"Thank the fates I'm not a military man, Jarvis, and can speak freely," Cantrell said dryly. "You already know I don't like you, and I'm beginning to like you even less."
"Come, come," Colonel Evans said hastily, "there's no point in arguing. We can't get perfection, I'm afraid. Cantrell here's the closest to our qualifications we could get, physically and psychologically, consistent with the right background for the job. Tomorrow at noon the rocket's going to take off with Cantrell aboard, and then we'll know."
"Yes," the psychiatrist said steadily, "and then we'll know."
Cantrell turned to Colonel Evans. "Will that be all, Colonel?"
Evans glanced hastily at Jarvis and nodded. "That's it, I guess—until tomorrow at noon."
"Right," Cantrell said. "See you." And he went out.
Once outside in the warm afternoon sun he mentally damned Jarvis and Evans, classifying them both as incompetents who drew military salary for putting red-taped impediments in the way of progress; the rocket should have taken off months ago.
He shrugged, trying to content himself with the thought that tomorrow he'd be away from them, away floating in the pure emptiness of space. Even so, the mere thought of Jarvis irritated him, made his fingers itch for the man's throat; him and his talk of animal fears!
Okay, so he hated animals, well he had good reason to. Ever since that dog had attacked him when he was a child, he'd hated dogs; and then the hatred spread to other animals—why not, for they all were potentially dangerous—and sometimes it even made him sick to think of them. It made sense when you stopped to consider it carefully. He'd moved to the city, to the great steel canyons that imprisoned only specimens of humanity, and for years never saw an animal. Now, he was in the open again, in the great desert and the plains. But there were no animals, only the dogs Captain Jarvis insisted on keeping.
"Nuts to Captain Jarvis," he said.