"No, Nicholas," Sam said. "You're the bug on history around here. Think a minute."
Joel drew a sleeve across his mouth, and pages flipped in his head again. Yes, Sam was right. Back as far as the twentieth century, there had been isolated tribes in South America which had been found free of the diseases that had plagued their more civilized neighbors of the north, and it had taken the medical experts years to find out exactly why. Invariably, the answer had been usage of the most promising materials provided by nature which were closest at hand. A tribe stumbled onto something, used it—experimentally at first, then wastefully, but finally, with a thousand years' practice, pretty efficiently. And it had nothing to do with the fact that they still went around with spears and animal-hide shields....
"All right, I get your point, Sam," Joel said. Sam quit talking, and for a moment there was silence in the limited confines of the fore-waist bridge. Then Joel put the bottle and the flagon down on the desk, turned his back to it and faced them.
"From the way you boys talk this thing up, it all must be just jim-dandy. Maybe better than on that rock back in Aldeberan, or even better than we did in Altair, or Fomalhaut, or Procyon Seven, or any of the rest of 'em...." He paused again, watched their faces. They remembered—all except Southard, who hadn't been with them on any of the old strikes. But his youthful enthusiasm just about made up for the fierce pride that shone in the eyes of the others.
Back home, the White Whale, of all of Earth's great fleet of Explorer-class ships, had hung up the most enviable record. She had brought back rare elements known to men but unobtainable by them within the confines of their own tiny Solar System, or rare life-forms, impossible to study effectively in their native habitats, or precious new data which were beyond the reach of the astronomer's observatory. It meant progress. It meant a living force in the universe, a force of learning and of knowing, which would tolerate no barrier, which would broach neither defeat nor ultimate conclusion. In short, it meant Man.
Nicholas Joel knew it, and he still hated space.
Since that first indoctrination blast out to the moon and back when he'd been a plebe—since that day that he'd realized for the first time how big it was. And how big men ought to be, but weren't. Big muscles, but little minds....
He still wondered just how the hell they'd sucked him in. They'd hit him somewhere inside, in a place he'd forgotten to guard—his instructors, his Commandant, the Secretary of Science himself. They'd sweet-talked him into staying those twelve years. Young man, they had told him, yours is a body and a brain with an adaptability to space exploration the like of which has never been duplicated in our records. You hate to fly, yet you are the best cadet pilot ever to enter the Academy. You dislike technical and scientific study, yet your grades in this field are the highest on record. You despise the regimen of the military necessary to survival in Space, yet, unaccountably, your cadet commands have been the most efficient and best handled of any in our knowledge.
Young man, they had said, here's the works on a silver platter—be a pilot—you owe it to yourself, to the world, to humanity!