 Why does Mickey decide not to go into space?
Spacemen Die at Home By EDWARD W. LUDWIG Illustrated by THORNE One man's retreat is another's prison ... and it takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home! How can I tell you what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the stars? The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after spawning its first-born. For it was June in this year of 1995, and we were the graduating class of the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight. They're going to bring us the metals and minerals that we desperately need. They're going to find new land for our colonists, good rich land that will bear food and be a home for our children. And perhaps most important of all, they'll make other men think of the stars and look up at them and feel humility—for mankind needs humility." The speaker was Robert Chandler, who'd brought the first rocket down on Mars just five years ago, who'd established the first colony there, and who had just returned from his second hop to Venus. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time, for I was thinking: He's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the others alone! Mickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. My parents had died in a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those "You are cordially invited" cards. He was a veteran of Everson's first trip to the Moon nearly twenty-five years ago, and he was still at it. I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. The Universe was mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only half as big. They expect us to make a new kind of civilization and a better place out of Earth. He was his normal, boyish self again, walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm with some silent melody.
 Mickey thinks that if he goes into space he'll only live another five to ten years. Space travel is dangerous.
 Mickey was offered a job as Chief Jetman on the Lunar Lady.  Mickey was offered a job at the Academy teaching astrogation.  Mickey thinks that if he goes into space he'll only live another five to ten years. Space travel is dangerous.  Mickey was offered a job as Chief Jetman on the White Sands.