1 files changed, 696 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/58899-0.txt b/58899-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74e8fd8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/58899-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,696 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 58899 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             JOURNEY WORK
+
+                            BY DAVE DRYFOOS
+
+                 _Get mad, old man, but don't give up;
+             you're not through by a long shot. Somewhere
+             there's a job for you, a job that youth can't
+                do ... a dangerous job, but a good one
+            that'll bring you fame, fortune and peace...._
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+              Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1955.
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+In a central California tomato field a dusty-faced man opened the
+autodriver of a nuclear-powered truck and inserted a cannery's address
+card so the truck would know where to deliver its load.
+
+Six old men--the tomato pickers--waited for their pay in the truck's
+lengthening shadow. Most of them smoked or dozed, too tired for talk.
+
+Ollie Hollveg, tallest and oldest of the pickers, eyed the heavy-set
+rancher who sat at the tally table figuring the payroll. For this
+day's work Ollie expected even less pay than usual; the mumbling,
+pencil-licking rancher--his name was Rost--seemed to be overacting the
+role of harried proprietor.
+
+Soon Ollie saw his guess confirmed. A look of frustrated rage spread
+from face to face as each of the other pickers was in turn called to
+the table and paid.
+
+All were overage. None dared protest.
+
+At seventy a poor man without relatives willing to care for him was
+supposed to let himself be permanently retired to a Home for Seniles.
+If he wasn't senile and didn't want a home with barred windows and a
+barbed wire fence, he had to lie low and keep his mouth shut.
+
+Anyone could charge an overage person with incompetence. The charge was
+not a crime and so had no defence.
+
+All of which was old stuff to Ollie Hollveg. He'd been dodging the
+geriatricians for sixteen years. He considered himself used to the
+setup.
+
+Yet something about the rancher, Rost--maybe his excessive weight, in
+contrast with the pickers' under-fed gauntness, or maybe his cardboard
+cowboy boots and imitation sombrero--made Ollie boil in spite of
+himself.
+
+He tried not to show his feelings. But when he was called to the tally
+table the rancher scowled up at him defensively and said, "Don't
+glare at me, Hollveg! If you moved as fast picking tomatoes as you do
+collecting your pay, you'd have earned more than this."
+
+He pushed out a little pile of coins that came to four dollars
+eighty-seven cents.
+
+"Odd pennies?" Ollie's voice broke as he fought to keep it under
+control. "Odd pennies, when picking's at the rate of two bits a lug?
+That can't be right. Just because we're old, you're stealing from us!"
+
+Rost's fat face turned livid. "Call me a thief?" he sputtered. "Get off
+my land!"
+
+Rost jumped clumsily to his feet, upsetting the tally table. Ollie bent
+to retrieve the coins scattered in the dust.
+
+"Don't try to steal from me!" Rost shouted. He pulled out a small gas
+gun and discharged it under Ollie's nose. Ollie pitched forward onto
+his face, twitched, moaned, and lay still.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The deputy sheriff held an ampoule under his nose and brought him to
+after setting the squad car on the beamway, proceeding under remote
+control toward the county seat.
+
+The first thing Ollie thought of was his day's pay. He'd never received
+it. Worse--his bedroll was left behind. And there was no stopping nor
+turning on the beam way.
+
+He complained bitterly.
+
+"You won't need that stuff," the sharp young deputy said. "Not where
+you're going."
+
+"I suppose Rost needs it!" Ollie protested.
+
+"He might at that. All he's got is those measily four rented acres of
+tomatoes. The cannery pays him the same as if he had four hundred acres
+and could pick by machine.
+
+"About all the profit he can make is what he chisels out of his
+pickers. You'll be better off in a Home, Pop, than trying to work
+cheaper than a machine."
+
+"Those Homes are prisons!"
+
+The deputy sighed. "I know how you feel. My old grandfather cried when
+we put him in. But we couldn't support him and he had no way of making
+a living.
+
+"The world changes faster than the people in it, Pop. Science all the
+time lets us live longer, but faster and faster it keeps changing the
+way we do things. An old guy falls so far behind the times, the only
+place for him is a Home."
+
+"But if a man wants to stay out," said Ollie, "I don't see why he
+can't."
+
+"Old guys are dangerous to the rest of us. I saw three people killed,
+not long ago, trying to dodge an oldtimer who walked too slow to get
+across a wide street before the lights changed against him."
+
+"They could have slowed the signal," Ollie said. "But no! Always it's
+the man who has to adapt to the machine, not the machine to the man.
+The only way to get by in this world is to find some machine you just
+naturally fit."
+
+"You sound kind of bitter."
+
+"Why not? I used to be a stock control clerk, keeping track of spare
+parts supply for a nationally distributed line of machine tools. I had
+twenty girls working for me. Then one day they put in a big computer."
+
+He sighed. "No wonder these suicide salesmen do so well. If I had the
+money I'd hire somebody to knock me off right now."
+
+"Don't be stupid!" the deputy snarled. "You wouldn't be losing your
+freedom if you'd had sense enough to stay out of a fight. And when you
+talk about suicide salesmen, you sure prove you can't take care of
+yourself!"
+
+But the deputy was kinder than he sounded. Rather than allege
+incompetence, he charged Ollie with an assault against Rost. So instead
+of being remanded to the geriatricians, Ollie was kept overnight in
+jail and ordered held, next morning, for want of fifty dollars bail.
+
+An hour after bail had been set, a dapper thin faced bailbond broker
+came to see him.
+
+"Want out?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"If I put up bail you'll be out."
+
+"No Home?"
+
+"You're classified as a criminal, ineligible for a Home till either
+you're found not guilty or serve your time."
+
+"Well, but I'm broke. I can't buy a bailbond."
+
+"You can work it off. I'm going to spring you right now. As soon as
+they let you out, meet me in the southwest corner of the park, just
+across from the post office."
+
+Ollie did. He thought his bail had been arranged by the deputy.
+
+The broker kept him waiting in the park for half an hour, but was brisk
+when he appeared.
+
+"My name is Lansing," he said. "Come on. We're taking a little trip."
+
+He steered Ollie to the copter tower at the park's center and with him
+boarded its endless-belt manlift. They were carried ten stories to the
+roof, and as they stepped off the manlift an empty copter hovered at
+hand. It bore on sides and bottom an address, a phone number, and the
+word _Bailbonds_, all in big letters.
+
+The copter rose under the tower's control as soon as they'd entered it,
+and continued to rise till Lansing selected a prepunched destination
+card and slipped it into the auto-pilot. Then a knowing red light
+winked on, the copter levelled off and headed southwest, and Lansing
+took one of a pair of chintz-padded wicker seats, motioning Ollie into
+the other.
+
+"How do you like the idea of going to a Home?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"I'd rather be dead."
+
+"I know someone who agrees with you. A fellow with bad health who wants
+to die but doesn't have the guts to do the necessary. Feel like helping
+him out?"
+
+Ollie sighed, smiled grimly, and shook his head. "No, thanks!"
+
+"You might die yourself, Hollveg." Lansing's voice was heavy with
+menace.
+
+"I might," Ollie agreed hotly. "I might get murdered. And maybe the
+same thing will happen to this supposedly sick man you want me to help
+out. He may not want to die any more than I do. I've heard you suicide
+salesmen do a lot of murder-for-hire."
+
+"You've heard too much, Hollveg."
+
+Lansing took a plushlined metal case from an inside pocket and removed
+from it a filled syringe, complete with needle.
+
+"This won't hurt," he said in a sneering imitation of a doctor. "But
+it'll end your independence like a barbed wire fence."
+
+Ollie began to sweat. "I've heard of those zombie-shots too," he said.
+He looked wildly around, then controlled himself and gestured almost
+calmly toward the sky, land, and water visible through the cabin's
+plastic walls.
+
+"Maybe you can put the needle away for a while," he suggested. "I'm not
+going to walk out on you right now."
+
+Lansing smiled and complied. "You may keep your health a long time
+yet," he said urbanely. "If you're sensible, we might even find steady
+work for you."
+
+Ollie suppressed a shudder.
+
+Lansing tuned in a Western on the physeo. Soon the odor of sage and
+horse-sweat filled the cabin.
+
+Ollie watched avidly. He hadn't seen enough physeo to be bored with it.
+
+There was a mouth watering camp supper scene, with pleasant odors of
+broiling beef and burning wood; and a stirring moonlit love scene with
+a wholesome girl who smelled of soap and starch, and only faintly of
+cosmetics.
+
+But then came the climactic chase, a combined stampede, stage-coach
+race, and Indian fight. So much alkali dust poured from the physeo that
+Ollie got a fit of coughing.
+
+He couldn't stop. After several excruciating minutes he lay down on the
+floor and gasped to Lansing for a drink of water.
+
+"There isn't any," Lansing told him sharply. "And brother, you'd better
+get up from there, because you'll have to move fast when we get to
+Frisco."
+
+Without knowing what would result, Ollie made sure he neither got up
+nor stopped coughing till they reached San Francisco which was fifteen
+minutes later.
+
+The pretense involved intense effort for so old a man. His voice went.
+He was clammy with sweat from head to foot. His face was pale and his
+hands cold.
+
+By the time the copter reached the roof of San Francisco's Union Square
+tower, Ollie was actually unable to jump out of the cabin in the thirty
+seconds allotted by the remote traffic-control system. Lansing tried to
+carry him out, but the result was merely a delay that damned the stream
+of traffic.
+
+A winged inspector buzzed them, took remote control of their copter,
+and led it to the emergency tower at Civic center.
+
+Ollie was taken off on a stretcher. Lansing, his urbanity washed away
+in a flood of redfaced rage, was still in the copter when it rose.
+And the hypo was still in his pocket; with Ollie due to get medical
+attention, he hadn't been able to use it.
+
+Ollie didn't dare stay long in the hospital. As soon as his stretcher
+was set down on the receiving ward floor, he rolled out of it and with
+the help of a fat steward struggled to his feet.
+
+"Thanks," he whispered hoarsely. "I have to go now."
+
+"You can't!" said the steward. "You haven't even been examined yet."
+
+"It's against my religion to have to do with medicine," Ollie
+improvised. "Besides, I'm perfectly well."
+
+"Yeah? What about your voice--or lack of one?"
+
+"A coughing spell. I'm over it now. And my voice is coming back." It
+was.
+
+The steward unbuttoned his coat and scratched his belly meditatively.
+"If you don't want treatment you don't have to have it," he said
+finally. "The joint's overcrowded now."
+
+Ollie didn't congratulate himself when he got out. He was now a
+fugitive from both the geriatricians and the underworld. Soon the
+police would want him for bail-jumping, and meanwhile they'd grab him
+for vagrancy if they caught him off skidrow.
+
+He headed that way at once, walking over to Mission and down it toward
+Third. A clock on a store-front said five twenty. He felt overdue for
+supper and bed.
+
+He counted his change--three dollars and forty-two cents. He had no
+bedroll; no overcoat, either. Even in this nice summer weather it might
+be a little tough for a fellow to get by on the road with so little
+plunder. Eighty-six was a trifle old for the rugged life.
+
+What he needed, of course, was a white-collar job. Not only needed, but
+deserved--he was a good clerk. Therefore he should go to the Hearst
+Building at Third and Market and scan the want ads posted there. As
+he'd been doing when in San Francisco for forty years.
+
+He thought of some of the many times he'd stared at that bulletin
+board. He'd gone there often during the years he'd worked as a
+construction timekeeper, before that skill became obsolete. Then
+there'd been an interval when he'd sold rebuilt window washers--for a
+firm which still owed him money. And he'd haunted the board during the
+months he'd had that job in the automatic grocery, replenishing the
+dispensing machines' merchandise.
+
+None of his jobs had come from a want ad. But he had to go look. It was
+a ritual.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The years had made the ritual a hard one for him. He could read the
+fine-printed columns only with head cocked an arm's length away from a
+cheap reading glass held up to them. He took a lot of room; forced a
+white-capped young mechanic to peer awkwardly around him.
+
+Embarrassed, Ollie moved out of the way. He'd begun to walk off when
+the young fellow stopped him. "I don't think you saw this one, Dad," he
+said, pointing.
+
+    OLDER MEN (the ad read) without dependents needed for dangerous
+    scientific experiments. If able to pass intensive physical and
+    mental tests report for interview to Civilian Personnel Office,
+    Short Air Force Base, Short, Utah.
+
+"I don't know where the place is at all," Ollie complained wearily.
+
+"Just this side of Salt Lake, on the main line," the young man said. "I
+served there, so I'm curious. If you're not--well--" He shrugged and
+edged away.
+
+"Thanks, son," Ollie called after him. "I'm going to follow that up."
+
+The young man walked on without looking back.
+
+Ollie felt committed, not only by his offhand declaration, but by his
+ritual. He'd come to look for a job; he'd found one for which he was
+eligible; he must go after it.
+
+He headed down Third Street toward the freight yards but stopped at a
+skidrow restaurant for a bowl of stew and a cup of coffee. Passing an
+old-fashioned catchpenny grocery he went in and bought a half-dozen
+rolls to take with him. The proprietor, squat, unshaven, and swarthy,
+picked out a large red apple and slipped it in with the rolls.
+
+"Good for you," he said, smiling.
+
+Ollie shook his head.
+
+The grocer frowned, then replaced the apple with an orange. "Easier on
+teeth," he said.
+
+"Thank you," said Ollie, smiling. "You make me feel lucky. I'm
+answering a want ad--maybe I'll get the job."
+
+The grocer smiled vaguely. "I hope." Then his face livened. "What job?
+In paper?"
+
+"Yes." There could be no other, for a man his age.
+
+"It says 'dangerous,'" said the grocer. "I think maybe they cut you up,
+find out how you live so long. Or make you sick to try new cure.
+
+"You find better job--or Home. That one bad." There was a slight pause.
+
+"Look. I close soon. You sweep store, I give you dollar."
+
+"You're a good guy," said Ollie. "But I've got three dollars now." He
+showed them proudly. "You save yours for somebody who doesn't have a
+job to try for."
+
+He tucked the rolls and orange inside his shirt, marched valiantly out
+of the dark little store, and continued on to the yards.
+
+The heavy traffic there confused him briefly. Transcontinental freight
+was carried in long trains of rubber-tired cars towed on elevated
+beamways by remotely-controlled, nuclear-fueled steam tractors. Here at
+the San Francisco yards the trains were broken up and the individual
+cars hauled by turbo-tractor on city streets and suburban roads for
+delivery at the addressees' doors.
+
+The cars were huge, the noise and bustle awe-inspiring. Ollie stood
+outside the main exit watching the little tractors and big cars emerge,
+till a beamway bull came over, flashed a badge, and told him to move on.
+
+He did. He was a fugitive from so many things; he couldn't afford
+resentments.
+
+He went on around the yards. They were vast. He felt sure that
+somewhere there must be an unguarded entry, and set out to find it,
+moving cautiously from shadow to shadow along the high plasti-board
+fence.
+
+Twice he blundered into watchmen. Once he nearly got himself run over.
+But after a couple of hours he saw a bindlestiff slip through an
+unguarded gate, and in half a minute he was right behind the man.
+
+Ollie moved away from him. There was safety in solitude. Besides, he
+had to find a Salt Lake train.
+
+The sealed cars were addressed like so many packages. But he had to
+have light to read by, and he risked discovery every time he moved into
+the light and took his stance behind the reading glass.
+
+There were other hazards; television beams for the yard clerks to read
+numbers by, invisible beams for the bulls to catch him with, headlights
+that suddenly flashed on blindingly, humped cars rolling unattended on
+silent, murderous tires.
+
+Ollie felt like an ant on a busy sidewalk, liable to be crushed under
+foot at any moment.
+
+But an added hazard helped him find his train. The bulls had read that
+want ad too. They were out in force around a string of cars. He slipped
+between two sleepy-looking men, checked an address, and then slipped
+out again, certain every car would be inspected before departure.
+
+A good way down the yard he hid at the base of the fence, dozing and
+shivering for several hours as he lay stretched out on the dew-chilled
+concrete. He checked each outbound train as it went by, and again knew
+his by the bulls on it.
+
+They were on the cowcatcher and in the cab, on the car roofs, and in
+the caboose with the train-crew of three trouble-shooting mechanics.
+Highlights gleamed on their weapons. Their job was to keep or get all
+transients off that train--and they would if they could.
+
+Ollie let most of the train go past. The caboose came by at about
+fifteen miles an hour with a sharp-eyed guard head-and-shoulders out of
+the cupola. Ollie let him get past, too--and hoped he went on looking
+toward the front.
+
+He began to hobble parallel to the train, dismayed at the stiffness
+that had set in while he lay out on the damp concrete.
+
+As the rear of the caboose drew even with him he emerged from the
+shadows and dived for the coupling at the car's rear. He caught it
+clumsily, tore the nail off his left ring finger, but hung on.
+
+He tried to trot but the train dragged him. He gave a leapfrog player's
+jump and landed on top of his own hands, his thighs around the
+coupling, his nose against the rear platform-wall of the caboose.
+
+The engine jerked slack out of the long train and nearly dislodged him.
+One at a time he moved his hands from the coupling to the base of the
+wall. He edged in a little closer. The train gathered speed.
+
+He wasn't really on but he couldn't safely get off. He'd intended
+climbing under the caboose to its rear truck, but the bulls and his own
+lack of agility made this impossible so now he must ride where he was,
+exposed to battering wind and searching cold as the train crossed the
+High Sierras, and also exposed to the whims of the trainmen if any
+should come out on the platform and look down.
+
+He'd seen men shot off trains. But he didn't worry about it. Instead,
+like the old hand he was, he tried to sleep while clinging there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Sparks the train stopped for a maintenance check. The guards formed
+a perimeter but Ollie was inside it. Too stiff to move far, he stayed
+in a shadow while the mechanics inspected, then he climbed under the
+caboose and stretched out on a girder separating two tires of the
+rearmost, six-tired truck.
+
+The tremendous tires fanned up hot winds when rolling, and these had
+warmed the steel he lay on. Before the train started he ate a roll,
+sucked the orange, and stretched out face down for the speed run across
+the central Nevada flatlands.
+
+The guards stayed behind. After the train had started, one of them
+shined a light directly in Ollie's eyes.
+
+The train kept on. And he was too close to the tires to be shot at;
+rubber-coated death whirled within three inches at either side of him.
+
+As the train picked up speed he was careful to lie still, but beyond
+making sure he didn't touch the tires Ollie tried to put all thought of
+risk from his mind.
+
+He saw a sudden vivid picture of his dead wife and son as they'd looked
+before the undertaker fixed them. They'd been killed while travelling.
+In times when to succeed was to get somewhere, they'd been killed en
+route. He couldn't remember where to.
+
+They'd died in a head-on crash caused by a stranger's error in
+judgment. A thing that didn't happen any more, now that highway
+vehicles were controlled by beamed energy instead of individual drivers.
+
+The highway was one place where the human had been tested against
+the machine and found inferior. The office was another. If Minna and
+Charlie hadn't died so long ago, they might have lived to see him
+now--a bindlestiff so low he even lacked a bindle.
+
+Still, it was lonely with no one in the whole wide world to care
+whether he lived or died.
+
+He sighed, shifted his position, and was nearly jerked under the wheels
+by sudden contact with the tire on his right.
+
+It was over in an instant. The tire simply ripped the coat from his
+back.
+
+He still wore the sleeves. The rest was gone. Weathered thread had
+saved him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He had ample time to think about the irony of that before rosy
+dawnlight was reflected into his face from a glittering salt-pan. He
+knew then he was still west of Salt Lake City, and that Short Air Force
+Base was close.
+
+Also close, now that night had withdrawn its concealment, was
+discovery. He was sure to be found when next the train stopped.
+
+Therefore he eased himself out of his coatsleeves. He moved gingerly,
+but still chanced death to improve his appearance.
+
+The train slowed, stopped.
+
+Someone called, "Here he is," and a redhaired Air Policeman leaned
+under the caboose, looked him over, and said, "Come on out, Pop."
+
+Ollie's legs were stiff. The airman had to help.
+
+"You're in kind of rough shape," he said. "Where did you think you were
+going?"
+
+"Why--uh--east." Ollie cast down his eyes, ashamed even to admit he'd
+once entertained the notion he might get a job.
+
+The airman wasn't fooled. "You slipped through the train guards after
+the job we've got here. Didn't you, Pop?"
+
+"All I want is out," said Ollie stubbornly.
+
+"Well," said the airman, "you can't get off the Base without a pass.
+You'll have to go up to Civilian Personnel and get one."
+
+"Can't I wash first?"
+
+He could. He could also get a jeep ride to the terra-cotta headquarters
+building, with a stop along the way for a canteen-cup of coffee and a
+slice of bread.
+
+When they got to headquarters the airman asked, "Tell the truth, now;
+didn't you really come after this job?"
+
+Ollie wouldn't admit he'd lied about it, so he lied again.
+
+"I've seen some of the other guys come in after it," the airman
+insisted, "and you look as good as any of them. Why not try for it, now
+you're here?"
+
+He gave Ollie a long application to fill out and left him at a desk
+just outside the personnel office.
+
+From somewhere came the clatter of a facsimile-printer, carrying the
+day's message from GHQ. A boy whistled above the squawk of a superwave
+radio. But otherwise the place seemed deserted at that early-morning
+hour.
+
+For lack of anything better to do, Ollie filled out the application,
+leaving the job title blank. The only thing that gave him pause, aside
+from the difficulty of seeing, was his arrest record, and in time he
+decided to put it down just as it was, including the pending assault
+charge with its implication of jumped bail.
+
+After an hour a young captain entered the building and went to the
+office marked Adjutant. A fat major gave Ollie a piercing glance and
+then entered the Civilian Personnel office. At about five minutes of
+eight the place suddenly boiled with military and civilian people of
+all ages and both sexes.
+
+Things quieted promptly at eight. A blond youth came out of the office,
+glanced at Ollie's application form, kept it, and invited him inside.
+
+"First thing for you," he said, "will be a physical exam."
+
+He took Ollie to another room and turned him over to a young medic
+who put him in a box like a steam cabinet, attached electrodes to his
+temples, wrists, ankles, and chest, and put a helmet on his head.
+
+For five minutes Ollie stood encased, his stomach fluttering as he
+recalled the grocer's warning. He waited for the vivisection to begin.
+
+It didn't. He was removed from his shell and handed an inked graph.
+
+"Here's your profile," the medic said. "It's good, considering. Take it
+back to the fellow who brought you here."
+
+He did and was ushered into a glassed-in office containing two desks,
+each labelled Civilian Personnel Officer. At one sat the fat major. At
+the other, a tallish young civilian held Ollie's application.
+
+"My name is Katt," the civilian said, getting up to shake hands. "This
+is Major Brownwight."
+
+The major also shook his hand. Katt placed a straightbacked chair
+between the two desks, and invited Ollie to sit in it. Ollie did,
+gazing uncertainly from one man to the other.
+
+"We heard you arrived by train early this morning," Katt said.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You were first reported in Sparks, but I'll bet you boarded that train
+in San Francisco."
+
+"Yes, sir. What's the penalty?"
+
+"None. I like it. It's enterprising, athletic, and even brave for a man
+of your years to do that for a job. Shows resourcefulness. Also skill,
+because men are trying to nip rides here from all over the United
+States, but very few arrive."
+
+"They're too old," said Major Brownwight. He turned to Katt and added,
+"I still don't think it's an old man's job!"
+
+"Well sir," said Katt, stifling a sigh, "your predecessor understood
+and approved of it. These old-timers have a lower metabolic rate
+than younger people, with all that that implies. They don't mind the
+enforced inactivity, they won't use up so much oxygen nor need so much
+food, they won't spend so many hours in sleep. All qualities we need."
+
+"Maybe so." The major turned to Ollie and said, "I just transferred in
+here. You know more about this than I do."
+
+"I don't even know what you're talking about," Ollie told him.
+
+"Without divulging classified information," said Katt, "for which you
+are not yet cleared, I can tell you these are little one-man jobs.
+Small stuff--for pioneering. That's why we want you men with lots of
+patience, who're used to being alone. People without a fixed place in
+society, and not too much to leave behind. A husky old itinerant like
+you is just what we want."
+
+"For what?" Ollie insisted.
+
+"To travel--as a sort of working passenger, since piloting will of
+course be mechanical--in the first manned spaceships to leave Earth for
+the stars."
+
+"Spaceships?"
+
+"Sure. Solo spaceships. Super-fast, which means the trip will
+seem relatively short while you're on it, and will give you extra
+earth-years of life in the end.
+
+"The job is much easier and less hazardous than the train ride that
+brought you here. You're a natural for it. You really fit it."
+
+"Do I, now?" A quick glow of inner warmth melted many bad years away.
+Ollie grinned.
+
+"You know," he said, "in a way that's a disappointment."
+
+"How so?" asked the major aggressively. "Don't you want the job?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I want it. But all these years I've been telling myself that
+somewhere on this earth was a place I'd fit into, if only I could find
+it. Now you tell me I fit in, but the place isn't here on Earth after
+all!"
+
+"Not right now, no," said Katt. "But you'll be back. Rich and famous,
+too. No Home for you, Mr. Hollveg--you'll have a nice place of your
+own."
+
+And he did--after photographing the planets of Arcturus.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Journey Work, by Dave Dryfoos
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 58899 ***