Her lips were tight and white. "Kelly's wife committed suicide today.
She couldn't take it any longer. It was her or--the Ideal...."
I felt the shock of her words and knew what she was trying to say. _It
could happen to us!_
I shook my head. "I'm sorry to hear that." And then I felt a bitter
anger. "She didn't give him a chance to find himself. Now he'll never
quit--"
"Chance! What kind of a chance does any woman have against an Ideal?
You're blaming _her_?"
This wasn't getting us anywhere and we both knew it. We stared at each
other in the tele for a long silent minute. Then she said, "This will
be the end for us, Al. Remember that before it's too late...."
I saw again the haunted look on Kelly's face. The almost desperate
pleading there of something I could never understand unless--
"I'm going." I said before I could let her change my mind.
"Then there's nothing more to say. Goodbye, Al."
And she switched off the set on me. Her face was gone, and maybe our
life together too. Just like that.
* * * * *
There was a three-day orientation period before we took off. Ships
on the Stardust Overdrive were operated by two-man teams and I
was assigned to a man named Radwick, an older man, who had been on
the Drive before. He was as crazy as a carnival mirror. He was a
semanticist and he carried around a small bag full of wooden blocks.
He would set these on a table and shift them around into various
positions. "I am thinking on the non-verbal level," he told me. "I'm
expressing ideas in things."
"Maybe we'd better go over the Company manual. I got a lot to learn in
only three days."
He had white hair and a thin face and a patient smile. "Nonsense. You
can't learn that way. You learn by doing. When we get into space, I'll
teach you all you need to know about the Drive."
I put in a complaint to the Company. "Listen," I told the supervisor.
"I don't like the idea of teaming up with a grown-up man who plays with
blocks. This boy has really lost his lid."
The supervisor gave me the stern Company treatment. "Don't you know
that we can't get one man in a hundred for the Drive?" he said. "We
can't afford to pick and choose. You volunteered for Stardust and
you'll have to abide by our system of operation."
* * * * *
I was glad to get out of earth and into the planets. The people of
earth loved that far-off metal we brought back from the stars, called
duronium plus. You could make a hundred year suit with it or you could
carry an atomic pile around in your pocket in a wallet made of the
stuff. It was profitable trade for the Company, but nobody wanted to
have anything to do with the rest of the culture of the far-off stars.
Every human who had gone out there had either not come back, or had
come back with too few of his marbles. In order to get their duronium
plus they had to depend on the lunatic fringe of people like Radwick,
Kelly and me. People who would try anything once. People who liked to
scare themselves about a thing and then go out and do it.
Radwick and I traveled on a conventional ship almost to Pluto. The
small, fast Overdrive ships never came very far into the solar system.
The local boys who put us on the small, red traveler serviced the ship
with a touch of awe. They were plenty scared, as if afraid they would
be stuck on board when we left.
There was something odd about the construction of the ship, but I
couldn't put my finger on it.
"The design has passed through the minds of the Stardust beings," said
Radwick, dumping his blocks on the table in the main cabin with a
rattling sound. "Earthmen provided the blueprints but these ships are
built out in Scolaris. They're partly organic."
"What!"