After his high expectations, it wasn't such a great thrill. Dick set the stops and dials, told him which button to press. "When I give the word, kid." Of course, he got to sit in the pilot's bucket-chair, which was something. Moira and Eleanor and Mom to lie down in acceleration hammocks while Pop and Dick sat in observation seats. He waited, all ears and nerves, as the slow seconds sloughed away. Pop set the hypos running; their faint, dull throb was a magic sound in the silence. Then there came a signal from outside. Dick's hand rose in understanding response; fell again. "Now!" * * * * * Bobby jabbed the button in frantic haste. Suddenly the silence was shattered by a thunderous detonation. There was a massive hand pressing him back into the soft, yielding leather of his chair; the chair retreated on oiled channels, pneumatic compensators hissing faintly, absorbing the shock. Across the room a faulty hammock-hinge squeaked rustily. Then it was over as quickly as it had begun, and he could breathe again, and Dick was lurching across the turret on feet that wobbled queerly because up was down and top was bottom and everything was funny and mixed up. Dick cut in the artificial gravs, checked the meter dials with a hurried glance, smiled. "Dead on it! Want to check, Skipper?" But Pop was standing by the observation pane, eyeing an Earth already ball-like in the vastness of space. Earth, dwindling with each passing moment. Bobby moved to his side and watched; Moira, too, and Eleanor and Mom, and even Dick. Pop touched Mom's hand. He said, "Martha--I'm not sure this is fair to you and the children. Perhaps it isn't right that I should force my dream on all of you. The world we have known and loved lies behind us. Before us lies only uncertainty...." Mom sort of sniffed and reached for a handkerchief. She turned her back to Pop for a minute, and when she turned around again her eyes were red and angry-looking. She said, "_You_ want to go on, don't you, Rob?" Pop nodded. "But I'm thinking of you, Martha." "Of me!" Mom snorted indignantly. "Hear him talk! I never heard such nonsense in my life. Of _course_ I want to go on. No, never mind that! Richard, isn't there a kitchen on this boat?" "A galley, Mom. Below." "Galley ... kitchen ... what's the difference? You two girls come with me. I'll warrant these men are starving. _I_ am!" * * * * * After that, things became so normal as to be almost disappointing. From his eager reading of such magazines as _Martian Tales_ and _Cosmic Fiction Weekly_, Bobby had conceived void-travel to be one long, momentous chain of adventure. A super-thrilling serial, punctuated by interludes with space-pirates, narrow brushes with meteors, sabotage, treachery--hair-raising, heroic and horrifying.