thought. My only problem is to observe, compute,
and get back into this dungeon without being observed, and back to
Earth.

The idea was to keep it from the women. The women wouldn't go for this
at all. They would object. The women would be able to bring into effect
several laws dealing with spaceflight, among them the one against
stowaways, and especially that particular one about aberrated males
sneaking into space and committing suicide.

A lot of men had tried it, in the beginning. Some of them had managed
it, but they had all died. For a long time, the men's egos hadn't been
able to admit that the male organism was incapable of standing the
rigors of acceleration. Women had had laws passed, and if the women
caught him doing this, the punishment would be extreme for him,
personally, and a lot more extreme for Earth civilization in general. If
you could call it a civilization. You could call it anything, Bowren
groaned--but it didn't make sense. A world without women. A birthrate
reduced to zero.

A trickle of sweat slid past Bowren's eyes, loosening a nervous flush
along his back that prickled painfully. His throat was tense and his
heart pounded loud in the hot dark.

A sharp pain ran up his body and exploded in his head. He tried to
swallow, but something gagged in his throat. He was afraid of retching.
He lay with his mouth open, spittle dribbling over his lips. The pain
returned, hammered at his entrails. He fought the pain numbly, like a
man grappling in the dark.

The wave subsided and he lay there gasping, his fists clenched.

"The pain will come in increasingly powerful waves," the Doctor had
said. "At a certain point, it will be so great, the analytical mind will
completely short-circuit. It will stay that way enroute to Mars, and
meanwhile your body will rapidly change into that of a beast. Don't
worry about it. A catalytic agent will return you to normal before you
reach the planet. If you live, you'll be human again."

* * * * *

A male human couldn't stand the acceleration. But a woman could. Animals
could. They had experimented on human males and animals in the giant
centrifuges, and learned what to do. Animals could stand 25 "G"
consistently, or centrifugal forces as high as 120 revolutions a minute.
About 10 "G" was the limit of female endurance. Less for men.

It had never been thoroughly determined why women had been able to stand
higher acceleration. But h