G.B.S.—Mark V “Charlie! Where you going?” Members of the rocket crew, passing, called. Charles Willis did not answer. He took the vacuum tube down through the friendly humming bowels of the spaceship. He fell, thinking: This is the grand hour. “Chuck! Where traveling?” someone called. To meet someone dead but alive, cold but warm, forever untouchable but reaching out somehow to touch. “Idiot! Fool!” The voice echoed. He smiled. Then he saw Clive, his best friend, drifting up in the opposite chute. He averted his gaze, but Clive sang out through his seashell ear-pack radio: “I want to see you!” “Later!” Willis said. “I know where you’re going. Stupid!” And Clive was gone up away while Willis fell softly down, his hands trembling. His boots touched surface. On the instant he suffered renewed delight. He walked down through the hidden machineries of the rocket. Lord, he thought, crazy. Here we are one hundred days gone away from the Earth in Space, and, this very hour, most of the crew, in fever, dialing their aphrodisiac animatronic devices that touched and hummed to them in their shut clamshell beds.
