nd his feet touching the deck of the cabin a good five feet
away.

Haney looked greenish, but he said hoarsely:

"Joe, don't make me laugh--not when my stomach feels like this!"

The feeling of weightlessness was unexpectedly daunting. Joe turned
himself about very slowly, with his legs floating indecorously in
entirely unintended kicks. He was breathing hard when he pulled himself
into the chair and strapped in once more.

"I'll take Communications," he told Mike as he settled his headphones.

Reluctantly, Mike switched over.

"Kenmore reporting to Communications," he said briefly. "We have ended
our take-off acceleration. You have our course and velocity. Our
instruments read--"

He went over the bank of instruments before him, giving the indication
of each. In a sense, this first trip of a ship out to the Platform had
some of the aspects of defusing a bomb. Calculations were useful, but
observations were necessary. He had to report every detail of the
condition of his ship and every instrument-reading because anything
might go wrong, and at any instant. Anything that went wrong could be
fatal. So every bit of data and every intended action needed to be on
record. Then, if something happened, the next ship to attempt this
journey might avoid the same catastrophe.

Time passed. A lot of time. The feeling of unending fall continued. They
knew what it was, but they had to keep thinking of its cause to endure
it. Joe found that if his mind concentrated fully on something else, it
jerked back to panic and the feel of falling. But the crew of the Space
Platform--now out in space for more weeks than Joe had been
quarter-hours--reported that one got partly used to it, in time. When
awake, at least. Asleep was another matter.

They were 1,600 miles high and still going out and up. The Earth as seen
through the ports was still an utterly monstrous, bulging mass, specked
with clouds above vast mottlings which were its seas and land. They
might have looked for cities, but they would be mere patches in a
telescope. Their task now was to wait until their orbit curved into
accordance with that of the Platform and they kept their rendezvous. The
artificial satellite was swinging up behind them, and was only a
quarter-circle about Earth behind them. Their speed in miles per second
was, at the moment, greater than that of the Platform. But they were
climbing. They slowed as they climbed. When their path intersected that
of t