returned his steady gaze thinking:
They start out burning with desire to cure the human mind and end with
the shadow of the images. The words become the fact, the therapy the
aim. What could Steinhart know of longing? No, he thought, I'm not being
fair. Steinhart was only doing his job.

The big clock on the back wall of the briefing shack said three
fifty-five. Zero minus one hour and five minutes.

Kimball looked around the room at the pale faces, the open mouths. What
have I to do with you now, he thought?

* * * * *

Outside, the winter night lay cold and still over the Base. Floodlights
spilled brilliance over the dunes and the scrubby earth, high fences
casting laced shadows across the burning white expanses of
ferroconcrete.

As they filed out of the briefing shack, Steinhart climbed into the
command car with Kimball. Chance or design? Kimball wondered. The
others, he noticed, were leaving both of them alone.

"We haven't gotten on too well, have we, Colonel?" Steinhart observed in
a quiet voice.

Kimball thought: He's pale skinned and very blond. What is it that he
reminds me of? Shouldn't there be a diadem on his forehead? He smiled
vaguely into the rumbling night. That's what it was. Odd that he should
have forgotten. How many rocket pilots, he wondered, were weaned on
Burroughs' books? And how many remembered now that the Thern priests all
wore yellow wings and a circlet of gold with some fantastic jewel on
their forehead?

"We've done as well as could be expected," he said.

Steinhart reached for a cigaret and then stopped, remembering that
Kimball had had to give them up because of the flight. Kimball caught
the movement and half-smiled.

"I didn't try to kill the assignment for you, Kim," the psych said.

"It doesn't matter now."

"No, I suppose not."

"You just didn't think I was the man for the job."

"Your record is good all the way. You know that," Steinhart said. "It's
just some of the things----"

Kimball said: "I talked too much."

"You had to."

"You wouldn't think my secret life was so dangerous, would you," the
Colonel said smiling.

"You were married, Kim. What happened?"

"More therapy?"

"I'd like to know. This is for me."

* * * * *

Kimball shrugged. "It didn't work. She was a fine girl--but she finally
told me it was no go. 'You don't live here' was the way she put it."

"She knew you were a career