Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a
garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a
tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that
he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at
the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was
mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only
half as big.
And then it seemed that all the proud faces were looking at us as if we
were gods. A shiver went through my body. Though it was daytime, I saw
the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each
like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by
the sons of Earth.
_They expect a lot from us. They expect us to make a new kind of
civilization and a better place out of Earth. They expect all this and
a hell of a lot more. They think there's nothing we can't do._