CERT SXF HALL, K. RS MART QUEEN SN1775690.
I walked across the ramp and into the lift beside the great tapering hull of the rocket. My heart was singing.
The timer said: "It is H minus thirty-one."
And then I stepped through the outer valve, into the Queen. The air was brisk with the tang of hydrogenol. Space-fuel. The ship was alive and humming with a thousand relays and timers and whispering generators, readying herself for space.
I lay down in the acceleration hammock and listened to the ship.
This was everything I had wished for all my life. To be a free man among the stars. It was worth the chances I had taken, worth the lying and cheating and danger.
The conquest of space had split humanity in a manner that no one could have foreseen, though the reasons for the schism were obvious. They hinged on two factors—mass and durability. Thus it was that some remained forever Earthbound while others reached for the sky. And bureaucracy being what it was, the decision as to who stayed and who went was made along the easy, obvious line of demarcation.
I and half the human race were on the wrong side of the line.
From the ship's speakers came the voice of the timer.