"My brother. I had a twin, but he got restless and jumped ship last time
we were down. He got left behind at blastoff time."
Quantrell nodded understandingly. "Too bad. But I know what he was up
against--and I envy the lucky so-and-so. I wish _I_ had the guts to just
walk out like that. Every day that goes by in this place, I say I'm
going over the hill next day. But I never do, somehow. I just sit here
and wait."
Alan glanced down the quiet sun-warmed street. Here and there a couple
of venerable-looking starmen were sitting, swapping stories of their
youth--a youth that had been a thousand years before. The Enclave, Alan
thought, is a place for old men.
They walked on for a while until the buzzing neon signs of a feelie
theater were visible. "I'm going in," Roger said. "This place is
starting to depress me. You?"
Alan shot a glance at Quantrell, who made a face and shook his head. "I
guess I'll skip it," Alan said. "Not just now."
"Count me out too," Quantrell said.
Roger looked sourly from one to the other, and shrugged. "I think I'll
go all the same. I'm in the mood for a good show. See you around, Alan."
After Roger left them, Alan and Quantrell walked on through the Enclave
together. Alan wondered whether it wasn't a good idea to have gone to
the feelie with Roger after all; the Enclave was starting to depress
him, too, and those three-dimensional shows had a way of taking your
mind off things.
But he was curious about Quantrell. It wasn't often he had a chance to
talk with someone his own age from another ship. "You know," he said,
"we starmen lead an empty life. You don't get to realize it until you
come to the Enclave."
"I decided that a long time ago," Quantrell said.
Alan spread his hands. "What do we do? We dash back and forth through
space, and we huddle here in the Enclave. And we don't like either one
or the other, but we fool ourselves into liking them. When we're in
space we can't wait to get to the Enclave, and once we're down here we
can't wait to get back. Some life."
"Got any suggestions? Some way of fixing things up for us without
queering interstellar commerce?"
"Yes," Alan snapped. "I do have a suggestion. Hyperspace drive!"