said that everything was right. The tinny voice behind his head, its
timbre changed by the weighting of its diaphragm, said: "_All readings
check within accuracy of instruments. Good work!_"

Joe moved his eyes to a quartz window. The sky was black. But there were
stars. Bright stars against a black background. At the same instant he
saw the bright white disks of sunshine that came in the cabin portholes.
Stars and sunshine together. And the sunshine was the sunshine of
space. Even with the polarizers cutting off some of the glare it was
unbearably bright and hot beyond conception. He smelled overheated
paint, where the sunlight smote on a metal bulkhead. Stars and super-hot
sunshine together....

It was necessary to pant for breath, and his heart pounded horribly and
his eyes tried to go out of focus, but Joe Kenmore strained in his
acceleration-chair and managed to laugh a little.

"We did it!" he panted. "In case you didn't notice, we're out of--the
atmosphere and--out in space! We're--headed to join the Space Platform!"




2


The pressure of three gravities continued. Joe's chest muscles ached
with the exertion of breathing over so long a period. Six gravities for
fourteen seconds had been a ghastly ordeal. Three gravities for minutes
built up to something nearly as bad. Joe's heart began to feel fatigue,