A Wreath of Stars

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Gilbert Snook sometimes thought of himself as being the exact social equivalent of a neutrino.

He was an aircraft engineer, and therefore not formally schooled in nuclear physics, but he knew the neutrino to be an elusive particle, one which interacted so faintly with the normal hadronic matter of the universe that it could flit straight through the Earth without hitting or disturbing one other particle. Snook was determined to do much the same thing on his linear course from birth towards death, and—at the age of forty—was well on the way to achieving his aim.

His parents were faded and friendless individuals, with insular tendencies, who had died when he was a child, leaving him little money and no family bonds of any kind. The only type of education made available to Snook by the local authority was of a technical nature, presumably because it was a quick and well-proven way of converting community liabilities into assets, but it had matched his aptitudes quite well. He had worked hard, easily holding his place in the classroom, always leading his group in benchwork. After collecting an adequate sheaf of certificates he had chosen to be an aircraft engineer, mainly because it was a trade which involved extensive foreign travel. He had inherited his parents’ liking for solitude and had made full use of his professional mobility to avoid concentrations of people. For almost two decades he had shuttled through the Near and Middle East, impartially selling his skills to anyone—oil company, airline or military organisation—who was straining aircraft to the limits and was prepared to pay well to keep them flying.

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