There was nothing to hear except the droning murmur of unresting
electric fans, stirring the air ceaselessly so that excess moisture from
breathing could be extracted by the dehumidifiers. But for them--if the
air had been left stagnant--the journey would have been insupportable.

There was nothing to see, because ports opening on outer space were not
safe for passengers to look through. Mere humans, untrained to keep
their minds on technical matters, could break down at the spectacle of
the universe. There could be no activity.

Some of the passengers took dozy-pills. Cochrane did not. It was against
the law for dozy-pills to produce a sensation of euphoria, of
well-being. The law considered that pleasure might lead to addiction.
But if a pill merely made a person drowsy, so that he dozed for hours
halfway between sleeping and awake, no harm appeared to be done. Yet
there were plenty of dozy-pill addicts. Many people were not especially
anxious to feel good. They were quite satisfied not to feel anything at
all.

Cochrane couldn't take that way of escape. He lay strapped in his chair
and thought unhappily of many things. He came to feel unclean, as people
used to feel when they traveled for days on end on railroad trains.
There was no possibility of a bath. One could not even change clothes,
because baggage went separately to the moon in a robot freight-rocket,
which was faster and cheaper than a passenger transport, but would kill
anybody who tried to ride it. Fifteen-and twenty-gravity acceleration is
economical of fuel, and six-gravity is not, but nobody can live through
a twenty-gravity lift-off from Earth. So passengers stayed in the
clothes in which they entered the ship, and the only possible concession
to fastidiousness was the disposable underwear one could get and change