 Why does Ben take offence to Cobb's comments about spacemen?
With never a moment to rest, the pursuit through space felt like a game of hounds and hares ... or was it follow the leader? Most of the big room lay obscured behind a shimmering veil of tobacco smoke and the sweet, heavy fumes of Martian Devil's Egg. 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. Again, its face would be a pop-eyed mask of surprise as Ben's fist thudded into its jaw. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate. 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. At fourteen, he'd converted an abandoned shed on the government boarding-school grounds to a retreat which housed his collection of astronomy and rocketry books. 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. Ben rose and started to leave the bar, but Cobb grabbed his arm and held him there. 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. 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 try to stay in space, even if you exile yourself from Earth. After all, was it right for a single second, a single insignificant second, to destroy a man's life and his dream? He found a tramp freighter whose skipper was on his last flight before retirement. Discipline was lax, investigation of new personnel even more so.
 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.