I suppose he noticed that when the colonel came out with his remarks about No women in Gilgamesh I was as surprised as any. Presently the three of us are issued with protective clothing; we just might have to venture out on the planet's surface and therefore we get white one-piece suits to protect against Cold, heat, moisture, dessication, radioactivity, and mosquitoes, and they are quite becoming, really. [Illustration] B and I drag out dressing for thirty minutes; then we just sit while Time crawls asymptotically towards the hour. Then the speaker calls us to go. We are out of the cabin before it says two words and racing for the hold; so that we are just in time to see a figure out of an Historical movie--padded, jointed, tin bowl for head and blank reflecting glass where the face should be--stepping through the air lock. The colonel and Mr. Yardo are there already. The colonel packs us into the hopper and personally closes the door, and for once I know what he is thinking; he is wishing he were not the only pilot in this ship who could possibly rely on bringing the ship off and on Mass-Time at one particular defined spot of Space. Then he leaves us; half an hour to go. The light in the hold begins to alter. Instead of being softly diffused it separates into sharp-edged beams, reflecting and crisscrossing but leaving cones of shadow between. The air is being pumped into store. Fifteen minutes. The hull vibrates and a hatch slides open in the floor so that the black of Space looks through; it closes again. Mr. Yardo lifts the hopper gently off its mounts and lets it back again. Testing; five minutes to go. I am hypnotized by my chronometer; the hands are crawling through glue; I am still staring at it when, at the exact second, we go off Mass-Time. No weight. I hook my heels under the seat and persuade my esophagus back into place. A new period of waiting has begun. Every so often comes the impression we are falling head-first; the colonel using ship's drive to decelerate the whole system. Then more free fall. The hopper drifts very slowly out into the hold and hovers over the hatch, and the lights go. There is only the glow from the visiscreen and the instrument board. One minute thirty seconds to go. The hatch slides open again. I take a deep breath. I am still holding it when the colonel's voice comes over the speaker: "Calling _Gilgamesh_. Calling the hopper. Good-by and Good luck. You're on your own." The ship is gone. Yet another stretch of time has been marked off for us. Thirty-seven minutes, the least time allowable if we are not to get overheated by friction with the air. Mr. Yardo is a good pilot; he is concentrating wholly on the visiscreen and the thermometer. B and I are free to look around. I see nothing and say so. I did not know or have forgotten that Incognita has many small satellites; from here there are four in sight. * * * * *