t limit.

When a government with tens of billions of dollars to spend becomes
monomaniacal, Great Things can be accomplished. Also, unfortunately,
Unspeakable Horrors.

_Stage One_: A drive was developed which could propel a spaceship at
half the speed of light. This was merely a matter of technological
concentration, and several billion dollars.

_Stage Two_: A ship was built around the drive, and outfitted with
every conceivable safety device. A laser-beam communication system was
installed, so that Sol could keep in contact with the ship all the way
to Centaurus. A crew of ten carefully screened, psyched and trained
near-supermen was selected, and the ship was launched on a
sixteen-year round-trip to Centaurus.

It never came back.

Two years out, the ten near-supermen became ten raving maniacs.

But the Solar Government did not give up. The next ship contained five
near-supermen, and five near-superwomen.

They only lasted for a year and a half.

The Solar Government intensified the screening process. The next ship
was manned by ten bona-fide supermen.

They stayed sane for nearly three years.

The Solar Government sent out a ship containing five supermen and five
superwomen. In two years, they had ten super-lunatics.

The psychologists came to the unstartling conclusion that even the
cream of humanity, in a sexually balanced crew, could not stand up
psychologically to sixteen years in a small steel womb, surrounded by
billions of cubic miles of nothing.

One would have expected reasonable men to have given up.

Not the Solar Government. Monomania had produced Great Things, in the
form of a c/2 drive. It now proceeded to produce Unspeakable Horrors.

The cream of the race had failed, reasoned the Solar Government,
therefore, we will give the dregs a chance.

The fifth ship was manned by homosexuals. They lasted only six months.
A ship full of lesbians bettered that by only two weeks.

Number Seven was manned by schizophrenics. Since they were _already_
mad, they did not go crazy. Nevertheless, they did not come back.
Number Eight was catatonics. Nine was paranoids. Ten was sadists.
Eleven was masochists. Twelve was a mixed crew of sadists and
masochists. No luck.

Maybe it was because thirteen was still a mystic number, or maybe it
was merely that the Solar Government was running out of ideas. At any
rate, ship Number Thirteen was the longest shot of all.

_Background_: From the beginnings of