"One point _zero_ gravities," Jones put in. "Over the long pull--and the women--you're right," Deston agreed, and took out his slide rule. "Let's see ... one gravity, plus and minus ... velocity ... time ... it'll take about eleven months?" "Just about," Jones agreed, and Adams nodded. "Well, if that's what the cards say, there's no use yowling about it," and all nine survivors went to work. Deston, besides working, directed the activities of all the others except Adams; who worked harder and longer than did anyone else. He barely took time out to eat and to sleep. Nor did either Deston or Jones ask him what he was doing. Both knew that it would take five years of advanced study before either of them could understand the simplest material on the doctor's tapes. III. The tremendous engines of the _Procyon_ were again putting out their wonted torrents of power. The starship, now a mere spaceship, was on course at one gravity. The lifecraft were in their slots, but the five and the four still lived in them rather than in the vast and oppressive emptiness that the ship itself now was. And socially, outside of working hours, the two groups did not mix. Clean-up was going nicely, at the union rate of six hours on and eighteen hours off. Deston could have set any hours he pleased, but he didn't. There was plenty of time. Eleven months in deep space is a fearfully, a tremendously long time. "Morning," "afternoon," "evening," and "night" were, of course, purely conventional terms. The twenty-four-hour "day" measured off by the brute-force machine that was their masterclock carried no guarantee, expressed or implied, as to either accuracy or uniformity. One evening, then, four hard-faced men sat at two small tables in the main room of Lifecraft Three. Two of them, Ferdy Blaine and Moose Mordan, were playing cards for small stakes. Ferdy was of medium size; compact rather than slender; built of rawhide and spring steel. Lithe and poised, he was the epitome of leashed and controlled action. Moose was six-feet-four and weighed a good two-forty--stolid, massive, solid. Ferdy and Moose; a tiger and an elephant; both owned _in fee simple_ by Vincent Lopresto. The two at the other table had been planning for days. They had had many vitriolic arguments, but neither had made any motion toward his weapon. "Play it my way and we've got it made, I tell you!" Newman pounded the table with his fist. "Seventy _million_ if it's a cent! Heavier grease than your lousy spig Syndicate ever even _heard_ of! I'm as good an astrogator as Jones is, and a damn sight better engineer. In electronics I maybe ain't got the theory Pretty Boy has, but at building and repairing the stuff I've forgot more than he ever will know. At _practical_ stuff, and that's all we give a whoop about, I lay over both them sissies like a Lunar dome." "Oh, yeah?" Lopresto sneered. "How come you aren't ticketed for subspace, then?"