"Grant?"
"Grant will be at loose ends, too. Remember, he has been seeking thrill after thrill, and cutting closer to the line each time. This defusing is the ultimate in nerve thrills to him, pitting himself against a corps of mechanical experts. Going back to rocket-racing and perihelion runs will be too tame. He's through, too."
"You all could get a new interest in life. You shouldn't quit," said Jenna softly.
"That's the worst of it," said Tom Lacy looking down at her. "I quit a long time ago. It's the starting-up that I fear."
"I don't follow."
"I think of Irene—and Little Fellow—and I know that when that area went up, my life ended. I've never had Harris' psychopathic hatred of the things. I've just felt that I'd like death, but want to go out doing my part. I have a life-long training against suicide per se, but I euphemize it by taunting death with the decontamination squadron."
"Yes?" said Jenna. She knew more was to come.
"Alone I'm all right. Then I see you and Ralph. I feel a resentment—not against you, or Ralph, but against Fate or Kismet or whatever Gods there be that they should deny me and give to you freely. It's not right that I feel this way. Life is like that." He quoted bitterly: "'Them as has, gits!'"
"Tom, I swear that if it were mine to do, I'd give you all the things you lost—return them."
He nodded. "Giving me wouldn't do," he said in self-reflection. "I'd want return—and that is impossible."