"I—I—it's all so hazy—"

"Hazy? It's simple, friend. You and me are four-time losers, like all these other guys. We got life imprisonment—but we volunteered for satellite duty instead. It's a quick death—only a year or so instead of a lifetime behind bars. And since there ain't no execution any more, we took it."

No—no—part of Conroy's mind protested. I didn't volunteer. I never was in jail ... except that drunken jetting once, and that was just overnight. How—why—?

"That can't be right," he said. "I'm not a criminal."

The other man looked at him strangely, then smiled pityingly. "You musta been lookin' the wrong way when the recruiters came around, then. Those birds'll do anything for ten thousand bucks."

They came to the end of the long corridor and approached another door—and suddenly Conroy remembered.

He had been drunk, that last night on Earth—and suddenly everyone in the bar had run madly out the door, into the washroom, hid anyplace they could. Two men had entered.

Recruiters. Space-station recruiters. Conroy remembered protesting mildly through a vague blue of alcohol and synthojoy, then letting them take him away. Sober now, he recalled having heard of such things. The space-stations needed men—and they'd grab them any way they could. They'd take uncomplaining derelicts when the supply of convicts ran out.

His fiancee Janet had told him, when she broke their engagement, "Your drinking'll kill you some day, Dave." The words had been prophetic—though not the way she meant.

The final door opened—and eight shambling, patchy-fleshed, almost bald wrecks of men came toward them. Dave shuddered. This was what a year of continuous hard radiation could do, even through tough shielding. This was what he'd look like a year from now.

Already he imagined he could feel the subatomic particles ripping through his body, even though he knew it was only an illusion. The radiation wouldn't begin to affect him for a few days—but even now he felt his skin tingling and itching from force of suggestion.

I've got to get out of here, he thought with a clarity he'd not known since he began drinking. I'm still young. I don't want to rot down here.

God, why couldn't I have been sober that night?

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