ng out there since
time without beginning and would wait for time without end.

Sometimes he would touch his finger to the wall and think, _Death is out
there, only one-sixteenth of an inch away_. His first fears became a
black and terrible conviction: the bubble could not continue to resist
the attack for long. It had already lasted longer than it should have.
Two million pounds of pressure wanted out and all the sucking Nothing of
intergalactic space wanted in. And only a thin skin of metal, rotten
with brittle welding spots, stood between them.

It wanted in--the Nothing wanted in. He knew, then, that Horne and
Silverman had not been insane. It wanted in and someday it would get in.
When it did it would explode him and jerk out his guts and lungs. Not
until that happened, not until the Nothing filled the bubble and
enclosed his hideous, turned-inside-out body would it ever be content ...

* * * * *

He had long since quit wearing the magnetized shoes, afraid the
vibration of them would weaken the bubble still more. And he began
noticing sections where the bubble did not seem to be perfectly concave,
as though the rolling mill had pressed the metal too thin in places and
it was swelling out like an over-inflated balloon.

He could not remember when he had last attended to the instruments.
Nothing was important but the danger that surrounded him. He knew the
danger was rapidly increasing because whenever he pressed his ear to the
wall he could hear the almost inaudible tickings and vibrations as the
bubble's skin contracted or expanded and the Nothing tapped and searched
with its empty fingers for a flaw or crack that it could tear into a
leak.

But the windows were far the worst, with the Nothing staring in at him
day and night. There was no escape from it. He could feel it watching
him, malignant and gloating, even when he hid his eyes in his hands.

The time came when he could stand it no longer. The cot had a blanket
and he used that together with all his spare clothes to make a tent
stretching from the table to the first instrument panel. When he crawled
under it he found that the lower half of one window could still see him.
He used the clothes he was wearing to finish the job and it was much
better then, hiding there in the concealing darkness where the Nothing
could not see him.

He did not mind going naked--the temperature regulators in the bubble
never let it get too co