"They told me I couldn't pilot. But I could help, and my help was needed--everybody's was, because this wasn't a matter of a government project. This was a matter of a race of people who were building a ladder--a big, tall ladder, Nicholas. Sometimes it was a killer. Sometimes a heartbreaker. Sometimes a laughingstock. _But it belonged to men, and they lived and died for it; they built it, and it's theirs to climb, Nicholas!_" Joel watched the other's worn face, and now the hurt was naked in it. "She said, Nicholas, that it was all off if I decided to go up to space. I loved her, Skipper. _And I loved the tall ladder._" Joel whirled. "Sure, and what's it got us, Sam? A bellyful of cold, aching loneliness--our guts twisted and squeezed until the life's dried up in 'em--and what do we get? What do those wrangling, yapping, bellyaching rotters back home give us for it? Pension us off when we can't see our blast-off studs anymore and forget about us. "They take the stuff we bring 'em--just as if it grew on trees, just as if it grew into a neat, pretty package somewhere all by itself! With money they can buy it--with enough money they can buy all of it! Even if we had to get it with the air sucked out of us, with our brains boiled out of us, with our crazy heads busted in. "And you know what, Sam? There was even a time when they said we couldn't do it at all! A hundred years ago, they laughed at us for trying to get to the moon! They laughed, Sam--and those who didn't laugh _didn't even give a damn at all_! "So I was to tell the girl I'd marry her later, but that right now they thought I ought to be a pilot! I was to say to my life: I'll live you later, but right now I've got to be a pilot.... And I was to freeze my insides for twenty years showing 'em they were wrong to laugh, and that it was time they gave a damn, that what I could bring home was going to mean a lot to the world they live on! "And like a fool I did! "And Sam--Sam, they're still yapping like little dogs for a piece of meat--not just a good piece of meat, but all wrapped up nice and fancy, no mistakes allowed, every time they whistle! And the whistling gets so easy, Sam--so easy. You can even do it while you're stabbing your neighbor in the back, while you're selling his kids down the river--even while you're taking your next breath to yap some more! "They can go to hell, Sam! They can go to hell." Joel slumped down in the chair behind the mahogany desk. The surgeon looked at him, looked away. "You've made up your mind, then." "That's right." "I suppose Dobermann and I can get the ship back somehow." "You'll make it." "I guess we will. Unless the rest feel the way you do--and I know half the crew thinks this is quite a place. In which case, of course, I suppose they'll survive, back home, even without the mneurium-4--they have for a long time. But there is one thing." "Yeah, yeah."