a long look
and goes away.

I suppose he noticed that when the colonel came out with his remarks
about No women in Gilgamesh I was as surprised as any.

Presently the three of us are issued with protective clothing; we just
might have to venture out on the planet's surface and therefore we get
white one-piece suits to protect against Cold, heat, moisture,
dessication, radioactivity, and mosquitoes, and they are quite
becoming, really.

[Illustration]

B and I drag out dressing for thirty minutes; then we just sit while
Time crawls asymptotically towards the hour.

Then the speaker calls us to go.

We are out of the cabin before it says two words and racing for the
hold; so that we are just in time to see a figure out of an Historical
movie--padded, jointed, tin bowl for head and blank reflecting glass
where the face should be--stepping through the air lock.

The colonel and Mr. Yardo are there already. The colonel packs us into
the hopper and personally closes the door, and for once I know what
he is thinking; he is wishing he were not the only pilot in this ship
who could possibly rely on bringing the ship off and on Mass-Time at
one particular defined spot of Space.

Then he leaves us; half an hour to go.

The light in the hold begins to alter. Instead of being softly
diffused it separates into sharp-edged beams, reflecting and
crisscrossing but leaving cones of shadow between. The air is being
pumped into store.

Fifteen minutes.

The hull vibrates and a hatch slides open in the floor so that the
black of Space looks through; it closes again.

Mr. Yardo lifts the hopper gently off its mounts and lets it back
again.

Testing; five minutes to go.

I am hypnotized by my chronometer; the hands are crawling through
glue; I am still staring at it when, at the exact second, we go off
Mass-Time.

No weight. I hook my heels under the seat and persuade my esophagus
back into place. A new period of waiting has begun. Every so often
comes the impression we are falling head-first; the colonel using
ship's drive to decelerate the whole system. Then more free fall.

The hopper drifts very slowly out into the hold and hovers over the
hatch, and the lights go. There is only the glow from the visiscreen
and the instrument board.

One minute thirty seconds to go.

The hatch slides open again. I take a deep breath.

I am still holding it when the colonel's voice comes over the speaker:
"Calling _Gilgamesh_.