he knew it was not from acceleration this time, it was
something else.

Something else.

_What's it like out there?_

His belly told him. Fear.

He reached out his hand to touch the control panel, and his arm did not
respond. It was shaking, uncontrollably, and moved off to the right of
where he wanted it to go. When he tried to correct, it swung too far to
the left, waving as if it were alive. It hung there before him as in a
dream, oscillating back and forth.

He could not control his body, and the realization nurtured the tiny
seed of panic that lay heavily in his belly.

_Dump it...._

What did that mean? _Dump it ... go home now, baby ... _I had_ a
true ..._

Decision ... there was a decision he had to make, but he was too
frightened to know what it was.

He had been born in fear and lived in fear and his body was full of it,
quivering to the lover's touch of fear. Falling, darkness, the fear of
dying, the unknown, the unimaginable always lurking just out of the
corner of his eye.

He wanted to scream and the fear choked it off. His hands were at his
sides, limply useless, dangling at the seat. He had to hang on to
something. His hand found a projection at the side of the seat. He
clutched it desperately.

He knew he would fall, down, spiraling, weightless, off the cliff as in
a dream, off the ladder, the tree, he was a child and his toes were
tingling as he stood too near the edge of the cliff, knowing he might
fall.

He clutched tightly, putting every ounce of his strength into holding on
to the lever, the single solid reality in a world of shifting unreality.
He was going to fall he was falling I love you I hate you I had a true
wife ...

* * * * *

There was softness beneath his back, and he moved his hands, feeling the
crispness of sheets. There was a low murmur of voices. He raised his
hands to his eyes and the voices stopped. There were heavy bandages on
his eyes.

"Colonel?" came a questing voice, and Johnny realized it was Doctor
Lambert. "Awake?"

"I can't see. Why can't I see?"

"You'll be all right. It's all right."

"What happened?"

"How much do you remember?" asked the voice. "The blast-off?"

"Yes--yes, I remember that."

"The orbit? The landing?"

"No," he said. "Not that."

"You did it," said the voice. "You made it."

_This is my day. Once around lightly._

"Johnny," said the voice. "I don't know just how to say this. We know
w