Filled with remorse, he left his desk-chair and walked stoop-shouldered under the low ceiling. At the trapdoor, he opened the combination on the inside lock handle and pushed upward. It wouldn't open. He tried again, but it wasn't the lock that was stuck. They must have slid something heavy over the hatch, something he couldn't move. He tried calling to them, but his voice was lost in the insulative metal of the deck. Finally he sat down, conserving his strength for a final onslaught. If he couldn't open the hatch, he realized vividly it would be not only his failure, but the failure of the human race. But maybe it did not have to be so. Maybe the differences in the others weren't biological--maybe they were environmental. And with that thought, he made his way through the narrow passageway and reversed his deed of eleven years past. He turned the mecs back on. Returning to the hatch, he reworked the combination to make sure it was not the lock that held him. He pushed upward with all his strength, steadily with increasing pressure, until the beads of perspiration turned into gulleys that streamed down his face. Exhausted, he crawled back to his chair and lay across the desk littered with calculations of a landing he would never make. The soft luminescence from the _Destiny's_ nuclear engines crept forward and caressed him. * * * * * In the aft recroom, Eve and Mary were admiring Joseph's strength in being able to push the heavy couch over Adam's trapdoor. Three wall panels lit red. All the mecs appeared together. "It's time for your science lesson," one said. "But where is Adam?" "He's in the trapdoor," they answered flatly. The panel turned green, reserving its redness for the delinquent Adam when he would choose to appear. Mecteacher began, "Now about the Solar System...." But the cousins didn't listen. Joseph had turned the gravity switch off and they were too busy floating upended, trying new positions, laughing at each other's ridiculous postures in the ship without bottom. The game was not a new one, but it was newly discovered and they reveled in its glories. Month after month, they played their weightless games while the mecs implored them to come down. The constellations shifted in the visiports. New Sol grew larger and then smaller as the _Destiny_ sped toward its unseen planet. In the recroom, the mecvoices were only noises to the trio now, annoying noises that could be silenced, they discovered, with forceful kicks to the red-glowing panels. When all the mecscreens had been smashed and the weightless games grew boring, Mary looked out the sunroom port. She was surprised to see a rust-yellow sphere hanging in the sky. She watched it seriously for a time, frowning as it grew bigger and filled a third of her horizon. Then she called Eve and Joseph.