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her vision from the screen. "It was a mistake to come here," she said. "Let us go."
    "Why, I find it charming," the planetologist answered, surprised. "An escape from bare walls that we'll need years to make sightly."
    "No escape from that." Glassgold pointed at the screen. It happened at the moment to be scanning aft and so held an image of the sun, shrunken to the brightest of the stars.
    Chi-Yuen regarded her narrowly. The molecular biologist was likewise small and dark-haired, but her eyes were round and blue, her face round and pink, her body a trifle on the dumpy side. She dressed plainly whether working or not; and without snubbing social activities, she had hitherto been observer rather than participant.
    "In—how long?—a couple of weeks," she continued, "we have reached the marches of the Solar System. Every day—no, every twenty-four hours; 'day' and 'night' mean nothing any longer—each twenty-four hours we gain 845 kilometers per second in speed."
    "A shrimp like me is grateful to have full Earth weight," Chi-Yuen said with attempted lightness.
    "Don't misunderstand me," Glassgold replied hastily. "I won't scream, 'Turn back! Turn back!' " She tried a joke of her own. "That would be too disappointing to the psychologists who checked me out." The joke dissipated. "It is only ... I find I require time ... to get used, piece by piece, to this."

    Chi-Yuen nodded. She, in her newest and most colorful cheong-sam—among her hobbies was making over her clothes—could almost have belonged to a different species from Glassgold. But she patted the other woman's hand and said: "You are not unique, Emma. It was expected. People begin to realize with more than brains, in their whole beings, what it means to be on such a voyage."
    "You don't seem bothered."
    "No. Not since Earth disappeared in the sun glare. And not unbearably before. It hurt to say good-by. But I've had experience in that. One learns how to look forward."
    "I am ashamed," Glassgold said. "When I have had so much more than you. Or has that made me soft in the spirit?"
    "Have you really?" Chi-Yuen's question was muted.
    "Why . . . yes. Haven't I? Or don't you recall? My parents were always well-to-do. Father is an engineer in a desalinization plant, Mother an agronomist. The Negev is beautiful when the crops are growing and calm, friendly, not hectic like Tel Aviv or Haifa. Though I did enjoy studying at the university. I had chances to travel, with good companions. My work went fine. Yes, I was lucky."
    "Then why did you enlist for Beta Three?"
    "Scientific interest ... a whole new planetary evolution—"
    "No, Emma." The raven's wing tresses stirred as Chi-Yuen shook her head. "The earlier starships brought back data to keep research going for a hundred years, right on Earth. What are you running from?"
    Glassgold bit her lip. "I shouldn't have pried," Chi-Yuen apologized. "I was hoping to help."
    "I will tell you," Glassgold said. "I have a feeling you might indeed help. You are younger than me, but you have seen more." Her fingers knitted together in her lap. "I'm not quite sure, though, myself. How did the cities begin to seem vulgar and empty? And when I went home to visit my people, the countryside seemed snug and empty. I thought I might find ... a purpose? ... out here. I don't know. I applied for the berth on impulse. When I was called for serious testing, my parents made a fuss till I could not back down. And yet we were always a close family. It was such a pain leaving them. My big, confident father, he was suddenly little and old."
    "Was a man involved too?" Chi-Yuen asked. "I'll tell you, because it's no secret—he and I were engaged, and everything about this crew that was ever on public record went into the dossiers—there was for me."

    "A fellow student," Glassgold said humbly. "I loved him. I still do. He hardly knew I existed."
    "Not uncommon," Chi-Yuen answered. "One gets over it, or else turns it into a sickness. You're healthy in