So, Ben reflected, you can take a beer-and-pretzels tale seriously. You can hide for a couple of days, get rid of your uniform, change your name. You can wait for a chance to get to Venus. To hell with your duty. You can try to stay in space, even if you exile yourself from Earth.
After all, was it right for a single second, a single insignificant second, to destroy a man's life and his dream?
He was lucky. He found a tramp freighter whose skipper was on his last flight before retirement. Discipline was lax, investigation of new personnel even more so.
Ben Curtis made it to Venus.
There was just one flaw in his decision. He hadn't realized that the memory of the dead man's face would haunt him, torment him, follow him as constantly as breath flowed into his lungs.
But might not the rumble of atomic engines drown the murmuring dead voice? Might not the vision of alien worlds and infinite spaceways obscure the dead face?
So now he sat searching for a perhaps nonexistent red-bearded giant, and hoping and doubting and fearing, all at once.
"You look for someone, senor?"
He jumped. "Oh. You still here?"