"Shoot me, Oakey. You've got to. We can't take the Quinnies to that planet!"
"I won't."
"It's mutiny. Give me the gun; I'll kill myself."
"There's no such thing as mutiny any more, Al. We're just two men in space. The last earthmen alive. The problem will solve itself."
"Oakey, we're not going to land on the planet alive."
"Be yourself. We've made a good fight. We lost. Let's die with a solid piece of ground under our legs. What if we do infect a planet with a plague. There's a thousand planets just like it in the universe. Every man on them will die, if not today, then in a few years from now. What difference does it make? Why should we try to keep the merry-go-round going?"
"Because ... there's a reason. We don't know what it is, but we've got to live and we've got to die. But we've got to preserve life every second we can."
"Is that why you want me to kill you? To preserve life?"
"One life doesn't matter." Al pointed to the porthole. "It's a whole world of living human beings ... people like us."
"We don't owe them anything."