 What is the irony in Ben's contempt for a single action destroying "a man's life and his dream?"
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 had twenty dives such as this. 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.
 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.