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a lifetime. The solution was the Coffins—the marvelous machine in which a man could slip into a sleep which was more than sleep while still on Earth, and awake years later in space, near his destination, subjectively only a month or so older. Without the Coffins there could be only divergence, possibly mutation. Humanity wanted to populate the stars—but with humanity.
    Tod and his five shipmates were hand-picked. They had superiorities—mechanical, mathematical, and artistic aptitudes. But they were not all completely superior. One does not populate a colony with leaders alone and expect it to live. They, like the rest of their cargo (machine designs, microfilms of music and art, technical and medical writings, novels and entertainment) were neither advanced nor extraordinary. Except for Teague, they were the tested median, the competent; they were basic blood for a mass, rather than an elite.
    Tod glanced around the blank walls and into the corner where a thin line delineated the sealed door. He ached to fling it open and skid across the corridor, punch the control which would slide away the armor which masked the port, and soak himself in his first glimpse of outer space. He had heard so much about it but he had never seen it—they had all been deep in their timeless sleep before the ship had blasted off.
    But he sighed and went instead to the Coffins.
    Alma’s was still closed, but there was sound and motion, in varying degrees, from all the others.
    He glanced first into April’s Coffin. She seemed to be asleep now. The needle-cluster and manipulators had withdrawn. Her skin glowed; it was alive and as unlike its former monochrome waxiness as it could be. He smiled briefly and went to look at Teague.
    Teague, too, was in real slumber. The fierce vertical line between his brows was shallow now, and the hard, deft hands lax and uncharacteristically purposeless. Tod had never seen him before without a focus for those narrow, blazing green eyes, without decisive spring and balance in his pose. It was good, somehow, to feel that for all his responsibilities, Teague could be as helpless as anyone.
    Tod smiled as he passed Alma’s closed Coffin. He always smiled at Alma when he saw her, when he heard her voice, when she crossed his thoughts. It was possible to be very brave around Alma, for gentleness and comfort were so ready that it was almost not necessary to call upon them. One could bear anything, knowing she was there.
    Tod crossed the chamber and looked at the last pair. Carl was a furious blur of motion, his needle-cluster swinging free, his manipulators in the final phase. He grunted instead of screaming, a series of implosive, startled gasps. His eyes were open but only the whites showed.
    Moira was quite relaxed, turned on her side, poured out on the floor of the Coffin like a long golden cat. She seemed in a contented abandonment of untroubled sleep.
    He heard a new sound and went back to April. She was sitting up, cross-legged, her head bowed apparently in deep concentration. Tod understood: he knew that sense of achievement and the dedication of an entire psyche to the proposition that these weak and trembling arms which hold one up shall not bend.
    He reached in and gently lifted the soft white hair away from her face. She raised the albino’s fathomless ruby eyes to him and whimpered.
    “Come on,” he said quietly. “We’re here.” When she did not move, he balanced on his stomach on the edge of the Coffin and put one hand between her shoulder-blades. “Come on.”
    She pitched forward but he caught her so that she stayed kneeling. He drew her up and forward and put her hands on the bar. “Hold tight, Ape,” he said. She did, while he lifted her thin body out of the Coffin and stood her on the top step. “Let go now. Lean on me.”
    Mechanically she obeyed, and he brought her down until she sat, as he had, on the bottom step. He punched the switch at her feet and put the capsules in her mouth