little push had been imparted, and drifting until
you triggered the opposite rocket for braking.

The airtanks on my back were right off a scuba outfit.

Really, they spent more time on the gloves than anything else. At
first we thought of the problem as a heat problem, but it was tougher
than that. Heat loss was not much, out there in a vacuum, and they
made arrangements to warm the handles of my tools so that I wouldn't
bleed heat through my gloves to them and thus freeze my fingers. No,
the problem was to get a glove that stood up to a pressure difference
of three or four pounds per square inch and could still be flexed with
any accuracy by my fingers. We could make a glove that was pretty
thin, but it stiffened out under pressure and made delicate work
really tough. It was a lot like trying to do brain surgery in mittens.

They eventually gave me a porous glove that leaked air when you flexed
your fingers. Air, they said, could always be gotten from the
Dyna-Soar rocket that would be hanging close at hand in space. Well,
we hoped it would work. I could do pretty fair work with the leaky
gloves, and all we could hope was that the vapor would be dry enough
as it seeped out through the gloves to prevent formation of a foggy
cloud all around me, or the formation of frost on the gloves. That we
could not test under any conditions easy to simulate.

Each team spent ninety days. They tell me that's right quick work for
pointing up a launch. But at the end of three months I had assembled
enough stuff to do the job, and still well within the weight limit
they had to set. I wasn't a walking machine shop, but there was a lot
I could do if I had to.

* * * * *

Ninety days had been enough for several dates with Sylvia. Out of the
office she wasn't quite the protective harpy about Paul Cleary that
she had been in the office, although the thought was never far from
her mind.

We spent my final night in New York before leaving for the Cape at
Sweets, a real old fashioned seafood house down on Fulton street.
After the obligatory oysters, we had broiled bluefish, and otherwise
lived it up. They serve a good piece of apple pie, and we had that
with our coffee.

"Are you scared?" Sylvia asked me.

"Of what?" I lied innocently.

"Of being out in space--just floating around?"

"Yes," I told her honestly. "I'm scared to death. What if I have a
queasy stomach? They say a good half of the men w