Yes, Murdock told himself, it will go well; every detail has been considered. My voice is his voice, my habits his own. The tapes I have pre-recorded will continue to reach them at specified intervals until their death. They will never know I'm gone.
"Are you ready now, sir?" the tall figure asked gently.
Murdock drew in his breath. "Yes," he said, "I'm ready now."
And they began to walk down the long corridor.
Murdock remembered how proud his parents had been when he was finally accepted for Space Training—the only boy in Thayerville to be chosen. But then, it was only right that he should have been the one. The other boys, those who failed, had not lived the dream as he had lived it. From the moment he'd watched the first moon rocket land he had known, beyond any possible doubt, that he would become a rocketman. He had stood there, in that cold December of 1980, a boy of 12, watching the great rocket fire down from space, watching it thaw and blacken the frozen earth. He had known that he would one day follow it back to the stars, to vast and alien horizons, to worlds past imagining.
He remembered his last night on Earth, twenty long years ago, when he had felt the pressing immensity of the vast and terrible universe surrounding him as he lay in his bed. He remembered the sleepless hours before dawn, when he could feel the tension building within the single room, within himself lying there in the heated stillness of the small, white house. He remembered the rain, near morning, drumming the roof, and the thunder roaring powerfully across the Kansas sky. And then, somehow, the thunder's roar blended into the deep atomic roar of a rocket, carrying him away from Earth, away to the burning stars ... away ...
Away.
The tall figure in the neat patrol uniform closed the outer airlock and watched the body drift into blackness. The ship and the android were one; two complex and perfect machines doing their job. For Robert Murdock, the journey was over, the long miles had come to an end.