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"The sensation of weightlessness you now experience," said the voice soothingly, "is natural at this stage of your flight. The ship has attained its maximum intended speed and is still rising to meet the space platform. You may consider that we have left atmosphere and its limitations behind. Now we have spread sails of inertia and glide on a wind of pure momentum toward our destination.
During three of its revolutions anybody on the ground, anywhere, could spot it in daylight as an infinitesimal star, bright enough to be seen against the sky's blueness, rising in the west and floating eastward to set at the place of sunrise. There was again weightlessness. A rocket-ship doesn't burn its rocket-engines all the time.
The ship drifted with all the queasy sensation of no-weight and lifted again, and then there was a fairly long period of weightlessness. At such times Holden would be greenish and sick and tormented by space-sickness. Which might be good for him at this particular time. For a long time, it seemed, there were alternating periods of lift and free fall, which in themselves were disturbing.
There was a vast silence, and weightlessness. Cochrane weighed nothing. This was free flight again like practically all of the ninety-odd hours from the space platform to the moon. The pilot left the controls and in an accustomed fashion soared to a port on the opposite side of the room. He gazed out, and then behind, and said in a tone of astonished satisfaction: "This is good! There's the sun!"
Joe knew, with private amusement, that Brown must have worked hard to get a dignified stance in weightlessness. "Mr. Kenmore," said Brown suddenly. "Have you been assigned a definite rank as yet?" "Not that I know of," said Joe without interest. "I skipper the ship I just brought up. But " "Your ship has no rating!" protested Brown irritably.
He wound up in a remarkably foolish position with the back of his neck on the back of the chair, his arms in a highly strained position to hold him there, and his feet touching the deck of the cabin a good five feet away. Haney looked greenish, but he said hoarsely: "Joe, don't make me laugh not when my stomach feels like this!" The feeling of weightlessness was unexpectedly daunting.
"You're welcome to it." Breckenridge shrugged and turned the conversation into a lighter vein. "Speaking of weightlessness, it's funny how many weight-fiends there are in the world, isn't it? You'd think the passengers would enjoy a little weightlessness occasionally especially the fat ones but they don't. But say, while I think of it, how come you were here and loose to make this check-up?
But though they spent much time taking photographs of the planets and of the moon, and in making spectrum analyses of the sun, time passed very slowly. Day after day they saw measured on the clocks, but they stayed awake, finding they needed little sleep, for they wasted no physical energy. Their weightlessness eliminated fatigue.
At this moment the entire fabric of the space-ship moved slightly. There was no sound of rockets. The ship seemed to turn a little, but that was all. No gravity. No acceleration. It was a singularly uncomfortable sensation, on top of the discomfort of weightlessness. Cochrane said sardonically: "If you can't take my word that I'm alive, I'll try to get you some proof! Hm.
Then Frank jumped for his own drum, and found himself turning slowly end-over-end, seeing first the pearl-mist curve that was the Earth, then the brown-black, chalk-smeared sky, with the bright needle points and the corona-winged sun in it. Instinct made him grab futilely outward, for the sense of weightlessness was the same as endless fall.
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