 What does Ben seem to fear, more than anything else?
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. Most of the big room lay obscured behind a shimmering veil of tobacco smoke and the sweet, heavy fumes of Martian Devil's Egg. For an instant, Ben's mind rose above the haunting vision of the dead man. 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. 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. 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. 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. So , Ben reflected, you can take a beer-and-pretzels tale seriously. After all, was it right for a single second, a single insignificant second, to destroy a man's life and his dream? So now he sat searching for a perhaps nonexistent red-bearded giant, and hoping and doubting and fearing, all at once. A ceaseless parade of faces broke through the smoky veil that enclosed him—reddish balloon faces, scaly reptilian faces, white-skinned, slit-eyed faces, and occasionally a white, rouged, powdered face. Each whiteness became brighter and closer, like shrinking spokes of a wheel with Ben as their focal point. The patrons of the Blast Inn were like tatter-clad occupants of a house whose walls have been ripped away.
 Losing his position and the chance to fly spaceships.
 The law, and atoning for his crime.  Losing his position and the chance to fly spaceships.  The dead man, and the way he persists in his mind.  Maggie and her husband, and the position they've put him in.