"I'm good in mine, too," he said. He chewed at his bottom lip for a moment.
"I could give the same reasons as you," he said finally. "Truthfully, though, there's more to it." He looked at Crag defiantly.
"I was a misfit on earth, Commander. A square peg in a round hole. I had dreams ... dreams, but they were not the dreams of earth. They were dreams of places in which there were no people." He gave an odd half-smile. "Of course I didn't tell the psych doctors that."
"There's plenty I didn't tell 'em, myself," Crag said.
"Commander, you might not understand this but ... I like the moon." He looked away, staring into the bleakness of Arzachel. Crag's eyes followed his. The plain beyond was an ash-filled bowl broken by weird ledges, spires, grotesque rocks. In the distance Backbone Ridge crawled along the floor of the basin, forming its fantastic labyrinths. Yet ... yet there was something fascinating, almost beautiful about the crater. It was the kind of a place a man might cross the gulfs of space to see. Nagel had crossed those gulfs. Yes, he could understand.
"I'll never return to earth," he said, almost dreamily.
"Nonsense."
"Not nonsense, Commander. But I'm not unhappy at the prospect. Do you remember the lines:
Under the wide and starry sky
Oh, dig the grave and let me lie ...
Well, that's the way I feel about the moon."