ke the star he likes best. I'll go back the
other way. Russ, you take the left. And you, Johnson, go to the
right."

Johnson started to laugh. Russell was yelling wildly at them, and
above his own yelling he could hear Johnson's rising laughter. "Every
guy's got a star of his own," Johnson said when he stopped laughing.
"And we got ours. A nice red-rimmed sun for each of us to call his
very own."

"Okay," Alvar said. "We cut off the gravity rope, and each to his own
sun."

Now Russell wasn't saying anything.

"And the old man," Alvar said, "can keep right on going toward what he
thought was right. And he'll keep on going. Course he won't be able to
give himself another boost with the life-gun, but he'll keep going.
Someday he'll get to that red-rimmed star of his. Out here in space,
once you're going, you never stop ... and I guess there isn't any
other body to pull him off his course. And what will time matter to
old Dunbar? Even less than to us, I guess. He's dead and he won't
care."

"Ready," Johnson said. "I'll cut off the gravity rope."

"I'm ready," Alvar said. "To go back toward whatever it was I started
from."

"Ready, Russ?"

Russell couldn't say anything. He stared at the endless void which now
he would share with no one. Not even crazy old Dunbar.

"All right," Johnson said. "Good-bye."

Russell felt the release, felt the sudden inexplicable isolation and
aloneness even before Alvar and Johnson used their life-guns and shot
out of sight, Johnson toward the left and Alvar back toward that other
red-rimmed sun behind them.

And old Dunbar shooting right on ahead. And all three of them
dwindling and dwindling and blinking out like little lights.

Fading, he could hear their voices. "Each to his own star," Johnson
said. "On a bee line."

"On a bee line," Alvar said.

Russell used his own life-gun and in a little while he didn't hear
Alvar or Johnson's voices, nor could he see them. They were thousands
of miles away, and going further all the time.

Russell's head fell forward against the front of his helmet, and he
closed his eyes. "Maybe," he thought, "I shouldn't have killed the old
man. Maybe one sun's as good as another...."

Then he raised his body and looked out into the year of blackness that
waited for him, stretching away to the red-rimmed sun. Even if he were
right--he was sure now he'd never make it alone.

* * * * *

The body inside the pressure