Stephen Marlowe

“ It's a common misconception. Good luck, Allerton."
But Allerton was already on his way down the companionway with its ghost-noises which he no longer could hear. He wondered what it really took to make a man happy, truly happy over a sustained period. The flitting stolen moments of a spaceman's life, he knew, could never be for him. Yet outside the rain drummed down drearily on the gray apron of the landing pit and washed over Allerton with an ineffable sadness.
The reporters were waiting for him down below, huddled together under a bobbing sea of umbrellas. ”

“ Suddenly, it was as if he had indeed died out there in space and now he was a ghost, coming home to haunt people who wanted only to forget. The reporters expected him to say something, though. Tell them that he had spent three years in space, hating every minute of it, to find security for his family? Tell them he had risked his life to repair the ship on Io because if he failed the government insurance would provide for his family? Tell them he was now dead, really dead as Nancy had thought, and they were wasting their time interviewing a ghost?
"Have you any plans, Mr. Allerton?" ”

“ The important thing is this: there aren't enough real spacemen to go around. A normal man doesn't give up life for dedication. A spaceman does. You belong to a strange breed, Allerton. Want to talk about your vacation?"
"Absolutely not," Allerton said curtly, then apologized. The thought of it, the thought of stepping off the Eros again and feeling the ground of Earth underfoot, wet ground sometimes, or dry and dusty, or covered with a white mantle of snow, always unpredictable, was distasteful. ”

“ Still, Allerton wasn't a born spaceman, and you know it. There's no such thing, except for extreme introverts, who aren't such good workers, anyway."
"We need spacemen. We need dedicated men who don't want to see their native planet. Either we control space or our enemy does." ”

“ He was a gaunt, comical figure of a man, so long and lean that he stooped slightly at the waist and again at the shoulders, with a long, down-tipped nose which almost seemed to meet the thin-lipped mouth as he spoke. ”

“ They're the hardest ones to deal with. The man never knows, but the woman does. How can you convince a woman her husband will be happiest away from her—how can you convince her when you're not even sure yourself?"
"I feel sorry for Allerton. ”

“ He wanted to say it no longer was available. "A man doesn't know what he wants, until he has it."
"Well...."
"Goodbye, Nancy."
"Goodbye, Harry."
The door shut. He fled with his picture.
"Come in, Allerton. Nice vacation?" Captain Greene peered at him through a blue haze of cigar smoke.
"Not particularly. There are too many people. Too many complications. A man can't think straight out there, with all that confusion. ”

“ Spacemen aren't born, chief. They are made. They are not particularly heroic or well-adjusted people. They are ordinary men with induced traumas and they don't want to go near Earth again, and we call them spacemen."
"It's for the security of the nation," said the government psychologist as he opened a new file.... ”