"Please, Al, please—"

But it was too late. I saw her glorious hair fade into a dull, ordinary mass. Her arms thickened, her breasts got smaller. Her body shifted under the dress with realistic imperfections. Her skin coarsened. She was still attractive now, but no more so than a thousand other women in New York.

I stood up but she had already made the motion to withdraw. "I will manage," she said. "We will say goodbye now. Your perspective has changed and I can no longer stand you."

I said nothing, being too full of new thoughts and feelings. She walked away towards the bar. As she approached she caught the attention of a near spaceman and seemed to improve at once. Seemed to regain some of her lost beauty.

"You see how unsatisfactory the Ideals are," said Radwick.

"And yours—"

Radwick gestured at the sugar cubes that were damp now with the water Sandy had spilled.

"A far-spaceman did the same for me, Al," he said. On the table was a circle of sugar cubes which symbolized the ideal, like an "o". Radwick put his hand in the middle of it and turned his hand, pushing the cubes in distortion so they became a zero, or "0". He grinned up at me.

"Nothing is greater," he said, "and we must check in tomorrow for the Overdrive. It's time to go out again."

"I won't be going," I said. "I don't want any more of the Stardust Overdrive."

"Too bad. There is much to learn out there."

I laughed at him playing with his cubes. "Yeah, there's a lot to learn—but we've got it right here too, and a better word for it. Dreams."

He looked up at me quizzically. "Dreams?"

"That's right. You know—'the grass is always greener' stuff. When you get tired of facing reality you can sign on the Stardust Overdrive. Treat yourself to a thrill—the biggest in the cosmos. I've found the answer I was looking for, Radwick, the thing you haven't been able to find with all your mathematical cube symbols. Men stay on the Stardust Overdrive and with an Ideal only because they choose a fantasy life to reality. They think they have it better out there on Scolaris. Better? They fight and die just as they would on Earth. The rub comes in when you realize you're only being a sucker for another 

 Prev. P 14/15 next