The Stoker And The Stars

_When you've had your ears pinned
back in a bowknot, it's sometimes hard
to remember that an intelligent people
has no respect for a whipped enemy ...
but does for a fairly beaten enemy._

Illustrated by van Dongen


Know him? Yes, I know him--_knew_ him. That was twenty years ago.

Everybody knows him now. Everybody who passed him on the street knows
him. Everybody who went to the same schools, or even to different
schools in different towns, knows him now. Ask them. But I knew him. I
lived three feet away from him for a month and a half. I shipped with
him and called him by his first name.

What was he like? What was he thinking, sitting on the edge of his bunk
with his jaw in his palm and his eyes on the stars? What did he think he
was after?

Well ... Well, I think he-- You know, I think I never did know him,
after all. Not well. Not as well as some of those people who're writing
the books about him seem to.

I couldn't really describe him to you. He had a duffelbag in his hand
and a packed airsuit on his back. The skin of his face had been dried
out by ship's air, burned by ultraviolet and broiled by infra red. The
pupils of his eyes had little cloudy specks in them where the cosmic
rays had shot through them. But his eyes were steady and his body was
hard. What did he look like? He looked like a man.