It got Trase to thinking. Hadn't there been something about a doctor, or an operation ... maybe now he had the money to pay. He went back to see the space doctor who told him that, and found that he was dead. He asked other doctors and they told him that it was a bunch of foolishness, that they had never known of a successful operation of that type, that the only thing to remember was the phrase, "Spacemen are born--not made." Trase got kind of tired of hearing it, but no doctor would risk his reputation on the operation. So that was that. * * * * * Trase and Irinia talked it over; that is, as much as they could with their throats kind of choked up, and they decided the only thing they could do was to forget each other. Irinia could never be happy living in gravity. So she went off to space again, and Trase just sat back at his great carved oaken desk, looked out his lucite port, and pondered. Oh, that Trase was a thinker, and his thinking got faster and faster as the days went by, and sometimes again he began to be seen on an earth-time afternoon down on the flight line, watching the ships come in and out. It was a place he hadn't frequented in years. By the time Irinia got back on her trip from Deimos, his face was hard--hard as the thought that was in his mind. He called Irinia to come to his office. She didn't want to, because they had vowed never to speak again, but somehow, from the tone of the note, she had to come. "O.K., veepee," she cracked, a frozen, bitter, mask of a smile on her lips, "What've I done now?" Trase said, "I'm going to space." Irinia's face went white for a minute, but she knew her Trase--and she knew argument was no good. "Where?" she whispered. "Saturn," Trase replied. "Oh, no!" cried Irinia. "Not Saturn! It's the worst of them all." "I know it is," Trase said. "That's the reason I want to go." "You'll never come back alive," whispered Irinia. "If the sickness doesn't get you, the rings will." "Maybeso, Irinia. But I need your help. I've got plans and I need you. If I make this trip, maybe I can make others. Maybe ... maybe I can prove that spacemen _can_ be made. But if I can't make it without sickness, I promise you I'll never bother you or ask anything of you again." "But what are your plans, Trase?" "Drugs, first, Irinia. Progressive slackening off, and attempted self-induced hypnotism. Small artificial gravity unity, enough to create about a tenth of earth gravity. I think I can do it, Irinia." "But it's all been tried before, Trase, and it's never worked! You know that--it's deeply psychological as well as physical. You can't do it simply by wanting it!" Trase looked long and hard at her. His smile was almost ghastly. "Life is worth nothing to me unless I try it, Irinia," he said quietly.