or
anyone who blocks him, he'll destroy, if he can. Can't you see that?
When he spots this, your life won't be worth spitting at."

Brownie was trembling as he sat down opposite the big man. His voice was
harsh in the little cubicle, heavy with pain and hopelessness. "That's
right," he said. "My life isn't worth a nickle. Neither is yours.
Neither is anybody's, here or back home. Nobody's life is worth a
nickle. Something's happened to us in the past hundred years,
Johnny--something horrible. I've seen it creeping and growing up around
us all my life. People don't matter any more, it's the Government, what
the Government thinks that matters. It's a web, a cancer that grows in
its own pattern, until it goes so far it can't be stopped. Men like
Loomis could see the pattern, and adapt to it, throw away all the
worthwhile things, the love and beauty and peace that we once had in our
lives. Those men can get somewhere, they can turn this life into a
climbing game, waiting their chance to get a little farther toward the
top, a little closer to some semblance of security--"

"Everybody adapts to it," Sabo snapped. "They have to. You don't see me
moving for anyone else, do you? I'm for _me_, and believe me I know it.
I don't give a hang for you, or Loomis, or anyone else alive--just me. I
want to stay alive, that's all. You're a dreamer, Brownie. But until you
pull something like this, you can learn to stop dreaming if you want
to--"

"No, no, you're wrong--oh, you're horribly wrong, Johnny. Some of us
_can't_ adapt, we haven't got what it takes, or else we have something
else in us that won't let us go along. And right there we're beat before
we start. There's no place for us now, and there never will be." He
looked up at the mate's impassive face. "We're in a life where we don't
belong, impounded into a senseless, never-ending series of fights and
skirmishes and long, lonely waits, feeding this insane urge of the
Government to expand, out to the planets, to the stars, farther and
farther, bigger and bigger. We've got to go, seeking newer and greater
worlds to conquer, with nothing to conquer them with, and nothing to
conquer them for. There's life somewhere else in our solar system, so it
must be sought out and conquered, no matter what or where it is. We live
in a world of iron and fear, and there was no place for me, and others
like me, _until this ship came_--"

Sabo looked at him strangely. "So I was right. I read it