out there in the void. We've
got experienced men here, and none of them is ready to try it."

"Fools rush in, eh, Mr. Stein."

"Precisely."

In the meantime I got a daily phone call from Paul Cleary. That I
could have snarled off, but Sylvia always came on the line first, and
there was a minute or so of chit-chat before she cut her boss in on
the line. I'm sure she listened to all the calls. But her first words
were deadly. For example:

"Mike! Hi, Mike. Mr. Cleary wants to see how you're doing."

"Good. Put him on."

"In a minute. I think it's so wonderful you passed the final physical,
Mike. You're really so deceptive. I never had imagined you had such a
steely physique."

"Clean living," I said. "No girls."

"There'd better not be!"

"Don't worry. How could I get to see any girls down here? Every time I
look away from my work all I can see is Bikini swim suits."

"Cut that out!" she snickered, and put Cleary on the line.

* * * * *

There came a final day when the mission chief called me in to his
office.

"Come in, Mike. Come in," he said shortly. "Sit down." He leaned back
against his desk and started talking to me, like they say, straight
from the shoulder:

"I'll give it to you straight, Mike. We've tried every legal way to
wash you out of this mission. There isn't a one of us here at the Cape
that wants any part of taking an armchair theorist and slapping him
into space--into the kind of a mission you've cooked up. Somebody's
going to get hurt out there, because you aren't fit for the job. Now,
physically, yes, you have the capacity. But emotionally and
environmentally, you simply don't add up. You're looking at this thing
as an extension of your laboratory, and instead it is an enormous
physical and mental hazard that you are undertaking. This country has
never lost a man in space--and you'll be the cause of our first
casualty, as well as being one yourself. I'm asking you man to man to
disqualify yourself."

"And put an end to this mission?"

"We'll train one of our men," he said.

"In two or three years your best man might be barely capable," I said.
"I don't think COMCORP is prepared to waste that much time. After
all," I said ingratiatingly, "all you have to do is refuse the
mission. Say I'm a built-in hazard and let it go at that." I grinned
at him. I was learning from Paul Cleary. I _figured_ how space-jockeys
would react to that.

He told me: "Do y