* * * * *
And now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping,
and the house is silent.
It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am
writing this.
I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading
the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that
Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they
could tell me what he could not express in words.
And among the things, Laura, I found a ring.
A wedding ring.
In that past he never talked about, there was a woman--his wife.
Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same
decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to
travel both. He later learned what we already know--that there can be
no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.
Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he
could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never
live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He
left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a
man's dream.
He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven
knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was
kind--but that doesn't matter now.
Do you know _why_ he wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't
want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth?
It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the
Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother,
brothers, the planets his children.
You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes
after you reach it. But how can one ever be _sure_ until the journey is
made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a
star and think, _I might have gone there; I could have been the first_?
We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one
be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways?
Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us
to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his
last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration
to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.
Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain
the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.
Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep--at a dingy stone cafe
on Mars, the _Space Rat_, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.
Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever
part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.