. Each man had his own private sweating party. The padded
passenger compartments were above the blastoff drum freight sections.

"Helmets secure? Air-restorer systems on? Phones working? Answer roll
call if you hear me. Baines, George?"

"Here!" Two-and-Two responded, loud and plain in Frank Nelsen's phone,
from the other rocket.

"Hines, Walter?"

One by one the names were called... "Kuzak, Arthur?... Kuzak,
Joseph?..."

"Okay--the Mystic Nine, eh? Lash down!"

They lay on their backs on the padded floors, and fastened the straps.
Gimp Hines, next to Frank, seemed to have discarded his crutches,
somewhere.

The inspector swaggered around among them, jerking straps, and tapping
shoulders and buttocks straight on the floor padding with a boot toe.

"All right--not good, not too bad. Ease off--shut your eyes, maybe. The
next twenty minutes are ours. The rest are yours, except for orders. I
hope you remember your jump procedures. Also that there are a lot of
wooden nickels Upstairs--in orbit, on the Moon, anyplace. We'll call
some of your shots from the ground. Good luck--and Glory help you..."

The growl in their phones died away with the muffled footsteps. Doors
closed on their gaskets and were dogged, automatically.

Then it was like waiting five minutes more, inside a cannon barrel.
There was a buzzing whisper of nuclear exciters. The roar of power cut
in. A soft lurch told that the rockets were off the ground--fireborne.
The pressure of acceleration mounted. You closed your eyes to make the
blackness seem natural, instead of a blackout in your optic nerves, and
the threadiness of your mind seem like sleep. But you felt smothered,
just the same. Somebody grunted. Somebody gave a thick cry.

Frank Nelsen had the strange thought that, by his body's mounting
velocity, enough kinetic energy was being pumped into it to burn it to
vapor in an instant, if it ever hit the air. But it was the energy of
freedom from gravity, from the Earth, from home--_for_ adventure.
Freedom to wander the solar system, at last! He tried, still, to believe
in the magnificence of it, as the thrust of rocket power ended, and the
weightlessness of orbital flight came dizzily.

He didn't consciously hear the order to leave the orbiting GO-12, which
was moving only about five hundred feet from it's companion, GO-11. But,
like most of the others, he worked his way with dogged purpose through
what seemed a fuzzy nightmare.

The doors of