He heard them coming aboard. He lay still on the acceleration couch, his eyes closed, pretending to be asleep, but his ears strained for the familiar sounds, and he heard the crane moving up the side of the ship, and the people coming aboard. There was little talking. They moved quietly, and they paid practically no attention to him. He felt sure that they knew he was awake, but they came aboard, and took their places, and began to strap themselves in without a word. The girl with the black hair was gone. She had work to do, back on Earth--the same work she had done with him, another flounderer to bring in, perhaps in a slightly different fashion, but essentially the same. And someday she, too, would be on the way out-- He waited in silence, and he could not have put into words the thoughts that flooded his mind. He waited, and his body grew tight; he heard the sounds coming from below, an occasional shout, the screeching of machinery, the hiss of airlocks closing. And then the ship was silent. Still he waited-- A whir started, somewhere in the depths of the ship. It grew to a growl, then to a roar. In a peal of thunder he felt himself crushed to the cot, felt his eyelids pressed tight over his eyes, felt his face muscles sag under the crush of the powerful acceleration, and he knew the ship was rising in earnest this time. A thought crossed his mind as he sank into the blackness of the deep-sleep that would carry him through the acceleration. He would have smiled, if he could have. They'd told him the truth. A Free Agent could go anywhere he wanted to go-- Even to the stars. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sixty-Year Extension, by Alan E. Nourse