was twenty-six--"

"Lots of guys think they'll make it. I did once myself. Look at me
now. I'm no good in the ships any more, so they bust me back to port
hand. It's too damn easy to throw your credits away in the
crumb-joints."

"I'm getting married," Hunter replied. "Ann and I worked this out when
I joined the service. Now we have the capital to open her clinic--and
ninety-six thousand credits, salted away in the Solar First National
Fund."

"Every youngster starts out like you did, but something always
happens. The girl doesn't wait, maybe. Or he gets to thinking he can
pile up credits faster in the company casinos." The old man saluted.
"So long, boy. It does my soul good to meet one guy who's getting out
of this crazy space racket."

Max Hunter strode along the fenced causeway toward the low,
pink-walled municipal building, shimmering in the desert sun. Behind
him the repair docks and the launching tubes made a ragged silhouette
against the sky.

Hunter felt no romantic inclination to look back. He had always been
amused by the insipid, Tri-D space operas. To Hunter it had been a
business--a job different from other occupations only because the
risks were greater and the bonus scale higher.

Ann would be waiting in the lobby, as she always was when he came in
from a flight. But today when they left the field, it would be for
keeps. Anticipation made his memory of Ann Saymer suddenly vivid--the
caress of her lips, the delicate scent of her hair, her quick smile
and the pert upturn of her nose.

Captain Hunter thought of Ann as small and delicate, yet neither term
was strictly applicable except subjectively in relation to himself.
Hunter towered a good four inches above six feet. His shoulders were
broad and powerful, his hips narrow, and his belly flat and hard. He
moved with the co-ordination that had become second nature to him
after a decade of frontier war. He was the typical spaceman, holding a
First in his profession.

As was his privilege, he still wore his captain's uniform--dress boots
of black plastic, tight-fitting trousers, and a scarlet jacket bearing
the gold insignia of Consolidated Solar Industries.

Hunter entered the municipal building and joined the line of people
moving slowly toward the customs booth. Anxiously he scanned the mass
of faces in the lobby. Ann Saymer wasn't there.

He felt the keen, knife-edge disappointment, and something
else--something he didn't want to put into w