"I'm not so sure you'd like it, Ray. Not after a while. All your friends are back on Earth. Everybody you know is back there. It's just the novelty of something new and something different here. I've felt that way a lot of times in different cultures and different societies. You'd change your mind after a while."
"Those aren't reasons, Ted. Why should I go back to a world where most of the people are unhappy at some time and a few people all the time? As far as I'm concerned, Tunpesh is my home now, and I don't intend to leave it."
Eckert was fascinated. It was like a case history unfolding right before his eyes.
"Are you sure you would enjoy it here for the rest of your life? Have you made any friends to take the place of those back home?"
"It takes time to become acquainted, even more time to make friends," Templin said defensively.
"You can't desert the Service," Eckert pointed out. "You still have your duty."
Templin laughed in his pillow. "It won't work, Ted. Duty's just a catch word, a jingo phrase. They can get along without me and you know it."
"What about Pendleton, Ray? He died here, you know, in mysterious circumstances."
"Would going back help him any? He wasn't murdered; we know that. And why do people commit suicide? For what one of several thousand possible reasons did Pendleton? We don't know. We'll never know. And if we did know, what good would it do?"
He had changed a lot in six months, Eckert saw.