But Lance fought the nausea, fought the sickness, and gradually as his flesh accommodated to the change, he felt better. It was then that the most disturbing phenomenon of all took place. He felt for a moment as if he had been split into two persons. No, four persons, eight, sixteen, an infinity of other selves. They were all beside him, in him and out of him. His eyes ached. He shut them. When he opened them again, everything was almost back to normal. The other selves had vanished. Only the constant throbbing vibration of the ship remained; yet it was a discomfort that had to be endured for four solid straight weeks now. There was no other means known, by which a man-made vessel could travel faster than light. Funny about that four weeks, too, thought Lance. All distances in hyperspace were the same, no matter where you wished to go; it required no more than fourteen days and no less, regardless of whether you jumped one light-year or fifty. Lance had always understood there were equations on file at HQ, which explained the paradox. But not being a math expert, he had never missed not being allowed to see them. He flicked a switch and opened up his viewports again. The starry universe had vanished. The _Cosmos XII_ was riding through a gray void. Alone and-- No, it wasn't alone! Again, Lance's vision suffered a wrenching sickness. Out there in the colorless vacuum, hundreds of replicas of the _Cosmos XII_ rode along beside him, above him, below him, stretched out in all directions. There had been nothing in the manuals about this. Lance stared at the meaningless phenomenon for a long time despite the fact it made his brain ill. At last, he decided it was harmless, whatever was causing it. He shook his head slowly and closed the ports down. He hoped Groombridge 34 would be less taxing. * * * * * The system was. After the ship reverted to normal space in the vicinity of Groombridge 34, Lance hovered about it exactly twelve hours, following all the instructions in his manual to the letter. He started up the cameras and other recording instruments. All went well, there were no incidents, no vessels disturbed him; though had the two components of the binary been at periastron, it would have simplified the work with the position micrometer. If anything else of interest had been detected, it would have to be deciphered from the film and tapes later. You can get as close as four billion miles to an Earth-sized planet in space--and it'll still show up fainter than a fourteenth magnitude star. Somewhere in the galaxy, Lance supposed, there must be other races building spaceships and guiding them from sun to sun. But thus far, the scout ships from Terra--for all their magnified caution--had never run into signs of any. The old veteran hype-pilots had the best philosophy after all. Earth was the choicest hunk of mud you were going to find. _Enjoy it, brethren._