ave just informed me it
was planned this way. It wasn't possible to build a round-trip rocket
yet. You need a lot of fuel to make course adjustments for the curvature
of space, so forth. The radio will send back your reports on the Alpha
Centaurian planets. Undoubtedly by all rules of probability they won't
support life without a mass of equipment. They suckered me too,
Meyverik, I swear. You turning back?"

"No," he said almost immediately.

"I thought you were after the rewards, trained to get them. You won't be
able to enjoy them posthumously."

The video blanked. He had turned off his camera.

"I guess I thought so," Meyverik's voice said. "But I kind of like it
out here--alone. I like people but back there there's no one to _touch_.
They smother you but you can't reach them. I can't do anything better
back there than I can do here."

* * * * *

Madison got a bottle and he and I got sloppily drunk, leaning on each
other, singing innocently obscene songs of our youth. The technicians,
good government men, were openly disgusted with us.

Two hours after we had contacted Meyverik, I left Madison snoring on the
desk and lurched to the control board, bunching my soiled shirt at the
throat with my hand.

I called Johnson.

"Going to die, Johnson. Tricked you. Can't get back, Johnson. Not ever.
No fuel. Ha, you can't ever go home again, Johnson. Like that, you
damned runny-nosed little poet?"

His dark face worked weakly.

Ha, he sure as thunderation _didn't_ like it.

He asked for the bloody details and I fed them to him.

"Turning back, aren't you?" I jeered.

"I just wanted a place and a time for thinking," he said across the
Solar System. "But I'll die and I don't know if you can dream in death."

"Just what I thought," I sneered.

"I'm not turning back," he said slowly. "People need me. I've got a job
to do. Haven't I? Haven't I?"

"_No_," I screamed at him. "You're just using that as an excuse to kill
yourself. Don't try to tell me you're not weak! Don't you try to make me
think you're strong! Hear me, Johnson, hear me?"

But he couldn't hear me.

One of the government technicians had broken the contact before that
last spurt.

* * * * *

"This is good," Madison said, pawing fuzzily at his pocket.
"Really--_good_."

I studied the three or four watchdials wobbling up and down my elongated
wrist. They seemed to say it was almost