They learned this quickly. Gradually the psychic hurts healed over and in their place was a hard defense-mechanism compounded of wisdom, mental toughness, and a contempt for the opinions of the others.
Actually, to Joe, the opinions of the Terrans were of no interest. But as he once remarked to Grey: "It's an impersonal sort of unpleasantness—like walking through a street filled with a bad odor, like walking through a room filled with buzz-saws. It jars the nerves."
Grey presently came to feel in the same manner.
"I'm not quite a Terran any more," he said.
Joe assented. "You are a real cosmopolitan. You have the real interstellar attitude. In time everybody will see it that way."
Time—time. It went so rapidly. It swept them along through the several stages of their training, and now it was their last night out before stepping into the great battlewagon for the final and irrevocable journey across space to the war, which up to now had been a hazy background to their work.
Elby Jones brought Grey another drink. "It's a good night here tonight."
"I'm glad it is," said Grey.
Yes, it had to be a good night, because the last one had to be good. There had to be that much to remember out there a thousand light-years away.