"I think you're doing all right," Hurtz said, and he tried to keep the tone of his voice casual, as though he really meant what he said.
The boy glanced at him briefly with insolent eyes. "I know I am," he said.
Hurtz had to clamp his jaw shut tightly to keep from saying anything more.
There was hardly any time involved in this landing, but each second stretched out to an individual eternity. The distant globe came up to meet them steadily, enlarging its circumference, and the roar of the jets was thunderous after the quiet free movement they had made through space.
There was nothing left for Hurtz to do now but wait, and he placed his hands on his knees, raising his curled fingers, dropping them, in a monotonous silent tapping.
It isn't right. None of it. The feel of it—the speed, the sound, the very movement. It isn't going to work, and why not, for God's sake, on this one last run?
As they slipped down through the atmosphere of the planet, Hurtz knew that he had been very foolish and sentimental and very, very stupid for having asked to accompany the boy. The boy's first trip. Hurtz's last. But if Hurtz still believed in the premonitions that he could feel to the marrow of his tired bones, this might be the last trip for both of them.
He watched the boy and he wished he could take control now before it was too late. But this was the boy's own run, his rocket, and there was nothing for Hurtz to do but wait.
Seconds now, and Hurtz thought of all the times he had done just what the boy was trying to do now. Twenty years of it, from globe to globe. Stretching the fingers of exploration, all to make the money and finally tip his damned hat and say, "Thank you. It was nice, and now I'm going to retire and let some other poor slob take my place." But when the time came for him to do and say just that, he had climbed in for one more ride, just so a kid who didn't want any help might have had a better chance to get along in this rotten exploratory service than Hurtz had been given.
The distance between the rocket and the widening surface of the planet was disappearing, and in that last interval, Hurtz thought again of his dream, the dream he had been carrying in his brain for all of these years.