Sam Meecham felt a wave of helplessness surge over him. He felt lost and bewildered. Perhaps she was right; maybe it _was_ foolish. Here he was: Sam Meecham, thirty-five, whose mediocre living was made attaching two wires to two terminals day after day, week after week--a man who suddenly saw a pointer go unexpectedly beyond the fifty mark, and who immediately began having delusions of grandeur. He was a dreamer--but dreams and reality were two different things, and sometimes he confused them. He shook his head, feeling like a fool. "Well?" Dorothy's face was before him, determined, demanding. Sam said, "All right, I'll take it back." She smiled condescendingly, like a mother does when a child admits a wrongdoing. Conditioned responses, Sam thought bitterly; that was the whole trouble. This cravenness, this kowtowing before any idiot with a louder voice, certainly wasn't in his genes. The trouble was in his conditioning, started when he was an adolescent. Give somebody an inch and they'll take two. Pretty soon they're walking all over you, and you've become so used to it you don't complain. He thought of his job, of the eternal fitting of two wires in place. He was a cog and nothing more--a cog that could be replaced as swiftly, as efficiently as any part of an assembly-line atomic engine could be replaced. He looked up into the blank, smiling, self-satisfied face of his wife. He thought of the stars beckoning overhead. The _stars_! "No," he said suddenly, decisively. The word fell like a sledgehammer blow in the stillness of the room. Dorothy's vacuous smile faded, uncomprehending. "What?" "No," Sam said, trying to keep his voice even. "I've changed my mind. I'm keeping the engine whether you like it or not." Dorothy's mouth hung open in surprise, and before she could recover enough to launch a fresh tirade Sam Meecham had walked out, slamming the door behind him. He paused in the cool evening and gazed upward. The government had gone only to the Moon. Sam Meecham was going to the stars! The next day he was given the silent treatment. It had begun the night before when he returned from his walk. Dorothy was in bed, awake and sniffling over the cruelty inflicted upon her by an unthoughtful husband, and when he came in she turned her back and wouldn't speak. Sam didn't mind that; in fact, it was a welcome relief. But all night long she sniffled into her pillow, trying to win him over. Sam felt an odd mixture of sympathy and anger. "Oh, shut up," he said finally, and stuck his head under the pillow. In the morning the treatment continued, but it was not totally silent--for Dorothy's air of hostility was now accompanied by low, sometimes indistinct mumblings. Suddenly Sam said, "This coffee's cold." "If you don't like it," Dorothy said, and thrust her face near his, "make some yourself."