Tough. You asked for it—

But why?

And then something was tugging at his mind, seeping through the heavy wall of memory. A terrible, loathsome thought. He shook his head, desperately, trying to fight it back, but the wall began to crumble. Long-dead pictures began drifting through, long-hidden memories. A bare whisper of thought, cold, relentless, devastating. Admit it, Scotty. You had to come. You had to be sitting in this seat; you couldn't do anything else, could you? You couldn't let them know about you. You couldn't bear to let the boys down on the field suspect the truth, could you, Scotty? You looked into their eyes, and you were afraid they suspected, like Matty had suspected, like Dad had suspected so many years ago—You had to come here. You couldn't help yourself, could you?

The whisper broke into a coarse, derisive laugh, and Scotty cowered back, shaking his head in denial, his whole body trembling. Take a look, Scotty—take a good look! Are you trying to hide the truth from yourself? But you can't get away with that. You can't hide it from yourself any longer—

And then the wall of memory buckled, and split wide open. You can fool the whole world, Scotty—but you can't fool yourself, the voice screamed in his ear. You can run, and hide, and twist, and lie, but you can't ever really fool yourself. You know it's true. You always have known.

You're a coward, Scotty. A dirty yellow coward. You always have been, and you always will be—

"Zero minus ten minutes—"

It wasn't true. He shook his head helplessly as his fingers found the safety belts, tightened them down fiercely on his chest and legs. Wasn't he sitting here now, waiting for the last count, waiting to start on the greatest adventure man had ever attempted? Would he be here if he were a coward? He snarled and clenched his fists tight on the arm-rests. It was a lie, it couldn't be true. No man can stare himself in the face and call himself a coward when there is a spark of life left in him at all. He can call himself a cheat, or a liar, or a fake—those were things that could be changed, things that could be made up for. But a coward had something wrong deep inside, something that was built in, that could never be changed as long as a man lived. No man could call himself that.

Scotty shook his head, half laughing, half crying. He was scared, sure. Anybody would be scared. But he wasn't a coward. He was in 

 Prev. P 8/14 next