on your face
when we were searching the ship. I knew what you were thinking...." His
face darkened angrily. "You couldn't get away with it, Brownie. Where
could you go, what could you expect to find? You're talking death,
Brownie. Nothing else--"

"No, no. Listen, Johnny." Brownie leaned closer, his eyes bright and
intent on the man's heavy face. "The captain has to take our word for
it, until he sees the ship. Even then he couldn't tell for sure--I'm
the only drive engineer on the Station. We have the charts, we could
work with them, try to find out where the ship came from; I already have
an idea of how the drive is operated. Another look and I could make it
work. Think of it, Johnny! What difference does it make where we went,
or what we found? You're a misfit, too, you know that--this coarseness
and bitterness is a shell, if you could only see it, a sham. You don't
really believe in this world we're in--who cares where, if only we could
go, get away? Oh, it's a chance, the wildest, freak chance, but we could
take it--"

"If only to get away from _him_," said Sabo in a muted voice. "Lord, how
I hate him. I've seen smallness and ambition before--pettiness and
treachery, plenty of it. But that man is our whole world knotted up in
one little ball. I don't think I'd get home without killing him, just to
stop that voice from talking, just to see fear cross his face one time.
But if we took the ship, it would break him for good." A new light
appeared in the big man's eyes. "He'd be through, Brownie. Washed up."

"And we'd be _free_--"

Sabo's eyes were sharp. "What about the acceleration? It killed those
that came in the ship."

"But they were so frail, so weak. Light brittle bones and soft jelly.
Our bodies are stronger, we could stand it."

Sabo sat for a long time, staring at Brownie. His mind was suddenly
confused by the scope of the idea, racing in myriad twirling fantasies,
parading before his eyes the long, bitter, frustrating years, the
hopelessness of his own life, the dull aching feeling he felt deep in
his stomach and bones each time he set back down on Earth, to join the
teeming throngs of hungry people. He thought of the rows of drab
apartments, the thin faces, the hollow, hunted eyes of the people he had
seen. He knew that that was why he was a soldier--because soldiers ate
well, they had time to sleep, they were never allowed long hours to
think, and wonder, and grow dull and empty. But he knew his l