said. "What makes this
little--" He circled his hands sickly in front of his stomach.

Harold closed his eyes and made similar circles. "Oh, that's this
counter-grav of mine. You see, the gravitation of the Earth--"

"Can't you do anything about it?" Orville was in no mood to listen to
one of Harold's lectures.

"I could move her over so we couldn't feel it, but it would be shaking
the ship then. Might tear it apart."

"Won't it tear us apart?"

"I don't think so. We got more give to us than the ship has." Harold was
able to drink the coffee now. "No, I don't think I've done a bad job on
this. First time a machine is built, you're bound to run into a few
bugs. But this is working, so far, even better than I expected."

"Yeah," Orville had to admit, "it ain't bad--for a guy with no
mechanical ability whatever."

II

Harold had opened the ship up a little more, and according to him, they
were now moving eighteen thousand miles per hour or so, approximately.
Orville had tried to drink some water from a milk bottle, but the sight
of the water, bouncing in rhythm to the invisible circles in his
stomach, had given him nausea.

Harold knelt on the floor, smoothing out a soiled sheet of paper. In the
center was a small circle, labeled in Harold's sloppy handwriting
"Earth." An arrow showed the direction of the Earth's motion around the
Sun. Outside this was a larger circle labeled "Orbit of Moon." A spiral
reached out from the Earth to intersect the Moon's orbit.

"Had the darnedest time drawing this," Harold said. "Got it out of an
astronomy book. _Let's Look at the Stars_ by someone. Thirty-five cents.
Let's see now."

He wet the point of the pencil and made a mark. He scratched his head
and erased the mark and made another.

"Harold, another thing," said Orville. "I weigh around one ninety-five.
Won't that take a lot of extra gas?"

"Nope. Doesn't matter if you weigh a ton. According to my counter-grav
principle--"

"Won't it get stuffy in here with two of us?"

"Why, I have some oxygen. That welding place in back of the garage where
I work--got a tank off them. Had to pay cash, but I can turn in the
empty when we get back."

"You sure one tank'll be enough?"

[Illustration]

"Well--" Harold flushed guiltily. "You won't say anything about this? I
took along several extra tanks, just to make sure. I wasn't stealing.
You see, I figure I might make some money out of this thing."

"Say!" Orville hadn