to it. He was able to move his arms and hands. They felt abnormally
heavy, and he experienced an extreme and intolerable weariness. He
wanted to go to sleep.

This was the second-stage rocket-phase. The moon-rocket had blasted off
at six gravities acceleration until clear of atmosphere and a little
more. Acceleration-chairs of remarkably effective design, plus the
pre-saturation of one's blood with oxygen, made so high an acceleration
safe and not unendurable for the necessary length of time it lasted.
Now, at three gravities, one did not feel on the receiving end of a
violent thrust, but one did feel utterly worn out and spent. Most people
stayed awake through the six-gravity stage and went heavily to sleep
under three gravities.

Cochrane fought the sensation of fatigue. He had not liked himself for
accepting the orders that had brought him here. They had been issued in
bland confidence that he had no personal affairs which could not be
abandoned to obey cryptic orders from the secretary of a boss he had
actually never seen. He felt a sort of self-contempt which it would have
been restful to forget in three-gravity sleep. But he grimaced and held
himself awake to contemplate the unpretty spectacle of himself and his
actions.

The red light said: "_Second stage ends ten seconds._"

And in ten seconds the rockets hiccoughed once more and were silent, and
there was that sickening feeling of free fall, but he grimly made
himself think of it as soaring upward instead of dropping--which was the
fact, too--and waited until the third-stage rockets boomed suddenly and
went on and on and on.