ons of years. And they want to send me back to get
fitted for a duronylon strait jacket again.

An hour after I shut off the viso-screen, and while I am taking my
calves' liver and onion capsules, my friend and space-lanceman,
D'Ambrosia Zahooli comes in. He just qualifies as a spaceman as he
takes up very little and is not much easier to look at than a Nougatine.
Once D'Ambrosia applied for a plasticectomy but the surgeons at the
Muzayo clinic just laughed and told him there was a limit to science
even in the year 2022. But the citizen was at home when they divided the
brains. Of course that is only my opinion. He is to fly with me into
inner space.

"Greetin's and salutations, and as the Martians say, 'max nabiscum,'
Sep," Zahooli says. "I have been figuring that we won't have to go
deeper than about four thousand kilometers. All that is worryin' me is
gettin' back up. I still do not fully believe that we won't melt.
Supposin' Professor Zalpha is right and that we will dive down into a
core of live iron ore. You have seen them pour it out of the big dippers
in the mills, Sep."

"Columbus started off like us," I says. "Who knew what he would find or
where he ended up? Chris expected to fall right off the edge of the
world, but did that scare him? No!"

"Of course you can count on me," Zahooli says. "When do we start
building this mechanical mole?"

"In just two days," I says. "Our backers have purchased an extinct
spaceship factory not far from Commonwealth Seven. Yeah, we will call
our project 'Operation Earthworm,' pal."

D'Ambrosia sits down and starts looking chicken. "We wouldn't get no
astrogator in his right mind to go with us, Sep. How many times the
thrust will we need over what we would use if we was just cutting space?
We start out in about a foot of topsoil, then some hard rock and then
more hard rock. Can we harness enough energy to last through the
diggin'? Do you mind if I change my mind for a very good reason which is
that I'm an awful coward?"

"Of course not," I says. "It would be a coincidence if you quit though,
my dear old friend, and right after Coordinator One found out who was
sipping Jovian drambuie on a certain space bistro last Monday with his
Venutian wife."

"You have sold me," Zahooli says. "I wouldn't miss this trip for one of
those four-legged turkey farms up in Maine. It is kind of frustratin'
though, don't you think, Septimus? We are still not thirty and could
live another h