t have got
much more than his big toe into boots that small! Somethin' tells me
the Pecos Kid has...."_

"... Traveled nearly two billion miles since then," said Hull.

Jayjay lifted his head from his book. "What?" He blinked. "I'm sorry;
I wasn't listening. What did you say?"

The younger man was still grinning triumphantly. "I said: We are
approaching turnover, and, according to my figures, nine days of
acceleration at one standard gee will give us a velocity of seventeen
million, five hundred and fifty miles per hour, and we have covered a
distance of nearly two billion miles." Then he added: "That is, if I
remembered my formulas correctly."

Jayjay Kelvin looked thoughtfully at the ceiling while he ran through
the figures in his head. "Something like that. It's the right order of
magnitude, anyway."

Hull looked a little miffed. "What answer did you get?"

"A little less than eight times ten to the third kilometers per
second. I was just figuring roughly."

Hull scribbled hastily, then smiled again. "Eighteen million miles an
hour, that would be. My memory's better than I thought at first. I'm
glad I didn't have to figure the time; doing square roots is a process
I've forgotten."

That was understandable, Jayjay thought. Hull was working for his
doctorate in sociology, and there certainly wasn't much necessity for
a sociologist to remember his freshman physics, much less his
high-school math.

Still, it was somewhat of a relief to find that Hull was interested in
something besides the "sociological reactions of Man in space". The
boy had spent six months in the mining cities in the Asteroid Belt,
and another six investigating the Jovian chemical synthesis planes and
their attendant cities. Now he was heading out to spend a few more
months observing the "sociological organization Gestalt" of the men
and women who worked at the toughest job in the System--taking the
heavy metals from the particularly dense sphere of Pluto.

Hull began scribbling on his paper again, evidently lost in the joys
of elementary physics, so Jayjay Kelvin went back to his book.

He had just read three words when Hull said: "Mr. Kelvin, do you mind
if I ask a question?"

Jayjay looked up from his book and saw that Jeffry Hull had reverted
to his role of the earnest young sociologist. Ah, well. "As I've told
you before, Mr. Hull, questions do not offend me, but I can't
guarantee that the answers won't offend you."

"Yes; of co