Memories flooded back into his mind, memories he had thought long ago blotted out and forgotten. The rich thrill of excitement as the last seconds crowded in close, with the strap cutting a deep welt across his chest—the muffled roar, the powerful sledge-hammer blow, driving his stomach and legs down like lead, then easing, easing gently into no pressure, then less than no pressure—the exhilarating, wonder-filled vision of the Earth rushing away, dwindling into a mottled patchwork, still dwindling—
Oh, he understood, all right. He knew what tugged at his son's heels, he knew the consuming thrill, the insatiable hunger to reach higher and higher, to seek out unknown places. He knew the wonder of stepping on another land, an alien land, the thrill of watching two moons creep softly over a reddish horizon. He knew the deep, rich thrill of pushing the frontier outward until the sun winked coldly like another star. Memories flooded his mind, and he remembered too well the insistent tug of the wanderlust at his heels, the call of the open road, the call of space. And he knew that, try as he would, no Earth-bound answer would ever drive it away—
Yes, he understood. But deep in his heart he felt the coldness, the pain and agony, the sense of bitter loss. He was one of the lucky. He had come back. Tad would never come back. The odds were too great, there were too few of the lucky. And it was better not to be one of the lucky, better to die out there, forgotten, unmourned.
Maybe he should have told the boy while he was young, tried to teach him, to make him understand. Perhaps he'd been wrong to conceal it all these years, to lie to Tad, to make Florence conceal, too. Perhaps Tad should have been told—but even knowing that someday the wanderlust would come, he knew he couldn't have told him. Better to conceal, to wait for the contempt, wait to hear the words, short, bitter words: "How could you ever understand? You've never been there—"
George felt the perspiration trickle down his neck. How could he explain the things he hardly dared think about himself? The fear, the bitterness, the horror? Tad would be sleeping now, peacefully, in his room, his bag half packed on the dresser, dreaming dreams of wonder in his sleep, and never dreaming for an instant of the terror, the pain—never knowing how hard a taskmaster the wanderlust could be, what terrible fees it could exact.
He knew he couldn't fight it. He had known since Tad was born that it would be useless. For the young saw only what they wanted to see.
And suddenly George was fumbling in his dresser drawer, frantically searching for the small oblong box, rushing, before he changed his mind. His hands closed on the small container, and its contents were cold between his fingers. And then he was in Tad's room, quietly, seeking the bag, half packed, a few meager clothes, a few meager memories to go away with a hopeful heart. He fumbled in the bag, and suddenly the memories closed in on George Barlow, and he was living again the horrible moments, the rumbling, jolting thunder in the bowels of the ship; the frantic scrambling down the dark passageways, the men, fear-crazed and tumbling over each other in free fall—the gleaming white-hot of the atomic fires gone wild; the screams of agony, the crashing, fiery groping through oven-like chambers, the twisting, wrenching of controls, fighting to stay alive, fighting in blazing agony, fire burning to the bottom of his soul—
The little metal disc slipped into the boy's bag, down between a pair of pants and a book; a thin metal disc of pure gold, a simple symbol, with simple words: To George L. Barlow, for Heroism in Space—
He dropped the disc into the boy's bag and stumbled back to his room. He sat in the silence stroking old Snuffy's soft muzzle, sat in darkness, eternal since that hour of terror, as tears streamed down scarred cheeks from his sightless eyes....