"Come on. Out with it. It won't matter much if you resign." Dubcek's manner was unruffled, but the lieutenant thought he caught a gleam of pain, or something, in his dark eyes.
"There was a moment when I hated you—-when I first realized you had sacrificed our carrier for theirs. But I don't feel that way now."
"Then why?"
"I just can't do it. I tried to put myself in your place. . .and I can't. This way of life, of thinking….. I can't."
"You think I send men to their death without feeling." It was not a question.
"No." But Brunner would say no more.
"No, but that was cruel of me. Young men are so much more, SENSITIVE. You think you could never send men to theirs, that you are not the right kind of man—-cold, calculating. You think too much, feel too much, is that it?"
"No….. I don't know."
"Save war for lonely old men?"
Brunner looked hard at him, defiant. This time he was sure. There was something quietly desperate in his commander's eyes. It was fear. Not the fear of age or death, but that of a far greater hurt: the pain of life's final reckoning, of uselessness and barren seed. "Can I tell you something, 'as a man?'" Dubcek turned his eyes away, poured the bottle into the glass.