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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40968 ***
+
+He had but one ambition, one desire: to pilot the first manned rocket to
+the moon. And he was prepared as no man had ever prepared himself
+before....
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+  DESIRE NO MORE
+
+  by Algis Budrys
+
+  (_illustrated by Milton Luros_)
+
+
+  "_Desire no more than to thy lot may fall...._"
+                                                   --Chaucer
+
+
+The small young man looked at his father, and shook his head.
+
+"But you've _got_ to learn a trade," his father said, exasperated. "I
+can't afford to send you to college; you know that."
+
+"I've got a trade," he answered.
+
+His father smiled thinly. "What?" he asked patronizingly.
+
+"I'm a rocket pilot," the boy said, his thin jaw stretching the skin of
+his cheeks.
+
+His father laughed in the way the boy had learned to anticipate and
+hate. "Yeah," he said. He leaned back in his chair and laughed so hard
+that the Sunday paper slipped off his wide lap and fell to the floor
+with an unnoticed stiff rustle.
+
+"A _rocket_ pilot!" His father's derision hooted through the quiet
+parlor. "A ro--_oh, no!_--a rocket _pilot_!"
+
+The boy stared silently at the convulsed figure in the chair. His lips
+fell into a set white bar, and the corners of his jaws bulged with the
+tension in their muscles. Suddenly, he turned on his heel and stalked
+out of the parlor, through the hall, out the front door, to the porch.
+He stopped there, hesitating a little.
+
+"_Marty!_" His father's shout followed him out of the parlor. It seemed
+to act like a hand between the shoulder-blades, because the boy almost
+ran as he got down the porch stairs.
+
+"What is it, Howard?" Marty's mother asked in a worried voice as she
+came in from the kitchen, her damp hands rubbing themselves dry against
+the sides of her housedress.
+
+"Crazy kid," Howard Isherwood muttered. He stared at the figure of his
+son as the boy reached the end of the walk and turned off into the
+street. "_Come back here!_" he shouted. "A _rocket_ pilot," he cursed
+under his breath. "What's the kid been reading? Claiming he's a rocket
+pilot!"
+
+Margaret Isherwood's brow furrowed into a faint, bewildered frown.
+"But--isn't he a little young? I know they're teaching some very odd
+things in high schools these days, but it seems to me...."
+
+"Oh, for Pete's sake, Marge, there aren't even any rockets yet! _Come
+back here, you idiot!_" Howard Isherwood was standing on his porch, his
+clenched fists trembling at the ends of his stiffly-held arms.
+
+"Are you sure, Howard?" his wife asked faintly.
+
+"Yes, I'm _sure_!"
+
+"But, where's he going?"
+
+"_Stop that! Get off that bus! YOU hear me?_ Marty?"
+
+"_Howard!_ Stop acting like a child and _talk_ to me! Where is that boy
+going?"
+
+Howard Isherwood, stocky, red-faced, forty-seven, and defeated, turned
+away from the retreating bus and looked at his wife. "I don't know," he
+told her bitterly, between rushes of air into his jerkily heaving lungs.
+"Maybe, the moon," he told her sarcastically.
+
+
+Martin Isherwood, rocket pilot, weight 102, height 4', 11", had come of
+age at seventeen.
+
+
+The small man looked at his faculty advisor. "No," he said. "I am not
+interested in working for a degree."
+
+"But--" The faculty advisor unconsciously tapped the point of a yellow
+pencil against the fresh green of his desk blotter, leaving a rough arc
+of black flecks. "Look, Ish, you've got to either deliver or get off the
+basket. This program is just like the others you've followed for nine
+semesters; nothing but math and engineering. You've taken just about
+every undergrad course there is in those fields. How long are you going
+to keep this up?"
+
+"I'm signed up for Astronomy 101," Isherwood pointed out.
+
+The faculty advisor snorted. "A snap course. A breather, after you've
+studied the same stuff in Celestial Navigation. What's the matter, Ish?
+Scared of liberal arts?"
+
+Isherwood shook his head. "Uh-unh. Not interested. No time. And that
+Astronomy course isn't a breather. Different slant from Cee Nav--they
+won't be talking about stars as check points, but as things in
+themselves." Something seemed to flicker across his face as he said it.
+
+The advisor missed it; he was too engrossed in his argument. "Still a
+snap. What's the difference, how you look at a star?"
+
+Isherwood almost winced. "Call it a hobby," he said. He looked down at
+his watch. "Come on, Dave. You're not going to convince me. You haven't
+convinced me any of the other times, either, so you might as well give
+up, don't you think? I've got a half hour before I go on the job. Let's
+go get some beer."
+
+The advisor, not much older than Isherwood, shrugged, defeated. "Crazy,"
+he muttered. But it was a hot day, and he was as thirsty as the next
+man.
+
+The bar was air conditioned. The advisor shivered, half grinned, and
+softly quoted:
+
+  "Though I go bare, take ye no care,
+  I am nothing a-cold;
+  I stuff my skin so full within
+  Of jolly good ale and old."
+
+"Huh?" Ish was wearing the look with which he always reacted to the
+unfamiliar.
+
+The advisor lifted two fingers to the bartender and shrugged. "It's a
+poem; about four hundred years old, as a matter of fact."
+
+"Oh."
+
+"Don't you give a damn?" the advisor asked, with some peevishness.
+
+Ish laughed shortly, without embarrassment. "Sorry, Dave, but no. It's
+not my racket."
+
+The advisor cramped his hand a little too tightly around his glass.
+"Strictly a specialist, huh?"
+
+Ish nodded. "Call it that."
+
+"But _what_, for Pete's sake? What _is_ this crazy specialty that blinds
+you to all the fine things that man has done?"
+
+Ish took a swallow of his beer. "Well, now, if I was a poet, I'd say it
+was the finest thing that man has ever done."
+
+The advisor's lips twisted in derision. "That's pretty fanatical, isn't
+it?"
+
+"Uh-huh." Ish waved to the bartender for refills.
+
+
+The _Navion_ took a boiling thermal under its right wing and bucked
+upward suddenly, tilting at the same time, so that the pretty brunette
+girl in the other half of the side-by-side was thrown against him. Ish
+laughed, a sound that came out of his throat as turbulently as that
+sudden gust of heated air had shot up out of the Everglades, and
+corrected with a tilt of the wheel.
+
+"Relax, Nan," he said, his words colored by the lingering laughter.
+"It's only air; nasty old air."
+
+The girl patted her short hair back into place. "I wish you wouldn't fly
+this low," she said, half-frightened.
+
+"_Low?_ Call _this_ low?" Ish teased. "Here. Let's drop it a little, and
+you'll _really_ get an idea of how fast we're going." He nudged the
+wheel forward, and the _Navion_ dipped its nose in a shallow dive,
+flattening out thirty feet above the mangrove. The swamp howled with the
+chug of the dancing pistons and the claw of the propeller at the
+protesting air, and, from the cockpit, the Everglades resolved into a
+dirty-green blur that rocketed backward into the slipstream.
+
+"Marty!"
+
+Ish chuckled again. He couldn't have held the ship down much longer,
+anyway. He tugged back on the wheel suddenly, targeting a cumulous bank
+with his spinner. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and his jaw set.
+The _Navion_ went up at the clouds, her engine turning over as fast as
+it could, her wings cushioned on the rising thrust of another thermal.
+
+And, suddenly, it was as if there were no girl beside him, to be teased,
+and no air to rock the wings--there were no wings. His face lost all
+expression. Faint beads of sweat broke out above his eyes and under his
+nose. "Up," he grunted through his clenched teeth. His fists locked on
+the wheel. "Up!"
+
+The _Navion_ broke through the cloud, kept going. "Up." If he listened
+closely, in just the right way, he could almost hear ...
+
+"Marty!"
+
+... the rumble of a louder, prouder engine than the Earth had ever known.
+He sighed, the breath whispering through his parting teeth, and the
+aircraft leveled off as he pushed at the wheel with suddenly lax hands.
+Still half-lost, he turned and looked at the white-faced girl. "Scare
+you--?" he asked gently.
+
+She nodded. Her fingertips were trembling on his forearm.
+
+"Me too," he said. "Lost my head. Sorry."
+
+
+"Look," he told the girl, "You got any idea of what it costs to maintain
+a racing-plane? Everything I own is tied up in the Foo, my ground crew,
+my trailer, and that scrummy old Ryan that should have been salvaged ten
+years ago. I _can't_ get married. Suppose I crack the Foo next week?
+You're dead broke, a widow, and with a funeral to pay for. The only
+smart thing to do is wait a while."
+
+Nan's eyes clouded, and her lips trembled. "That's what I've been trying
+to say. _Why_ do you have to win the Vandenberg Cup next week? Why can't
+you sell the Foo and go into some kind of business? You're a trained
+pilot."
+
+He had been standing in front of her with his body unconsciously tense
+from the strain of trying to make her understand. Now he
+relaxed--more--he slumped--and something began to die in his face, and
+the first faint lines crept in to show that after it had died, it would
+not return to life, but would fossilize, leaving his features in the
+almost unreadable mask that the newspapers would come to know.
+
+"I'm a good bit more than a trained pilot," he said quietly. "The Foo Is
+a means to an end. After I win the Vandenberg Cup, I can walk into any
+plant in the States--Douglas, North American, Boeing--_any_ of them--and
+pick up the Chief Test Pilot's job for the asking. A few of them have as
+good as said so. After that--" His voice had regained some of its former
+animation from this new source. Now he broke off, and shrugged. "I've
+told you all this before."
+
+The girl reached up, as if the physical touch could bring him back to
+her, and put her fingers around his wrist. "Darling!" she said. "If it's
+that _rocket_ pilot business again...."
+
+Somehow, his wrist was out of her encircling fingers. "It's always 'that
+_rocket_ pilot business,'" he said, mimicking her voice. "Damn it, I'm
+the only trained rocket pilot in the world! I weigh a hundred and
+fifteen pounds, I'm five feet tall, and I know more navigation and math
+than anybody the Air Force or Navy have! I can use words like
+brennschluss and mass-ratio without running over to a copy of
+_Colliers_, and I--" He stopped himself, half-smiled, and shrugged
+again.
+
+"I guess I was kidding myself. After the Cup, there'll be the test job,
+and after that, there'll be the rockets. You would have had to wait a
+long time."
+
+All she could think of to say was, "But, Darling, there _aren't_ any
+man-carrying rockets."
+
+"That's not my fault," he said, and walked away from her.
+
+
+A week later, he took his stripped-down F-110 across the last line with
+a scream like that of a hawk that brings its prey safely to its nest.
+
+
+He brought the Mark VII out of her orbit after two days of running rings
+around the spinning Earth, and the world loved him. He climbed out of
+the crackling, pinging ship, bearded and dirty, with oil on his face and
+in his hair, with food stains all over his whipcord, red-eyed, and
+huskily quiet as he said his few words into the network microphones. And
+he was not satisfied. There was no peace in his eyes, and his hands
+moved even more sharply in their expressive gestures as he gave an
+impromptu report to the technicians who were walking back to the
+personnel bunker with him.
+
+Nan could see that. Four years ago, he had been different. Four years
+ago, if she had only known the right words, he wouldn't be so intent now
+on throwing himself away to the sky.
+
+She was a woman scorned. She had to lie to herself. She broke out of the
+press section and ran over to him. "Marty!" She brushed past a
+technician.
+
+He looked at her with faint surprise on his face. "Well, Nan!" he
+mumbled. But he did not put his hand over her own where it touched his
+shoulder.
+
+"I'm sorry, Marty," she said in a rush. "I didn't understand. I couldn't
+see how much it all meant." Her face was flushed, and she spoke as
+rapidly as she could, not noticing that Ish had already gestured away
+the guards she was afraid would interrupt her.
+
+"But it's all right, now. You got your rockets. You've done it. You
+trained yourself for it, and now it's over. You've flown your rocket!"
+
+He looked up at her face and shook his head in quiet pity. One of the
+shocked technicians was trying to pull her away, and Ish made no move to
+stop him.
+
+Suddenly, he was tired, there was something in him that was trying to
+break out against his will, and his reaction was that of a child whose
+candy is being taken away from him after only one bite.
+
+"Rocket!" he shouted into her terrified face. "_Rocket!_ Call that pile
+of tin a rocket?" He pointed at the weary Mark VII with a trembling arm.
+"Who cares about the bloody _machines_! If I thought roller-skating
+would get me there, I would have gone to work in a _rink_ when I was
+seventeen! It's _getting there_ that counts! Who gives a good goddam
+_how_ it's done, or what with!"
+
+And he stood there, shaking like a leaf, outraged, while the guards came
+and got her.
+
+
+"Sit down, Ish," the Flight Surgeon said.
+
+_They always begin that way_, Isherwood thought. The standard medical
+opening. Sit down. What for? Did somebody really believe that anything
+he might hear would make him faint? He smiled with as much expression as
+he ever did, and chose a comfortable chair, rolling the white cylinder
+of a cigarette between his fingers. He glanced at his watch. Fourteen
+hours, thirty-six minutes, and four days to go.
+
+"How's it?" the FS asked.
+
+Ish grinned and shrugged. "All right." But he didn't usually grin. The
+realization disquieted him a little.
+
+"Think you'll make it?"
+
+Deliberately, rather than automatically, he fell back into his usual
+response-pattern. "Don't know. That's what I'm being paid to find out."
+
+"Uh-_huh_." The FS tapped the eraser of his pencil against his teeth.
+"Look--you want to talk to a man for a while?"
+
+"What man?" It didn't really matter. He had a feeling that anything he
+said or did now would have a bearing, somehow, on the trip. If they
+wanted him to do something for them, he was bloody well going to do it.
+
+"Fellow named MacKenzie. Big gun in the head-thumping racket." The
+Flight Surgeon was trying to be as casual as he could. "Air Force
+insisted on it, as a matter of fact," he said. "Can't really blame them.
+After all, it's _their_ beast."
+
+"Don't want any hole-heads denting it up on them, huh?" Ish lit the
+cigarette and flipped his lighter shut with a snap of the lid. "Sure.
+Bring him on."
+
+The FS smiled. "Good. He's--uh--he's in the next room. Okay to ask him
+in right now?"
+
+"Sure." Something flickered in Isherwood's eyes. Amusement at the Flight
+Surgeon's discomfort was part of it. Worry was some of the rest.
+
+
+MacKenzie didn't seem to be taking any notes, or paying any special
+attention to the answers Ish was giving to his casual questions. But the
+questions fell into a pattern that was far from casual, and Ish could
+see the small button-mike of a portable tape-recorder nestling under the
+man's lapel.
+
+"Been working your own way for the last seventeen years, haven't you?"
+MacKenzie seemed to mumble in a perfectly clear voice.
+
+Ish nodded.
+
+"How's that?"
+
+The corners of Isherwood's mouth twitched, and he said "Yes" for the
+recorder's benefit.
+
+"Odd jobs, first of all?"
+
+"Something like that. Anything I could get, the first few months. After
+I was halfway set up, I stuck to garages and repair shops."
+
+"Out at the airports around Miami, mostly, wasn't it?"
+
+"Ahuh."
+
+"Took some of your pay in flying lessons."
+
+"Right."
+
+MacKenzie's face passed no judgements--he simply hunched in his chair,
+seemingly dwarfed by the shoulders of his perfectly tailored suit, his
+stubby fingers twiddling a Phi Beta Kappa key. He was a spare man--only
+a step or two away from emaciation. Occasionally, he pushed a tired
+strand of washed-out hair away from his forehead.
+
+Ish answered him truthfully, without more than ordinary reservations.
+This was the man who could ground him He was dangerous--red-letter
+dangerous--because of it.
+
+"No family."
+
+Ish shrugged. "Not that I know of. Cut out at seventeen. My father was
+making good money. He had a pension plan, insurance policies. No need to
+worry about them."
+
+Ish knew the normal reaction a statement like that should have brought.
+MacKenzie's face did not go into a blank of repression--but it still
+passed no judgements.
+
+"How's things between you and the opposite sex?"
+
+"About normal."
+
+"No wife--no steady girl."
+
+"Not a very good idea, in my racket."
+
+MacKenzie grunted. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright in his chair, and swung
+toward Ish. His lean arm shot out, and his index finger was aimed
+between Isherwood's eyes. "You can't go!"
+
+Ish was on his feet, his fists clenched, the blood throbbing in his
+temple veins. "What!" he roared.
+
+MacKenzie seemed to collapse in his chair. The brief commanding burst
+was over, and his face was apologetic, "Sorry," he said. He seemed
+genuinely abashed. "Shotgun therapy. Works best, sometimes. You can go,
+all right; I just wanted to get a fast check on your reactions and
+drives."
+
+Ish could feel the anger that still ran through him--anger, and more
+fear than he wanted to admit. "I'm due at a briefing," he said tautly.
+"You through with me?"
+
+MacKenzie nodded, still embarrassed. "Sorry."
+
+Ish ignored the man's obvious feelings. He stopped at the door to send a
+parting stroke at the thing that had frightened him. "Big gun in the
+psychiatry racket, huh? Well, your professional lingo's slipping, Doc.
+They did put _some_ learning in my head at college, you know. Therapy,
+hell! Testing maybe, but you sure didn't do anything to help me!"
+
+"I don't know," MacKenzie said softly. "I wish I did."
+
+Ish slammed the door behind him. He stood in the corridor, jamming a
+fresh cigarette in his mouth. He threw a glance at his watch. Twelve
+hours, twenty-two minutes, and four days to go.
+
+Damn! He was late for the briefing. Odd--that fool psychiatrist hadn't
+seemed to take up that much of his time.
+
+He shrugged. What difference did it make? As he strode down the hall, he
+lost his momentary puzzlement under the flood of realization that
+nothing could stop him now, that the last hurdle was beaten. He was
+going. He was going, and if there were faint echoes of "Marty!" ringing
+in the dark background of his mind, they only served to push him faster,
+as they always had. Nothing but death could stop him now.
+
+
+Ish looked up bitterly at the Receptionist. "No," he said.
+
+"But _everybody_ fills out an application," she protested.
+
+"No. I've _got_ a job," he said as he had been saying for the last half
+hour.
+
+The Receptionist sighed. "If you'll _only_ read the literature I've
+given you, you'll understand that all your previous commitments have
+been cancelled."
+
+"Look, Honey, I've seen company poop sheets before. Now, let's cut this
+nonsense. I've got to get back."
+
+"But _nobody_ goes back."
+
+"Goddam it, I don't know what kind of place this is, but--" He stopped
+at the Receptionist's wince, and looked around, his mouth open. The
+reception desk was solid enough. There were IN and OUT and HOLD baskets
+on the desk, and the Receptionist seemed to see nothing extraordinary
+about it. But the room--a big room, he realized--seemed to fade out at
+the edges, rather than stop at walls. The lighting, too....
+
+"Let's see your back!" he rapped out, his voice high.
+
+She sighed in exasperation. "If you'd read the _literature_ ..." She
+swiveled her chair slowly.
+
+"No wings," he said.
+
+"Of course not!" she snapped. She brushed her hair away from her
+forehead without his telling her to. "No horns, either."
+
+"Streamlined, huh?" he said bitterly.
+
+"It's a little different for everybody," she said with unexpected
+gentleness. "It would have to be, wouldn't it?"
+
+"Yeah, I guess so," he admitted slowly. Then he lost his momentary awe,
+and his posture grew tense again. He glanced down at his wrist. Six
+hours, forty-seven minutes, and no days to go.
+
+"Who do I see?"
+
+She stared at him, bewildered at the sudden change in his voice. "See?"
+
+"About getting out of here! Come on, come on," he barked, snapping his
+fingers impatiently. "I haven't got much time."
+
+She smiled sweetly. "Oh, but you do."
+
+"Can it! Who's your Section boss? Get him down here. On the double. Come
+on!" His face was streaming with perspiration but his voice was firm
+with the purpose that drove him.
+
+Her lips closed into an angry line, and she jabbed a finger at a desk
+button. "I'll call the Personnel Manager."
+
+"Thanks," he said sarcastically, and waited impatiently. Odd, the way
+the Receptionist looked a little like Nan.
+
+
+The Personnel Manager wore a perfectly-tailored suit. He strode across
+the lobby floor toward Ish, his hand outstretched.
+
+"Martin Isherwood!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I'm _very_ glad to
+meet you!"
+
+"I'll bet," Ish said dryly, giving the Personnel Manager's hand a short
+shake. "I've got other ideas. I want out."
+
+"That's all he's been saying for the past forty-five minutes, Sir," the
+Receptionist said from behind her desk.
+
+The Personnel Manager frowned. "Um. Yes. Well, that's not unprecedented."
+
+"But hardly usual," he added.
+
+Ish found himself liking the man. He had a job to do, and after the
+preliminary formality of the greeting had been passed, he was ready to
+buckle down to it. Oh, he--shucks?--the Receptionist wasn't such a bad
+girl, either. He smiled at her. "Sorry I lost my head," he said.
+
+She smiled back. "It happens."
+
+He took time to give her one more smile and a half-wink, and swung back
+to the Personnel Manager.
+
+"Now. Let's get this thing straightened out. I've got--" He stopped to
+look at his watch. "Six hours and a few minutes. They're fueling the
+beast right now."
+
+"Do you know how much red tape you'd have to cut?"
+
+Ish shook his head. "I don't want to sound nasty, but that's your
+problem."
+
+The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Look--you feel you've got a job
+unfinished. Or, anyway, that's the way you'd put it. But, let's face
+it--that's not really what's galling you. It's not really the job, is
+it? It's just that you think you've been cheated out of what you devoted
+your life to."
+
+Ish could feel his jaw muscles bunching. "Don't put words in my mouth!"
+he snapped. "Just get me back, and we'll split hairs about it when I get
+around this way again." Suddenly, he found himself pleading. "All I need
+is a week," he said. "It'll be a rough week--no picnic, no pleasures of
+the flesh. No smoking, no liquor. I certainly won't be breaking any
+laws. One week. Get there, putter around for two days, and back again.
+Then, you can do anything you want to--as long as it doesn't look like
+the trip's responsible, of course."
+
+The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Suppose--" he began, but Ish
+interrupted him.
+
+"Look, they need it, down there. They've got to have a target, someplace
+to go. We're built for it. People have to have--but what am I telling
+_you_ for. If you don't know, who does?"
+
+The Personnel Manager smiled. "I was about to say something."
+
+Ish stopped, abashed. "Sorry."
+
+He waved the apology away with a short movement of his hand. "You've got
+to understand that what you've been saying isn't a valid claim. If it
+were, human history would be very different, wouldn't it?"
+
+"Suppose I showed you something, first? Then, you could decide whether
+you want to stay, after all."
+
+"How long's it going to take?" Ish flushed under the memory of having
+actually begged for something.
+
+"Not long," the Personnel Manager said. He half-turned and pointed up at
+the Earth, hanging just beyond the wall of the crater in which they were
+suddenly standing.
+
+"Earth," the Personnel Manager said.
+
+Somehow, Ish was not astonished. He looked up at the Earth, touched by
+cloud and sunlight, marked with ocean and continent, crowned with ice.
+The unblinking stars filled the night.
+
+He looked around him. The Moon was silent--quiet, patient, waiting.
+Somewhere, a metal glint against the planet above, if it were only large
+enough to be seen, was the Station, and the ship for which the Moon had
+waited.
+
+Ish walked a short distance. He was leaving no tracks in the pumice the
+ages had sown. But it was the way he had thought of it, nevertheless. It
+was the way the image had slowly built up in his mind, through the
+years, through the training, through the work. It was what he had aimed
+the _Navion_ at, that day over the Everglades.
+
+"It's not the same," he said.
+
+The Personnel Manager sighed.
+
+"Don't you see," Ish said, "It _can't_ be the same. I didn't push the
+beast up here. There wasn't any _feel_ to it. There wasn't any sound of
+rockets."
+
+The Personnel Manager sighed again. "There wouldn't be, you know. Taking
+off from the Station, landing here--vacuum."
+
+Ish shook his head. "There'd still be a sound. Maybe not for anybody
+else to hear--and, maybe, maybe there _would_ be. There'd be people,
+back on Earth, who'd hear it."
+
+"All right," the Personnel Manager said. His face was grave, but his
+eyes were shining a little.
+
+
+"Ish! Hey, Ish, wake up, will you!" There was a hand on his shoulder.
+"Will you get a _load_ of this guy!" the voice said to someone else. "An
+hour to go, and he's sleeping like the dead."
+
+Ish willed his eyes to open. He felt his heart begin to move again, felt
+the blood sluggishly beginning to surge into his veins. His hands and
+feet were very cold.
+
+"Come on, Ish," the Crew Chief said.
+
+"All right," he mumbled. "Okay. I'm up." He sat on the edge of his bunk
+looking down at his hands. They were blue under the fingernails. He
+sighed, feeling the air moving down into his lungs.
+
+Stiffly, he got to his feet and began to climb into his G suit.
+
+
+The Moon opened its face to him. From where he lay, strapped into the
+control seat in the forward bubble, he looked at it emotionlessly, and
+began to brake for a landing.
+
+
+He looked for footprints in the crater, though he knew he hadn't left
+any. Earth was a familiar sight over his right shoulder.
+
+He brought the twin-bubble beast back to the station. They threw
+spotlights on it, for the TV pickups, and thrust microphones at him. He
+could see broad grins behind the faceplates of the suits the docking
+crew wore, and they were pounding his back. The interior of the Station
+was a babbling of voices, a tumult of congratulations. He looked at it
+all, dead-faced, his eyes empty.
+
+"It was easy," he said over a world-wide network, and pushed the press
+representatives out of his way.
+
+
+MacKenzie was waiting for him in the crew section. Ish flicked his
+stolid eyes at him, shrugged, and stripped out of his clothes. He pulled
+a coverall out of a locker and climbed into it, then went over to his
+bunk and lay down on his side, facing the bulkhead.
+
+"Ish."
+
+It was MacKenzie, bending over him.
+
+Ish grunted.
+
+"It wasn't any good was it? You'd done it all before; you'd been there."
+
+He was past emotions. "Yeah?"
+
+"We couldn't take the chance." MacKenzie was trying desperately to
+explain. "You were the best there was--but you'd done something to
+yourself by becoming the best. You shut yourself off from your family.
+You had no close friends, no women. You had no other interests. You were
+a rocket pilot--nothing else. You've never read an adult book that
+wasn't a text; you've never listened to a symphony except by accident.
+You don't know Rembrandt from Norman Rockwell. Nothing. No ties, no
+props, nothing to sustain you if something went wrong. _We couldn't take
+the chance, Ish!_"
+
+"So?"
+
+"There was too much at stake. If we let you go, you might have
+forgotten to come back. You might have just kept going."
+
+He remembered the time with the _Navion_, and nodded. "I might have."
+
+"I hypnotized you," MacKenzie said. "You were never dead. I don't know
+what the details of your hallucination were, but the important part came
+through, all right. You thought you'd been to the Moon before. It took
+all the adventure out of the actual flight; it was just a workaday
+trip."
+
+"I said it was easy," Ish said.
+
+"There was no other way to do it! I had to cancel out the thrill that
+comes from challenging the unknown. You knew what death was like, and
+you knew what the Moon was like. Can you understand why I had to do it?"
+
+"Yeah. _Now get out before I kill you._"
+
+
+He didn't live too long after that. He never entered a rocket again--he
+died on the Station, and was buried in space, while a grateful world
+mourned him. I wonder what it was like, in his mind, when he really
+died. But he spent the days he had, after the trip, just sitting at an
+observatory port, cursing the traitor stars with his dead and
+purposeless eyes.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+
+  Text in italics is surrounded with underscores: _italics_.
+
+  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected without note.
+
+  This etext was produced from Dynamic Science Fiction, January, 1954.
+    Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+    copyright on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Desire No More, by Algirdas Jonas Budrys
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40968 ***