headpiece. He
carried them to his bunk and laid them carefully down.

"Will somebody please help me on with my suit?" he asked.

For one more long moment, no one moved. Then James got up and began to
help Ross fit his legs into the suit. Ross had arthritis, not badly, but
enough so that he needed a little help climbing into a spacesuit.

James pulled the heavy folds of the suit up around Ross's body and held
it while Ross extended his arms into the sleeve sections. His hands, in
the heavy gauntlets, were too unwieldy to do the front fastenings, and
he stood silently while James did it for him.

Ross lifted the helmet, staring at it as a cripple might regard a
wheelchair which he loathed but was wholly dependent upon. Then he
fitted the helmet over his head and James fastened it down and lifted
the oxygen tank to his back.

"Ready?" asked James.

The bulbous headpiece inclined in a nod. James walked to a panel and
threw a switch marked INNER LOCK. A round aperture slid silently open.
Ross stepped through it and the door shut behind him as James threw the
switch back to its original position. Opposite the switch marked OUTER
LOCK a signal glowed redly and James threw another switch. A moment
later the signal flickered out.

Frankston, with a violent gesture, swept the checker board clean. Red
and black men clattered to the floor, rolling and spinning. Nobody
picked them up.

"What does he do it for?" demanded Frankston in a tight voice. "What
does he get out of those stinking geraniums he can't touch or smell?"

"Shut up," said Gregory.

James looked up sharply. Curtness was unusual for Gregory, a bad sign.
Frankston was the one he'd been watching, the one who'd shown signs of
cracking, but after so long, even a psycho-expert's opinion might be
haywire. Who was a yardstick? Who was normal?

"Geraniums don't smell much anyway," added Gregory in a more
conciliatory tone.

"Yeah," agreed Frankston, "I'd forgotten that. But why does he torture
himself like this, and us, too?"

"Because that's what he wanted to do," answered James.

"Sure," agreed Gregory, "the whole trip--the last twenty years of it,
anyhow--all he could talk about was how, when he got back to Earth, he
was going to buy a little place in the country and raise flowers."

"Well, we're back," muttered Frankston, with a terrible bitterness.
"He's raising flowers, but not in any little place in the country."

* * * *