Alan Edward Nourse

“ My god, Bart, can't you see what's happening? She's selfish, Bart. Just plain selfish. She wants you, and she wants you on her own terms. There won't be any compromise. Turn in that resignation, and you're sunk—"
Anger lit in his eyes then. "It's not selfishness," he said doggedly.
"Then what do you call it? Has she even listened to you? Has she given even one little minute's consideration to how you feel?" I set down my coffee cup in disgust. "Marny is a woman," I said slowly. "To women, a husband and a home are the end of existence. ”

“ Out of all the thousands who want to go to space, you have the chance. You'll get to Mars, you'll work to open the frontier, on Mars, on Venus—we're on the edge of the greatest era of exploration and discovery the earth has ever known, Bart. We have the ships to take us to our own planets now, we need only the men with courage and strength enough to leave their homes and go. And with the new work on induced warp that Dillon's laboratories have been doing, it may not be long before we can go farther than our system—on to the stars. ”

“ Ever since I've known him his eyes have been on the stars. Can you understand that, Marny? That's his life, everything that he wants. He's been aiming at the stars since he was a kid, studying, working, getting into Rocket engineering, meeting people, talking—all with one idea. To get into space, to go places nobody has ever been. That's the kind of man Bart is. He's a wanderer, a rover. Tie him down and he'd die." I looked at her closely. "You'll kill him, Marny. No matter how much you try to give in, it'll be a losing game. It'll always be a fight between you, and going out on another trip. ”

“ The staggering courage of the man, the fearlessness, the eagerness to be first, to push farther and farther into the limitless challenge of interplanetary exploration. Pictures came back, messages came back, and later the colonists came back, telling tales of the man that grew and expanded month after month. And then, amazingly, the Dillon Warp was perfected in the laboratory, and Bart Witton was the first to petition for a ship, waiting eagerly for word from the home offices that he could command the first ship to make a star-jump. ”

“ And you'll always lose. If you don't, you'll kill him. That's all there is to it."
There were tears in her eyes. "What should I do, Ben?"
"Tie him down, and he'll shrivel up and die. Turn him loose, and nothing in the universe can stop him. Let him go, Marny. Completely. You can find another life down here, the sort of life you need. But Bart could never find another life—"
Her eyes were wide with pain and sadness. "There's no other way, Ben?"
"If you love him, Marny, that's the only thing you can do—"
Bart was waiting for me, several nights later, when I got in from the hospital. ”

“ My eyes widened, and I sat bolt upright. "You mean the competition for crews?"
Bart nodded excitedly. "That's right. Dillon got the government to back his contracts and research, and he'll be tripling the number of ships in space within the next five years. He needs men—the best men he can get to man those ships! And these tests are designed to pick the best part for Dillon's crew—" He sank down on the davenport, his hands trembling. "It was the only smart thing to do," he said. "Every mug on the streets thinks that he wants to walk in and ferry a ship to Mars. ”

“ He's out for what he can make out of it, and nothing more. You can't trust a man like that...."
Bart shrugged indifferently. "Stories," he said. "Dillon's a pioneer. Those who are afraid of space spread dirty stories, sure, but there's no proof. Anyway, I won't fly with Dillon. He just builds the ships, and his ships are the finest that can be built—"
"But Bart, it's a fool's errand!" The girl's eyes were huge, filling with tears. "You have a good job, a good home—you just can't go—"
He blinked at her, unbelieving. "With a chance like this? To go to space? ”

“ That wouldn't work—it takes too much knowledge, too much engineering skill, and lots more. The men who go have got to be the best bets on every score—the best to handle the long trips, the best for repairing, reporting, exploring—everything. ”