Way Station

by Clifford D. Simak

If a man wanted to live to be a thousand, it might be a thing of wonder, but it was his own damned business.

Our horizons are so far, he thought, and we see so little of them. Even now, with flaming rockets striving from Canaveral to break the ancient bonds, we dream so little of them.

As if this were a special place, one of those special places that each man must seek out for himself, and count himself as lucky if he ever found it, for there were those who sought and never found it. And worst of all, there were even those who never hunted for it.

You can’t love the doll you made or I the toymaker. But each of us thought we did; each of us still think we should and are guilty and miserable when we find we can’t.” “We could try,” said Enoch. “If you would only stay.” “And end up by hating you? And, worse than that, by your hating me. Let us keep the guilt and misery. It is better than the hate.”