. Fatigue had caused his undoing, but had he been completely fearless
he might have found a way to save himself, might have managed somehow to
prevent the small, navigational errors from piling up until they had
carr