from the cosmic receptors of her sister ship, the
passengers and their new possessions were moved into their former
quarters. There was a brief ceremony of farewell, the doors of the
airlocks were closed, the careful check-out was gone through, and the
driving projectors of the _Sirius_ lifted both great vessels up the
shaft, slowly and easily. And after them, as long as they could be seen,
stared the thousands of Callistonians who thronged the great shaft's
floor. Many of the spectators were not, strictly speaking, Callistonians
at all. They were really Europans, born and reared in that hidden city
which was to have been the last stronghold of Callisto's civilization.
In that throng were hundreds who had never before seen the light of the
sun nor any of the glories of the firmament, hundreds to whom that brief
glimpse was a foretaste of the free and glorious life which was soon to
be theirs.

Up and up mounted that powerful tug-boat of space, with her heavy barge,
falling smoothly upward at normal acceleration. Below her first Europa,
then mighty Jupiter, became moons growing smaller and smaller. In their
stateroom Nadia's supple waist writhed in the curve of Stevens' arm as
she turned and looked up at him with sparkling eyes.

"Well, big fellow, how does it feel to be out of a job? Or are you going
over there every day on a tractor beam to work, as Norman suggested?"

"Not on your sweet young life!" he exclaimed. "Norm thought he was
kidding somebody, but it registered zero. It gives me the pip to loaf
around when there's a lot of work to do, but this is entirely different.
Nothing's driving us now, and a fellow's entitled to at least one
honeymoon during his life. And what a honeymoon this is going to be,
little spacehound of my heart! Nothing to do but love you all the way
from here to Tellus! Whoopee!"

"Oh, there's a couple of other things to do," she reminded him gaily.
"You've got to smoke a lot of good cigarettes, I must eat a lot of
Delray's chocolates, and we both really should catch up on eating fancy
cooking. Speaking of eating, isn't that the second call for dinner? It
_is_!" and they went along the narrow hall toward the elevator. To these
two the long journey was to seem all too short.

Long though the voyage was, it was uneventful. The occupants of the
two vessels were in constant touch with each other by means of the
communicators, and there was also much visiting back and forth in
person. Stevens