"What about you?" he asked James. "Were you sucked in by Boggs' arguments?"
The engineer nodded. "He took all of us. And all along he never intended that more than a couple would get out alive—by double crossing the others."
"Why?" said Jorden.
"Why? I've thought a lot about that, living here in this mudhole. You get to thinking about things like that when you realize there's no going back, that Boggs would kill me on sight for what I could tell—and that the other colonists would also, because of what I've done. Adamson says I can trust him. He says I can trust you. But I don't trust anybody. I know that someday soon I'm going to get a bullet in the head from one of you. All I'm hoping is that some of you hate Boggs enough to get him first."
"Why did you come to Serrengia in the first place?"
"To get away. Why did anyone come? You don't give up everything you've got in order to go to some strange world and spend the rest of your life unless you've got a reason. Unless you hate what you've got so much you're willing to try anything else. Unless you're so terribly afraid of what could happen to you back there that you're willing to face any kind of dangers out here. We all had our reasons. I'm not asking yours. It makes no difference to you what mine were. But they're all alike. We came because we were so afraid or full of hate we couldn't stay."
"How did you expect to build a new world out of hate and fear of the old one?"
"Who worried about what we'd build here? All we wanted to do was get away. You can't tell me you came for any other reason!"
Jorden made no answer. He continued to stare in wonder at the atomic engineer. To what extent were James' words actually true? How completely was the colony riddled with unpredictable, purposeless characters like him?