This was everything I had wished for all my life. To be a free man
among the stars. It was worth the chances I had taken, worth the lying
and cheating and danger.
The conquest of space had split humanity in a manner that no one could
have foreseen, though the reasons for the schism were obvious. They
hinged on two factors--mass and durability. Thus it was that some
remained forever Earthbound while others reached for the sky. And
bureaucracy being what it was, the decision as to who stayed and who
went was made along the easy, obvious line of demarcation.