"Why? Because ... I was just telling you ..."
She shook her head. "No, I don't mean the official reasons. Why do you dig the idea? Why does it turn you on?"
"We need it. The whole human race needs it."
"No," she repeated patiently. "You. Why are you for it? What's in it for you?"
"What do you mean?"
"What makes you tick, man? What turns you on? Is it a Moonbase? Power? Glory? What moves you, Chet?"
They were all watching him, the whole crowd, their faces eager or smirking or inquisitive. Kinsman looked past them, through them, remembering. Floating weightless, standing on nothing, alone, free, away from them all. Staring back at the overwhelming beauty of Earth, rich, brilliant, full and shining against the black emptiness. Knowing that people down there are killing themselves, killing each other, killing their world and teaching their children how to kill. Knowing that you are part of it, too. Your eyes filling with tears at the beauty and the horror. To get away from it, far away, where they can't reach you, where you can start over. fresh, clean, new. How could they see it? How could any of them understand?
"What moves you, Chet?" Diane asked again.
He made himself grin. "Well, for one thing, since they started using synthetic coffee in the Pentagon ..."
A few people laughed, a nervous titter. But Diane would not let him off the hook. "Get serious, Chet. This is impor- tant. What turns you on?"
They don't really want to know, he told himself. They would never understand. How could they?
"You mean, aside from the obvious things, like women?"
Diane nodded gravely.
"I never really thought about it. Hard to say. Flying, I guess. Getting out on your own responsibility, away from all 181 the committees and chains of command."
"There's got to be more to it than that," Diane insisted.
"Well . . . have you ever been out on the desert, at an Israeli outpost, dancing all night by firelight because you know that at dawn there's going to be an attack and you don't want to waste a minute of living?"
There was a heartbeat's span of dead silence. Then one of the women asked in a near-whisper, "When were you ...?"
Kinsman said, "Oh, I've never been there. But isn't it a romantic picture?"
They all broke into laughter. That burst the bubble, Kinsman knew. The crowd began to dissolve, fragmenting into smaller groups. Dozens of conversations began to fill the silence that had briefly held them.
"You cheated," Diane said, frowning.
