outward spiral began.

"Cripes--I'm not sure I can even astrogate to the Moon," Two-and-Two was
heard to complain.

"I'll check your ionic setting for you, Two-and-Two," Gimp answered him.
"After that the acceleration should continue properly without much
attention. So how about you and me taking first watch, while the others
ease off a little...?"

Frank Nelsen crept carefully back into his own rotating ring, still half
afraid that an armored knee or elbow might go right through the thin,
yielding stellene. Prone, and with his helmet still sealed, he slipped
into the fog which the tranquilizer now induced in his brain, while the
universe of stars, Moon, sun and Earth tumbled regularly around him.

He dreamed of yelling in endless fall, and of climbing over metal-veined
chunks of a broken world, where once there had been air, sea, desert and
forest, and minds not unlike those of men, but in bodies that were far
different. Gurgling thickly, he awoke, and snapped on his helmet phone
to kill the utter silence.

Someone muttered a prayer in a foreign tongue:

"... _Nuestra Dama de Guadalupe--te pido, por favor... Tengo miedo_--I'm
scared... _Pero pienso mas en ella_--I think more of her. _Mi chula, mi
linda_... My beautiful Eileen... Keep her--"

The prayer broke off, as if a switch was turned. It had been brash
Ramos... Now there were only some fragments of harmonica music...

Frank slipped into the blur, again, awakening at last with Two-and-Two
shaking his shoulder. "Hey, Frankie--we're five hours out, by the
chronometers--look how small the Earth has got...! We're all gonna have
brunch in Ramos' vehicle... Know what that goof ball Mex was doing,
before? Stripped down to his shorts, and with the spin stopped for
zero-G, he was bouncing back and forth from wall to wall inside his
bubb! The sun makes it nice and warm in there. Think I might try it,
myself, sometime. Shucks, I feel pretty good, now... Frankie, ain't you
hungry?"

Frank felt limp as a rag, but he felt much better than before, and he
could stand some nourishment. "Lead on, Two-and-Two," he said.

Ramos' bubb was spinning once more, but he was wearing just dungarees.
The Bunch--the Planet Strappers--with only their helmets off, were
crouched, evenly spaced, around the circular interior of the ring. Dave
Lester was there, too--staring, but fairly calm, now. In this curious
place, there was a delicious and improbable aroma of coffee--cooked by
mirro