not going to the dance?"
"Nope."
Rat clambered up the arm of the pneumochair and swivelled his head
upward till his glittering little eyes met Alan's. "You're not planning
to go over the hill the way Steve did, are you? I can spot the symptoms.
You look restless and fidgety the way your brother did."
After a moment of silence Alan shook his head. "No. I couldn't do that,
Rat. Steve was the wild kind. I'd never be able just to get up and go,
the way he did. But I've got to do _something_. I know what he meant. He
said the walls of the ship were pressing in on him. Holding him back."
With a sudden impatient motion he ripped open the magnesnaps of his
regulation shirt and took it off. He felt himself changing, inside.
Something was happening to him. Maybe, he thought, he was catching
whatever it was Steve had been inflamed by. Maybe he had been lying to
himself all along, about being different in makeup from Steve.
"Go tell the Captain I'm not going to the dance," he ordered Rat.
"Otherwise he'll wonder where I am. Tell him--tell him I'm too tired, or
something. Tell him anything. But don't let him find out how I feel."
_Chapter Four_
The next morning, Roger Bond told him all about the dance.
"It was the dullest thing you could imagine. Same old people, same dusty
old dances. Couple of people asked me where you were, but I didn't tell
them anything."
"Good."
They wandered on through the heap of old, ugly buildings that composed
the Starmen's Enclave. "It's just as well they think I was sick," Alan
said. "I was, anyway. Sick from boredom."
He and Roger sat down carefully on the edge of a crumbling stone bench.
They said nothing, just looking around. After a long while Alan broke
the uncomfortable silence.
"You know what this place is? It's a ghetto. A self-imposed ghetto.
Starmen are scared silly of going out into the Earther cities, so they
keep themselves penned up in this filthy place instead."
"This place is really old. I wonder how far back those run-down
buildings date."
"Thousand years, maybe more. No one ever bothers to build new ones. What
for? The starmen don't mind living in the old ones."
"I almost wish the medical clearance hadn't come through after all,"
said Roger moodily.
"How so?"
"Then we'd be still quarantined up there. We wouldn't be able to come
down and get another look at the kind of place this really is."
"I don't know which is worse--to be cooped up
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