.

There was nothing to see, because ports opening on outer space were not
safe for passengers to look through. Mere humans, untrained to keep
their minds on technical matters, could break down at the spectacle of
the universe. There could be no activity.

Some of the passengers took dozy-pills. Cochrane did not. It was against
the law for dozy-pills to produce a sensation of euphoria, of
well-being. The law considered that pleasure might lead to addiction.
But if a pill merely made a person drowsy, so that he dozed for hours
halfway between sleeping and awake, no harm appeared to be done. Yet
there were plenty of dozy-pill addicts. Many people were not especially
anxious to feel good. They were quite satisfied not to feel anything at
all.

Cochrane couldn't take that way of escape. He lay strapped in his chair
and thought unhappily of many things. He came to feel unclean, as people
used to feel when they traveled for days on end on railroad trains.
There was no possibility of a bath. One could not even change clothes,
because baggage went separately to the moon in a robot freight-rocket,
which was faster and cheaper than a passenger transport, but would kill
anybody who tried to ride it. Fifteen-and twenty-gravity acceleration is
economical of fuel, and six-gravity is not, but nobody can live through
a twenty-gravity lift-off from Earth. So passengers stayed in the
clothes in which they entered the ship, and the only possible concession
to fastidiousness was the disposable underwear one could get and change
to in the rest-rooms.

Babs Deane did not take dozy-pills either, but Cochrane knew better than
to be more than remotely friendly with her outside of office hours. He
did not want to give her any excuse to tell him anything for his own
good. So he spoke pleasantly and kept company only with his own
thoughts. But he did notice that she looked rapt and starry-eyed even
through the long and dreary hours of free flight. She was mentally
tracking the moonship through the void. She'd know when the continents
of Earth were plain to see, and the tints of vegetation on the two
hemispheres--northern and southern--and she'd know when Earth's
ice-caps could be seen, and why.

The stewardess was not too much of a diversion. She was brisk and calm
and soothing, but she became a trifle reluctant to draw too near the
chairs in which her passengers rode. Presently Cochrane made deductions
and maliciously devised a television c