e springs in our seats pushed back out. And
then I got my first taste of free fall. Each veteran astronaut I had
talked to at the Cape had a different way of trying to scare me with
the idea of falling endlessly, and each had different ideas about how
to lick it. In spite of all the talk, I grabbed the arms of my seat to
keep from falling. I turned my head and in the glow from our
instruments could see Sid sneering across at me through his
transparent bubble helmet.

"How you like them apples?" his voice came from my earphone.

"That first step is a killer, Sid," I said, trying to sound chipper. I
felt horrible.

"Let me know when you've had enough," he suggested. "I've got things
to do."

I knew he did. We had dry-run it a hundred times. If we had been
inserted correctly in orbit, the _Nelly Bly_ was right in the path
that three of the Telstars were now following, and catching up with
Number One at several hundred miles an hour. On the ground, radars all
around the world were taking fixes on us, and Sid was talking shop
over his long-range radio with the radar crews.

By the time my stomach had made up its mind that it would stick with
me, he had a report.

"It could be worse," he said. "We've got a lot more velocity than I'd
like, but we're on course. Our orbit would differ quite some, Seaman.
Because of this speed we'd be somewhat more eccentric--maybe swing out
a hundred miles beyond the birds we're chasing. Are you making it?"

"Easy, Sid. Do we slow down yet?"

"I'll fire the retros and retard us to the speed of what we're
chasing," he said. "That will equalize our orbits very nearly. Get
busy on that scope if you're up to it. I'll compute my retro."

* * * * *

They had made an amateur radar operator out of me, because it was easy
to do, and gave Sid more time for actual rocket valving. My belt cut
me hard as he braked for several seconds.

"There," Sid's voice said in my ear. "We should still be catching up
about fifty miles an hour. Let's not ram that thing. See any blip?"

"Not yet. How close are we supposed to be?"

He lit the cabin light and tapped at the calculator that he swung out
from its rack. "Still got a hundred miles to go, I'd judge." He moved
awkwardly in his suit to finger a switch on his neck and I heard him
speaking to the ground again, and heard in my earphones the answer
that came up from Woomera. We had eighty miles to go, and were now a
little