By Earthlight — Themes and Context

What was the matter with him? He'd expected to die, all the time, from the start. Everybody died! Few could experience what he was experiencing. Death was worth this. One last kick, the biggest kick of all for Hal Barlow. You lived for kicks, so what was the matter?

He couldn't move his limbs; he could barely lift his head. Encased in 700 pounds of suit. Helpless. A pencil-flash flickered on and off. A couple of eyes shone. A whisper. "The kit is fastened to your belt. The instructions are in an air-tight capsule inside the kit. If you're caught, and the paper's removed, it will disintegrate; now we'll slide you inside."

The helmet slid over his face. It was absolutely dark. The suit, all-enclosing mobile shelter, atmosphere-pressure, temperature-control, mobility and electric power to manipulate tools. Its own power plant. It reprocessed continuously the precious air breathed by the occupant, putting it back into circulating supply after enriching it. The rocket was cold and alien and it would support no life; the suit alone protected him. The rocket was just metal and gadgets; only the suit stood between him and an agonizing death from acceleration, deceleration, extremes of heat and cold.

The dolly was rolling him in through the small opening. His encased body being slid, stuffed, jammed into something like a wad of ammo into a barrel. His body was entirely constricted. He couldn't hear anything. It was black. He could shift his massive helmet slightly. It clanged against metal, and the sound inside the helmet was like rusty thunder.

His blood boiled softly. He felt like a child shut up in the dark. He thought of the radio in the suit, and desperately manipulated the controls by the small control-panel in the metal hand of the suit.

The voices seemed to quiet whatever had been boiling up in him. He had started to scream; he remembered that now. Somehow, with an intense effort, he had suppressed the scream, clamped his teeth on it. Now the voices helped. He realized how much time had passed in the quick pressured dark. Voices preparing to send the first rocket to the moon. Quiet voices with all the suspense and tension held down by long military habit.

He had started being afraid. More than that. He had been going to scream. He--Hal Barlow! Where was the excitement, the great thrill, the big kick he had anticipated, to compensate for a voluntary dying?

He felt only anxiety. Afraid the terror would return. He had never admitted fear before. He thought back a little, trying to recall something that would explain the fear.

He felt as if an immense cyst of suppuration had burst inside of him. Sweat teared his eyes.

_If they had psyched me, I'd know. I wouldn't be afraid. What would they have found? Why am I afraid now when I've never been afraid in my life?_

Or had he? He couldn't remember. He tried to think of something immediate....

Two hours before, Barlow had paused on the second floor of the men's barracks on the White Sands, New Mexico, Proving Grounds and looked put. He shivered a little. It was a lonely spot, maybe the loneliest in the world. Especially at night. Even here, Barlow managed to be with someone most of the time--but the same dullards got boring. Even women (like Lorraine), who said they loved him, were futile companions; a guy whose future was death couldn't get emotionally involved.

He went into his three-room dump and switched on the radio at once. He needed the sound of voices and the music. He started to undress in the dark. But the cold and frigid moonlight came in and shone on the bed; it revealed the body lying there. The face looking up at Barlow was his own! His breath thinned. His hands were wet.

It did him a lot more justice than any mirror, or the reflection in a woman's eyes. The half-boyish, half-man face with the thin wiry lips, the blond curling hair and the sun-burned, cynical face. The blue eyes that seemed never quite able to smile. The face on the bed never would; it was dead.

Barlow turned. Part of the shadow in the corner moved. A voice. "D-716."

The 16 meant that this was that number among the hundred possible goals of duty and sacrifice. The D of course meant Death, and Barlow had known since having been given the number years ago what his end would be.

There were many other ways, some worse than dying. Loss of identity by plastic surgery. Barlow's appearance had been thoroughly altered three times. Some had volunteered for the torture and concentration camps of the East. Barlow had done that, too; anything for kicks.