 Why does Ben take offence to Cobb's comments about spacemen?
A Coffin for Jacob By EDWARD W. LUDWIG Illustrated by EMSH [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956. With never a moment to rest, the pursuit through space felt like a game of hounds and hares ... or was it follow the leader? Ben Curtis eased his pale, gaunt body through the open doorway of the Blast Inn, the dead man following silently behind him. The place was like an evil caldron steaming with a brew whose ingredients had been culled from the back corners of three planets. Most of the big room lay obscured behind a shimmering veil of tobacco smoke and the sweet, heavy fumes of Martian Devil's Egg. He could not tell if they were Earthmen, Martians or Venusians. He was like a red-skinned marionette with pipestem arms and legs, clad in a torn skivvy shirt and faded blue dungarees. Five dollars or twenty keelis for visit Martian friend. "Then I show you to good table,— tres bien . I do not charge you, senor ." They passed the bar with its line of lean-featured, slit-eyed Earthmen—merchant spacemen. Several times, Ben glimpsed the bulky figures of CO 2 -breathing Venusians, the first he'd ever seen. Even when they played an Earth tune, it still seemed a song of old Mars, charged with echoes of lost voices and forgotten grandeur. For an instant, Ben's mind rose above the haunting vision of the dead man. He was stout and flabby and about forty and he hated spacemen. But he'd become a kind of invisible Siamese twin, as much a part of Ben as sight in his eyes. Again, its face would be a pop-eyed mask of surprise as Ben's fist thudded into its jaw. You can defeat him or submit to him or ignore him, and the matter is over and done. It had begun a week ago in Luna City. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate. The man named Cobb plopped his portly and unsteady posterior on the stool next to him. "Spacemen," he muttered, "are getting like flies. Everywhere, all you see's spacemen." "If it weren't for spacemen, you wouldn't be here." "Spacemen in their white monkey suits. He was twenty-four and dressed in the white, crimson-braided uniform of the Odyssey's junior astrogation officer. He was three months out of the Academy at White Sands and the shining uniform was like a key to all the mysteries of the Universe.
 It's deeply personal to him. He grew up venerating space and space travel. He spent his whole life preparing for it.
 He takes a lot of pride in his job, and dislikes Cobb disparaging it.  It's deeply personal to him. Because of his parent's death, he'd taken an interest in the job.  It's deeply personal to him. He grew up venerating space and space travel. He spent his whole life preparing for it.  He knows that spacemen account for the life people like Cobb can live, because of his work.