the brittle amnesty, he
knew that authority awaited only a single slip to deal with him
according to their views. But in the bitterness of ultimate
disillusions, he had found the fountainhead as lacking in civilization
and sanity as its furthest ripples. He longed, now, only for the final
gesture of rejection. Escape....

"I had expected more of Newlin," said the girl.

* * * * *

His reply was a short, bitter laugh. "So had I. My character is as
corrupt as the rest of mankind. Poverty is undignified and degrading; it
poisons virtue and debases the outlook. Without money a man cannot claim
his birthright of freedom; getting money he loses his independence and
his character."

"You think money would make you free?" the girl asked.

"Not of itself." Newlin scowled. "With money, a free man can be free; a
slave with money is still a slave. Perhaps I want to learn for myself
which I am. I want enough to pay for a spaceship, the best to be had. A
one-man ship in which I can escape this madhouse and venture
alone--beyond Pluto. Such a plan requires money, so I work in the
Spacebell. Between wages, tips, graft and my winnings, I may have half
enough, by dawn. If I live that long."

The girl nodded, then spoke contemptuously, "I can pay very generously.
You can set your own price. Enough even for your spaceship. But what do
you expect to find--beyond Pluto?"

"Myself, first. After that, who knows? This solar system is a vast
pesthouse. I am contaminated by fools, moneygrubbers, sheep and the
corrupt authorities that rule them. What else I find isn't important if
I find myself. Even death."

Newlin's eyes burned with a hot glare of fanaticism. Dread sprang into
the girl's heart. Always with these people there was this fear, this
panic-desire to escape, always an urge to destruction coupled with eery
mysticism, compulsions, conflicts--and always the final delusion of
personal sanity in the atmosphere of chaos. Some of Newlin's words found
echo in herself, but she checked a momentary sympathy. The system was
mad, true--but how sane was Newlin? How sane and trustworthy? He could
be a dangerous tool in her unskilled, frightened hands.

She had chosen him on the basis of his reputation. From his police
record, and other documents. A capable man, courageous and self-reliant,
ingenious, but a person of tensions and conflicts, a man of violence,
unpredictable, torn by contradictory impulses, a s