"You don't put off things like this, boy. Why, my three sons were lined up here at five in the morning on their sixteenth birthdays. Every mother's son of 'em. They'd talked of nothing else since they were twelve. Used to play Drivers maybe six, seven hours every day...." His voice trailed.
"Most kids are like that," said Tom.
"Weren't you?" The hostility in Harry Hayden seemed to be churning like boiling water.
"Oh, sure," lied Tom.
"I don't get it. You say you wanted to Drive, but you didn't try to enlist."
Tom squirmed.
You can't tell him you've been scared of jetmobiles ever since you saw that crash when you were three. You can't say that, at seven, you saw your grandfather die in a jetmobile and that after that you wouldn't even play with a jetmobile toy. You can't tell him those things because five years of psychiatric treatment didn't get the fear out of you. If the medics didn't understand, how could Harry Hayden?
Tom licked his lips. And you can't tell him how you used to lie in bed praying you'd die before you were sixteen—or how you've pleaded with Mom and Dad not to make you enlist till you were twenty. You can't—
Inspiration struck him. He clenched his fists. "It—it was my mother, sir. You know how mothers are sometimes. Hate to see their kids grow up. Hate to see them put on a uniform and risk being killed."
Harry Hayden digested the explanation for a few seconds. It seemed to pacify him. "By golly, that's right. Esther took it hard when Mark died in a five-car bang-up out of San Francisco. And when Larry got his three summers ago in Europe. Esther's my wife—Mark was my youngest, Larry the oldest."