The Stars My Destination

by Alfred Bester

“I don’t know about Nomad, nothing.” “No, no, Foyle, that won’t do. You show up with Nomad tattooed across your face. Fresh tattooed. Intelligence checks and finds you were aboard Nomad when she sailed. Foyle, Gulliver: AS:128/127:006, Mechanic’s Mate, 3rd Class. As if all this isn’t enough to throw Intelligence into a tizzy, you come back in a private launch that’s been missing fifty years. Man, you’re cooking in the reactor. Intelligence wants the answers to all these questions. And you ought to know how Central Intelligence butchers its answers out of people.” Foyle started. Dagenham nodded as he saw his point sink home. “Which is why I think you’ll listen to reason. We want information, Foyle. I tried to trick it out of you; admitted. I failed because you’re too tough; admitted. Now I’m offering an honest deal. We’ll protect you if you’ll co-operate. If you don’t, you’ll spend five years in an Intelligence lab having information chopped out of you.” It was not the prospect of the butchery that frightened Foyle, but the thought of the loss of freedom. A man had to be free to avenge himself, to raise money and find Vorga again, to rip and tear and gut Vorga.