Part 2

He took Ollie to another room and turned him over to a young medic who put him in a box like a steam cabinet, attached electrodes to his temples, wrists, ankles, and chest, and put a helmet on his head.

For five minutes Ollie stood encased, his stomach fluttering as he recalled the grocer's warning. He waited for the vivisection to begin.

It didn't. He was removed from his shell and handed an inked graph.

"Here's your profile," the medic said. "It's good, considering. Take it back to the fellow who brought you here."

He did and was ushered into a glassed-in office containing two desks, each labelled Civilian Personnel Officer. At one sat the fat major. At the other, a tallish young civilian held Ollie's application.

"My name is Katt," the civilian said, getting up to shake hands. "This is Major Brownwight."

The major also shook his hand. Katt placed a straightbacked chair between the two desks, and invited Ollie to sit in it. Ollie did, gazing uncertainly from one man to the other.

"We heard you arrived by train early this morning," Katt said.

"Yes, sir."

"You were first reported in Sparks, but I'll bet you boarded that train in San Francisco."

"Yes, sir. What's the penalty?"

"None. I like it. It's enterprising, athletic, and even brave for a man of your years to do that for a job. Shows resourcefulness. Also skill, because men are trying to nip rides here from all over the United States, but very few arrive."

"They're too old," said Major Brownwight. He turned to Katt and added, "I still don't think it's an old man's job!"

"Well sir," said Katt, stifling a sigh, "your predecessor understood and approved of it. These old-timers have a lower metabolic rate than younger people, with all that that implies. They don't mind the enforced inactivity, they won't use up so much oxygen nor need so much food, they won't spend so many hours in sleep. All qualities we need."

"Maybe so." The major turned to Ollie and said, "I just transferred in here. You know more about this than I do."

"I don't even know what you're talking about," Ollie told him.

"Without divulging classified information," said Katt, "for which you are not yet cleared, I can tell you these are little one-man jobs. Small stuff--for pioneering. That's why we want you men with lots of patience, who're used to being alone. People without a fixed place in society, and not too much to leave behind. A husky old itinerant like you is just what we want."

"For what?" Ollie insisted.

"To travel--as a sort of working passenger, since piloting will of course be mechanical--in the first manned spaceships to leave Earth for the stars."

"Spaceships?"

"Sure. Solo spaceships. Super-fast, which means the trip will seem relatively short while you're on it, and will give you extra earth-years of life in the end.

"The job is much easier and less hazardous than the train ride that brought you here. You're a natural for it. You really fit it."

"Do I, now?" A quick glow of inner warmth melted many bad years away. Ollie grinned.

"You know," he said, "in a way that's a disappointment."

"How so?" asked the major aggressively. "Don't you want the job?"

"Yes, sir. I want it. But all these years I've been telling myself that somewhere on this earth was a place I'd fit into, if only I could find it. Now you tell me I fit in, but the place isn't here on Earth after all!"

"Not right now, no," said Katt. "But you'll be back. Rich and famous, too. No Home for you, Mr. Hollveg--you'll have a nice place of your own."

And he did--after photographing the planets of Arcturus.