Then the light went out. The glare cut off abruptly. There was only a
dim redness where the space-port tarmac had been made incandescent for a
little while. That glow faded--and Cochrane became aware of the
enormous stillness. He had not really noticed the rocket's deafening
roar until it ended.
The helicab flew onward almost silently, with only the throbbing pulses
of its overhead vanes making any sound at all.
"_I kidded myself about those rockets, too_," said Cochrane bitterly to
himself. "_I thought getting to the moon meant starting to the stars.
New worlds to live on. I had a lot more fun before I found out the facts
of life!_"
But he knew that this cynicism and this bitterness came out of the hurt
to the vanity that still insisted everything was a mistake. He'd
received orders which disillusioned him about his importance to the firm
and to the business to which he'd given years of his life. It hurt to
find out that he was just another man, just another expendable. Most
people fought against making the discovery, and some succeeded in
avoiding it. But Cochrane saw his own self-deceptions with a savage
clarity even as he tried to keep them.
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