They are wondering how _I_ feel, he was thinking. And asking themselves why I want to go.

On the dais nearby, listening to the PRO, but watching Kimball, sat Steinhart, the team analyst. Kimball returned his steady gaze thinking: They start out burning with desire to cure the human mind and end with the shadow of the images. The words become the fact, the therapy the aim. What could Steinhart know of longing? No, he thought, I'm not being fair. Steinhart was only doing his job.

The big clock on the back wall of the briefing shack said three fifty-five. Zero minus one hour and five minutes.

Kimball looked around the room at the pale faces, the open mouths. What have I to do with you now, he thought?

* * * * *

Outside, the winter night lay cold and still over the Base. Floodlights spilled brilliance over the dunes and the scrubby earth, high fences casting laced shadows across the burning white expanses of ferroconcrete.

As they filed out of the briefing shack, Steinhart climbed into the command car with Kimball. Chance or design? Kimball wondered. The others, he noticed, were leaving both of them alone.

"We haven't gotten on too well, have we, Colonel?" Steinhart observed in a quiet voice.

Kimball thought: He's pale skinned and very blond. What is it that he reminds me of? Shouldn't there be a diadem on his forehead? He smiled vaguely into the rumbling night. That's what it was. Odd that he should have forgotten. How many rocket pilots, he wondered, were weaned on Burroughs' books? And how many remembered now that the Thern priests all wore yellow wings and a circlet of gold with some fantastic jewel on their forehead?

"We've done as well as could be expected," he said.

Steinhart reached for a cigaret and then stopped, remembering that Kimball had had to give them up because of the flight. Kimball caught the movement and half-smiled.

"I didn't try to kill the assignment for you, Kim," the psych said.

"It doesn't matter now."

"No, I suppose not."

"You just didn't think I was the man for the job."

"Your record is good all the way. You know that," Steinhart said. "It's just some of the things----"

Kimball said: "I talked too much."

"You had to."

"You wouldn't think my secret life was so dangerous, would you," the Colonel said smiling.

"You were married, Kim. What happened?"

"More therapy?"

"I'd like to know. This is for me."

* * * * *

Kimball shrugged. "It didn't work. She was a fine girl--but she finally told me it was no go. 'You don't live here' was the way she put it."

"She knew you were a career officer; what did she expect----?"

"That isn't what she meant. You know that."

"Yes," the psych said slowly. "I know that."

They rode in silence, across the dark Base, between the concrete sheds and the wooden barracks. Overhead, the stars like dust across the sky. Kimball, swathed in plastic, a fantastic figure not of earth, watched them wheel across the clear, deep night.