anets
ultimately to serve only as sources of materials, Mitch's star people
would be left in relative peace for centuries.

Frank Nelsen began to chuckle again. As if something, everything, was
funny. Which, perhaps, it was in a way. Because the whole view, personal
and otherwise, seemed too huge and unpredictable for his wits to grasp.
It was as if neither he, nor any other person, belonged where he was at
all. He checked his thoughts in time. Otherwise, he would have commenced
hiccuping.

That was the way it went for a considerable succession of arbitrary
twenty-four hour day-periods. As long as he kept his attention on the
tasks in hand, he was okay--he felt fine. Still, the project was
proceeding almost automatically, just now. The first cluster of prefabs
had grown until it had been split into halves, which moved a million
miles apart, circling the sun. And he knew that there were other
clusters, built by other outfits, growing and dividing into widely
separated portions of the same great ring-like zone.

Maybe the old problems were beat. Safety? If deployment was the answer
to that, it was certainly there--to a degree, at least. Room enough?
Check. It was certainly available. Freedom of mind and action? There
wasn't much question that that would work out, too. Home, comfort, and a
kind of life not too unfamiliar? In the light of detached logic and
observation, that was going fine, too. In the main, people were
adjusting very quickly and eagerly. Perhaps _too_ quickly.

That was where Nelsen always got scared, as if he had become a nervous
old man. The Big Vacuum had a grandeur. It could seem gentle. Could
children, women and men--everybody sometimes forgot--learn to live with
it without losing their respect for it, until suddenly it killed them?

That was the worst point, if he let himself think. And how could he
always avoid that? From there his thoughts would branch out into his
multiple uncertainties, confusions and puzzlements. Then those
strangling hiccups would come. And who could be taking devil-killers
all the time?

He hadn't avoided Nance Codiss. He talked with her every day, lunched
with her, even held her hand. Otherwise, a restraint had come over him.
Because something was all wrong with him, and was getting worse. Just
one urge was clear, now, inside him. She knew, of course, that he was
loused up; but she didn't say anything. Finally he told her.

"You were right, Nance. I was fumbling my wa