e all right, madame. You got here in time, and that's what counts.
But you'll have to hurry to get to your cabin before takeoff."

"Wait!" said Steward Davis. His long face had come to life as he looked
at her admiringly and extended his tray of flowers.

"White roses? For me?" she said.

"Yes, madame. Compliments of the Star Line."

Turning her head, she moved away. "Thank you, but I'm not ready to wear
white roses, yet. It's not that they're not lovely, but--" she raised
her arms, burdened with their scented blooms, "you see that I already
have so many flowers, and the red rose is still for the living!"

Davis banged his tray to the floor and shoved it aside with his foot.

"All right, madame. Now we'll have to hurry. We'll have to run!"

* * * * *

A final bell rang, a final light flashed.

On the floor below the ship, the crowds of relatives and wistful
stay-at-homes gazed up; at the beautiful metal creation, poised on its
slender fins, nose pointed towards the opened dome.

A vibration began, a gentle, barely perceptible shuddering of the ground
which increased in frequency. It beat through the floor, into their
feet, until their whole bodies quivered with the racing pulse that grew
faster, faster, as the twenty-four total conversion Piles in the ship
released their power. Then, as the people watched, between one instant
and the next, the ship vanished. In the blink of an eyelid she had
shifted to hyperspace.

The _Star Lord_ had begun her maiden voyage.

* * * * *

By the second day out, most of the passengers felt completely at home.
The ship had become a separate world, and the routines they had left
behind them on earth, and the various routines they would take up again
some six weeks from now on Almazin III seemed equally remote and
improbable. Life on the _Star Lord_ was the only reality.

She moved through the uncharted realms of hyperspace, travelling in one
hour's time as measured by earth watches, more than twenty light years
distance, if measured in the units of real space. The ship itself was
quiet. The vibration of the takeoff had ended in a moment, and now the
passengers could hear no noise and hum of motors, could feel no motion
against swelling waves, no battering against a barrier of uneven air.
The artificial gravity induced a sense of security as absolute as though
the ship were resting on living rock.

Although most o