 What is the irony in Ben's contempt for a single action destroying "a man's life and his dream?"
A Coffin for Jacob By EDWARD W. LUDWIG Illustrated by EMSH 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. 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. You can't escape from a memory that has burned into your mind. It had begun a week ago in Luna City. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate. At sixteen, he'd spent every weekend holiday hitchhiking from Boys Town No. 5 in the Catskills to Long Island Spaceport. There, among the grizzled veterans of the old Moon Patrol, he'd found friends who understood his dream and who later recommended his appointment to the U. S. Academy for the Conquest of Space. And a month ago, he'd signed aboard the Odyssey —the first ship, it was rumored, equipped to venture as far as the asteroids and perhaps beyond. Cobb was persistent: "Damn fools shoulda known enough to stay on Earth. Until this instant, Ben had suppressed his anger. Now, suddenly and without warning, it welled up into savage fury. You can give yourself up, and that's what a good officer would do. Under interplanetary law, that would mean ten years in prison and a dishonorable discharge. They don't want new men over thirty-four for officers on rockets or even for third-class jet-men on beat-up freighters—they don't want convicted killers. Or— There were old wives' tales of a group of renegade spacemen who operated from the Solar System's frontiers. They were misfits, rejectees from the clearing houses on Earth. And whereas no legally recognized ship had ventured past Mars, the souped-up renegade rigs had supposedly hit the asteroids. So , Ben reflected, you can take a beer-and-pretzels tale seriously. You can hide for a couple of days, get rid of your uniform, change your name.
 He'd just done the same to a man by striking him without thought, and is now running from his guilt.
 If he had stayed and made the decision to confess, he wouldn't have ruined his life.  He'd just deliberately ended a man's life, and his running from what he's done.  It's against the morals of what he claims to stand by.  He'd just done the same to a man by striking him without thought, and is now running from his guilt.