"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.
So that did it. Trase cashed in his stock in Air-Lanes, bought a ship and they went to work on it. He couldn't get a first-rate crew because the news got around about what they were trying to do, and no self-respecting spaceman would have anything to do with it. But there were drifters to be had.
They blew off in the middle of the two-week moon night, the polyglot crew grazing the space-station dome, and setting off ten degrees off course, with Trase strapped in his bunk and drugged into unconsciousness, and Irinia cursing the crew in pure venom they had never heard before.