What's It Like Out There?

by Hamilton Edmond

I wished I could explain to them somehow why I hadn't told the truth, not the whole truth. I tried, sort of, to ex- plain.

"I didn't want to lie," I said. "But I had to-at least, it seemed like I had to"

I quit it. It was crazy, talking to guys who were dead and forty million miles away. They were dead, and it was over, and that was that. I quit looking up at the red dot in the sky and started on home again.

But I felt as though something was over for me too. It was being young. I didn't feel old. But I didn't feel young either, and I didn't think I ever would, not ever again.