Chapter VI

And then he decided that they weren't going to get away with it. His despair was giving way to a burning rage. He was trapped, and he knew it, and the very helplessness infuriated him. He had never been on a ship before, he knew nothing about controls, or lifeboats, or navigation, but he knew a little about engines. Properly treated, they would drive a space ship. Improperly treated, they could explode.

He knew it would mean his life, and he didn't care any more. He started back through the cabin to the hatchway at the rear. It was closed. He fell upon it savagely, struggling to throw it open.

"That won't do any good," a voice said behind him. "It's locked."

He whirled, staring at the black-haired girl as if she were a ghost. And then he began kicking at the hatch again. "I'll break it open, then," he snarled, "and if you don't like it, that's too bad--"

"Stop it!" The girl was upon him now, wrenching at his wrist. "Stop it, you silly fool, and listen to me for a minute--"

"I listened to you before, and you sold me out." He struggled to break away from her. "I don't know where you were hiding, but you sold me out. It was a great act, but it's over now, and now you can go with me--"

Then she said: "The ship will touch on Titan for an hour or more. You can leave it then, if you like."

His jaw sagged, and he stared at her, the fear and bitterness and despair giving way to confusion. "On--Titan?"

"That's what I said. You didn't think you'd be awake and able to move about now if the ship were headed out, did you? You'd be under deep-sleep for two weeks. Use your head."

He gaped at her. His thinking began tumbling down around his ears, and he grasped at it wildly. "But it's going out--"

"Oh, yes. It's going out--from Titan. With a full load. Men and women aboard, voluntarily aboard. Men and women just like you."

"Then it is true. We grow old and start to die, and they take us to the Center and make us new again, so we can be shanghaied aboard ships and driven out to the stars, whether we like it or not. What's the matter--is the government afraid of us? Or is it just greedy to hand the people Centauri on a silver platter?"

"I said you could get off on Titan if you want," the girl snapped.

"Sure," he sneered. "I believe you. Anything you say now, I believe it. Go ahead, say something more. Say something about the rest of the suckers that are coming through now, the ones who think they can have a new life without a price-tag on it. How about them? Can they get off on Titan too?"

"You've got it wrong, Griffin," the girl said sadly. "You've got it backwards. Right facts, wrong conclusion. Your cause and effect are backwards."

"I don't get you." Griffin's voice was leaden.

"You weren't made new again so you could be placed on this ship. You were placed on this ship because you'd been made new again."

Griffin stared at her. "You mean because I'm different now? Because there's something wrong with me?"

She hesitated. "In a sense--"

"_In a sense!_ I'm either a whole, complete human being or I'm not! _Now which is it?_"

"Oh, no, no," cried the girl wearily. "Can't you see that's just the idea we've been fighting against for so long? Look, Griffin. _You're alive._ You've got sixty more years of life. A long, useful life. But if it's not a useful life in the society where you lived before, does that make it wrong? They have skill and techniques to give perfectly good new bodies to men and women who would die without them. Could it ever be right to deny that life to the people who wanted it? Could they turn them back, and say 'No, we can give you life, but we've decided not to use it.' Could they do that?"

Griffin shook his head. "What happened? Back when it first started. What went wrong?"

The girl sat down, facing him. "Some didn't change at all. Some went back, just as they were before. Others tried it, and went insane. Some committed suicide. Others lived out lives of utter misery trying to fit a pattern they could never be part of. They were a kind of human being which had never existed before--an infant personality superimposed on a grown, mature body, thrust out into a highly organized, rigid society. They couldn't survive." She looked up at Griffin. "The government got the Free Agent legislation through, finally. It helped some, but not enough. Most of them were looking for something that just didn't exist. They searched, and floundered, and tried one thing and another, and in the end they were bitter, and confused, and utterly helpless. So they went to the stars."

The girl walked out into the control room, and stared out at the bright pinpoints of light in the blackness. Griffin followed her, his body and mind both numb. "What about Mars, or Venus?" he said.

"No good. They were just the old Earth society in a different setting, trying like crazy to duplicate things back on Earth. But on a new planet, in a new solar system, a _new_ society would have a chance. On a dozen planets a dozen societies could be created." She laughed wryly. "You and your price-tag! You can go back to Earth, Griffin. But you'll die there. You'd never have believed that if we'd told you at the start. You remembered your old life too well. You thought it would be so easy to go back to it. We had to let you try, and you tried. Maybe now you can believe it. You can go back to Earth, if you want to, or you can ship out and make your own world to live in. You're a Free Agent. It's up to you."

He heard them coming aboard. He lay still on the acceleration couch, his eyes closed, pretending to be asleep, but his ears strained for the familiar sounds, and he heard the crane moving up the side of the ship, and the people coming aboard.

There was little talking. They moved quietly, and they paid practically no attention to him. He felt sure that they knew he was awake, but they came aboard, and took their places, and began to strap themselves in without a word.

The girl with the black hair was gone. She had work to do, back on Earth--the same work she had done with him, another flounderer to bring in, perhaps in a slightly different fashion, but essentially the same. And someday she, too, would be on the way out--

He waited in silence, and he could not have put into words the thoughts that flooded his mind. He waited, and his body grew tight; he heard the sounds coming from below, an occasional shout, the screeching of machinery, the hiss of airlocks closing. And then the ship was silent. Still he waited--

A whir started, somewhere in the depths of the ship. It grew to a growl, then to a roar. In a peal of thunder he felt himself crushed to the cot, felt his eyelids pressed tight over his eyes, felt his face muscles sag under the crush of the powerful acceleration, and he knew the ship was rising in earnest this time.

A thought crossed his mind as he sank into the blackness of the deep-sleep that would carry him through the acceleration. He would have smiled, if he could have. They'd told him the truth. A Free Agent could go anywhere he wanted to go--

Even to the stars.