Then I looked at you and the promise in your eyes, and I knew.
All through the years I'd been walking down a single, narrow path.
Government boarding school, the Academy, my eyes always upward and on
the stars.
Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that
I'd never noticed before.
_You can go into space_, I thought, _and try to do as much living in
ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died
in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie
buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like
Charlie--a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally
alone, never finding a home._
_Or there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth
in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with
a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow
old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who
fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous
dust._
"I'm sorry," you said. "I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben."
"It's all right," I said, clenching my fists. "You made sense--a lot of
sense."
* * * * *
The next morning Charlie said good-bye in our room. He rubbed his
scarred face nervously as he cleared his throat with a series of thin,
tight coughs.
Then he pointed to a brown, faded tin box lying on the bed. "I'm
leavin' that for you. It's full of old stuff, souvenirs mostly. Thought
maybe you'd like to have 'em."