 Why did the story open the way it did?
How can I tell you what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an evil jack-in-the-box at night. Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning.... 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. 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. They expect us to make a new kind of civilization and a better place out of Earth. But your eyes were the eyes of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before. A moment later Mickey said, frowning, "What was he talking about, Ben? That's what most of you want, isn't it? I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart. Then your last words came back and jabbed me: "That's what Mickey used to want."
 to describe how torn Ben was in his decisions
 to show how frustrated he was with space  because his training was good and bad  because that was how long he'd been away from Laura  to describe how torn Ben was in his decisions