to get rich. It went fine. We started to
build. Then Keller and Stark came back from rejuvenation. Lijinsky had
been rejuvenated five years before."

"Look, I don't need a course in history," Dan exploded.

"Yes, you do," Paul snapped. "You need to sit down and listen for
once, instead of shooting your big mouth off all the time. That's what
you need real bad, Dan." Paul Fowler rubbed his chin. There were red
spots in his cheeks. "Okay, there were some changes made. I didn't
like the engine housing--I never had, so I went along with them a
hundred percent on that. Even though I designed it--I'd learned a few
things since. And there were bugs. It made perfectly good sense,
talking to Lijinsky. Starship Project was pretty important to all of
us. Dangerous to risk a fumble on the first play, even a tiny risk. We
might never get another chance. Lijinsky knew we youngsters were
driving along on adrenalin and nerves, and couldn't wait to get out
there, but when you thought about it, what was the rush? Was it worth
a chance of a fumble to get out there _this_ year instead of _next_?
Couldn't we take time to find a valid test for that engine at
ultra-high acceleration before we put it back in? After all, we _had_
time now--Keller and Stark just back with sixty more years to
live--why the rush?

"Okay. I bought it. We worked out a valid test on paper. Took us four
years of work on it to find out you couldn't build such a device on
Earth, but never mind that. Other things were stalling all the while.
The colony-plan for the ship. Choosing the crew--what criteria, what
qualifications? There was plenty of time--why not make _sure_ it's
right? Don't leave anything crude, if we can refine it a little
first--"

Paul sighed wearily. "It snowballed. Keller and Stark backed Lijinsky
to the hilt. There was some trouble about money--I think you had your
thumb in the pie there, getting it fixed for us, didn't you? More
refining. Work it out. Detail. Get sidetracked on some aspect for a
few years--so what? Lots of time. Rejuvenation, and all that, talk
about the Universalists beating Rinehart out and throwing the Center
open to everybody. Et cetera, et cetera. But somewhere along the line
I began to see that it just wasn't true. The holdups, the changes, the
digressions and snags and refinements were all excuses, all part of a
big, beautiful, exquisitely reasonable facade built up to obscure the
real truth. _Lijinsky and Keller and Star