It was like a trail in the snow that led one way out into the bright
moonlight, into the middle of a field, and then stopped dead, without
sign or struggle. Impossible. But the papers were there before him.
_Checked through._
Nobody to suspect, nobody to worry about tracing them down. Because
they were dead. Free Agents. Beyond the law, beyond search and tracing.
Dropped from sight.
The girl was shaking his arm, begging him to hurry. He rolled up the
papers, thrust them into his inside pocket. He could not find his hat,
and he swore under his breath, and they went out without it. Then they
were on a surface car, curving up through the twilight into the New
City again, until they spotted a street where cabs were passing. They
hailed one, and the girl leaned back in the seat, trembling, as Griffin
said, "Rocket Landing. Hurry."
And then he leaned back, a thousand phantoms flickering through his
agitated mind.
* * * * *
He had to get rid of her before he could do anything. He glared at the
girl as they made their way across the Landing Building pavilion toward
the endless rows of loading platforms, wishing he had never agreed to
help her. Instinct told him to run, to leave her there and let her get
aboard her ship as best she could, but he followed her grimly. The
entrance guard passed them without argument when Griffin showed him his
green stripe. "Venus ship? Platforms are down to the right--"
They moved down the rows of silent ships, and then she pointed. It was
a huge ship, with a single light swinging on top of the gantry. "That's
the one."
He glanced up at the ship. The gantry stood tall by her side, and her
airlock was standing open. He pushed the crane buzzer; up above, the
machinery began to squeak and groan as the platform started down.
"Who's down there?" The voice from above was harsh, and Griffin saw a
head appear over the edge of the crane. "What do you want?"
"Free Agent," said Griffin. "I'd like to come aboard and take a look
around."
"Not supposed to start loading for two hours," the voice grumbled.
"We're not shipping, we're just looking."
"All right. Come along."
The crane rumbled down and squeaked to a stop. Griffin and the girl
stepped on the platform, and it started up again. At the top the guard
peered at them suspiciously, hand on his gun belt. He fluoresced the
green stencil on Griffin's arm, grunting. "Who's she?" he said.
"Free loader," said Griffin, tense. "Friend of mine."
The guard didn't like it. It was written a yard wide across his face.
"Going to be long?"
"Not long. Just want to look around."
"Better keep forward, Free Agent. The pile's active."
"We won't go aft." Griffin moved through the lock, and the girl
followed him. He heard a sound, then, a soft, swishing sound that
sounded wrong. He whirled too late as the guard moved toward him.
Powerful arms trapped him, held him tightly, and a hand clamped
unceremoniously across his mouth. Something sharp bit his arm, and he
let out a little scream. And then, like pieces in a puzzle the whole
grotesque picture slammed into place in his mind, and he fought like a
wild man to break loose from the arms that held him.
After a while, he stopped struggling.
* * * * *
The first sound he heard was not a sound at all, but a vibration, low,
deep seated, swallowing his whole body as he lay there. He tried to
sit up, and felt the leather bands catch his arms and legs and chest.
He let out a little cry, and fumbled to unbuckle them, and then he
rolled and spun crazily through the air until his boots struck metal,
and caught him tight to the floor. A pang of nausea shot through him;
he stared wide-eyed at the empty cabin, the dozen slanted acceleration
cots, all empty. He struggled to the closed hatchway in front, and
fought it open, his mind screaming. And then he was in the control
room, staring at the empty seats in front of the panel, and above the
rows of glittering keys, the curved plexiglass giving out to the black
expanse of space with its millions of bright pinpoints.
He gave a strangled cry, and pushed up against the glass, staring down
at the still-dwindling discs below him, one pale greenish-blue, the
other, much smaller, dead white against the blackness. And then he was
clawing the glass, screaming and sobbing and cursing like a madman.
He stared out the glass, and down at the panel, and slowly, like a
malignant poison seeping into his mind, he began to realize what it
meant.
He knew now where he was going. He knew now the price-tag. Not to
Venus, not to Mars--it would be too easy to return from there, it would
be idiotic to shanghai a person aboard a ship to take him to Mars or
Venus--he could simply turn around and come back home. Not to Venus,
not to Mars. Not anywhere in the Solar System--
He saw it clearly, as bits of evidence fell into place. Man had
been aiming at the stars for centuries. It was sure to come; the
frontier had expanded year by year--across Africa, across Asia, across
Antarctica--to the moon, to the planets. Always the expanding frontier,
until now, when it had expanded beyond man's reach. For man could not
go to the stars. There was no light-speed drive to carry him there,
the journey would take too long. Once a man had grown to maturity,
and been educated, and reached an age where he could move out on the
long journey, he would be too old. The journey could never take less
than twenty-five or thirty years, with the rocket drive man had, and
man would be too old to be useful when he arrived at his destination.
A man aged 25 at the start of the journey would spend his prime years
in transit; he would be fifty, or sixty, or seventy or more before he
arrived. There could be no round trips, there could be no exploration,
or colonization, or anything else. Man would be too old--
_Unless he be born again_--
But Griffin had been born again. He had a new body, and now, in the
barest infancy of his new life, with sixty or seventy or eighty years
of life left before him, he was on the first lap of the journey--to the
stars. This was the price-tag, this was how the government was using
the techniques which gave men new lives--in order to carry Earth to the
stars.