ee again,
looked down at him. He blinked several times and moistened his lips.
The suit was like a lead coffin. He didn't feel dead, but supposedly
dead and unable to tell any one. A ridiculous way to feel!

What was the matter with him? He'd expected to die, all the time, from
the start. Everybody died! Few could experience what he was
experiencing. Death was worth this. One last kick, the biggest kick of
all for Hal Barlow. You lived for kicks, so what was the matter?

He couldn't move his limbs; he could barely lift his head. Encased in
700 pounds of suit. Helpless. A pencil-flash flickered on and off. A
couple of eyes shone. A whisper. "The kit is fastened to your belt.
The instructions are in an air-tight capsule inside the kit. If you're
caught, and the paper's removed, it will disintegrate; now we'll slide
you inside."

The helmet slid over his face. It was absolutely dark. The suit,
all-enclosing mobile shelter, atmosphere-pressure, temperature-control,
mobility and electric power to manipulate tools. Its own power plant. It
reprocessed continuously the precious air breathed by the occupant,
putting it back into circulating supply after enriching it. The rocket was
cold and alien and it would support no life; the suit alone protected him.
The rocket was just metal and gadgets; only the suit stood between him and
an agonizing death from acceleration, deceleration, extremes of heat and
cold.

The dolly was rolling him in through the small opening. His encased
body being slid, stuffed, jammed into something like a wad of ammo
into a barrel. His body was entirely constricted. He couldn't hear
anything. It was black. He could shift his massive helmet slightly. It
clanged against metal, and the sound inside the helmet was like rusty
thunder.

His blood boiled softly. He felt like a child shut up in the dark. He
thought of the radio in the suit, and desperately manipulated the
controls by the small control-panel in the metal hand of the suit.

The voices seemed to quiet whatever had been boiling up in him. He had
started to scream; he remembered that now. Somehow, with an intense
effort, he had suppressed the scream, clamped his teeth on it. Now the
voices helped. He realized how much time had passed in the quick
pressured dark. Voices preparing to send the first rocket to the moon.
Quiet voices with all the suspense and tension held down by long
military habit.

He had started being afraid. More than that. He