in Wonstead's
monologue of complaint and regret? Raf had heard the same words over
and over so often that they no longer had any meaning--except as a
series of sounds he might miss if the man who shared this pocket were
suddenly stricken dumb.

"Should never have put in for training--" Wonstead's whine went up the
scale.

That was unoriginal enough. They had all had that idea the minute
after the sorter had plucked their names for crew inclusion. No matter
what motive had led them into the stiff course of training--the
fabulous pay, a real interest in the project, the exploring fever--Raf
did not believe that there was a single man whose heart had not sunk
when he had been selected for flight. Even he, who had dreamed all his
life of the stars and the wonders which might lie just beyond the big
jump, had been honestly sick on the day he had shouldered his bag
aboard and had first taken his place on this mat and waited, dry
mouthed and shivering, for blast-off.

One lost all sense of time out here. They ate sparingly, slept when
they could, tried to while away the endless hours artificially divided
into set periods. But still weeks might be months, or months weeks.
They could have been years in space--or only days. All they knew was
the unending monotony which dragged upon a man until he either lapsed
into a dreamy rejection of his surroundings, as had Hamp and Floy, or
flew into murderous rages, such as kept Morris in solitary confinement
at present. And no foreseeable end to the flight--

Raf breathed shallowly. The air was stale, he could almost taste it.
It was difficult now to remember being in the open air under a sky,
with fresh winds blowing about one. He tried to picture on that dull
strip of metal overhead a stretch of green grass, a tree, even the
blue sky and floating white clouds. But the patch remained stubbornly
gray, the murmur of Wonstead went on and on, a drone in his aching
ears, the throb of the ship's life beat through his own thin body.

What had it been like on those legendary early flights, when the
secret of the overdrive had not yet been discovered, when any who
dared the path between star and star had surrendered to sleep, perhaps
to wake again generations later, perhaps never to rouse again? He had
seen the few documents discovered four or five hundred years ago in
the raided headquarters of the scientific outlaws who had fled the
regimented world government of Pax and dared space on the