"The bill. Don't people pay to stay here—or is it a charity institution?"
"Oh, no sir. We are not a charity institution. But your bill was paid for by—"
"I know—by Mr. Clifford." Lee scowled and strode out into the street.
He walked from the hotel straight to the nearest bar. He knocked off a double bourbon, neat, and let it warm the lining of his stomach. It felt good. He set down his glass and gestured to the barkeep. Then he was looking into the refilled glass and making no move to lift it. A moment later he was out in the street, realizing this was the first time in eighteen months that he'd walked away from a drink.
It was no reformation, though; merely a temporary diversion of his mind from a prime objective; that of drinking himself to death; that of blotting from his brain the picture of eleven men dying horribly as the ship he had designed shivered and buckled and collapsed in deep space.
Not even a temporary respite, because the horrible vision of his own shortcomings—his own failure—was still there. But how could he have known? Neither he nor anyone else could possibly have been aware of the true conditions encountered out there. Theories and abstracts were fine; almost enough to go on. But not quite. The payoff is always in the doing. Otherwise, test pilots would not command fabulous salaries to risk their necks on the first try-out. But eleven men! Snuffed out because Lee Hayden's word had been taken. Eleven young men.
And here he was, many hours later—back in his room with the bottle on the table ready to blot out the dream—the nightmare of their final agony—that ripped and tore at him everytime he closed his eyes.
Still half sober, he fell into bed and began living it again, tasting the horror, feeling his own flesh grind, his own bones break; living their deaths over just as he had from that first moment when he'd gotten word of the disaster; the last message they'd sent from space.
He awoke in a pool of sweat and realized where he was. He snatched at the bottle, hit it, knocked it off the table. He watched the liquor slop out onto the carpet. He sobbed.