And that, essentially, was the way the trip went. Irinia never weakened and by the time they were two months out she had the crew almost to a state of discipline.
Of course, drugs had been tried before—they were the method used to transport non-space-born passengers between the Earth and the moon. Irinia fed Trase intravenously. At the end of the two months she turned on the puny artificial gravity system and let him come awake.
His first words were, "Where's Saturn?"
"O, Trase, we haven't even got well started yet," Irinia cried.
Trase came awake. He tried to sit up in his bunk, and fell out lightly on the floor with his whole insides heaving. Irinia dosed him up again and toyed with the idea of turning back. But Trase was in good health, so she decided to go on. At the end of the third month, Trase found that he could lie flat on his back in his bunk with eyes blindfolded, and with no movement at all. This way he could stay awake at stated intervals, as long as there was no change in course or velocity.
Oh, the beauty of open space! Though he couldn't get out of his bunk to see it, Trase knew that they were way out in the middle of nowhere, and Irinia would come around to tell him about it.
The time passed, and then Saturn began gradually to fill the screen of the ship's vision-plate, and Irinia began to worry. For to shoot the rings required plenty of deft acceleration and deceleration, and Irinia knew that Trase couldn't stand the maneuvering.
"How about just a look at Saturn from a distance, Trase?" Irinia would ask.
"We've got to shoot the rings," he would reply grimly.