In the murky atmosphere of the ship, Joe was sure his suit was leaking. He would have sworn he could smell the foul stuff the Neranians lived in.
Must be getting old, he thought. He remembered when he was a kid and his father had taken him through the first ships from out of the distant galaxies. He remembered the kind, ugly faces of those first visitors he'd met. But it was just as well that that kind of thrill didn't last forever, he supposed. Nobody could live all his life on the high emotional plane he enjoyed when he was a kid.
The ship glided out of the open doors of the hangar under the guidance of the ground crew. It was towed far out beyond the shops to the desert testing-stand field.
Joe watched the Neranians' handling of the ship with a critical eye. "I thought you people always used your mensa," he said abruptly.
The two at the control panel seemed to stiffen, he thought afterwards. They hesitated, then one spoke, "We are trying to get away from them. It is cumbersome to depend on them. We have been trying a surgical technique to enable us to do without them."
Joe grunted. It didn't look as if they had been very successful. They were clumsy in their manipulation of the controls.
"Head out at right angles to the plane of the ecliptic," he ordered. To his companions, he said, "You three go down and watch the engines. When the sub-cees get up to limit, I'll come back there and try to throw in the manuals on the super-cee."
The three men ducked awkwardly through the low corridors. The ship was designed with paragravity controls for horizontal walking instead of vertical climbing.
Fortunately, the Neranians were no more than a foot shorter than the Earthmen. Occasionally, there were ships in which it was impossible for a man to get about through the small openings that fitted the builders.
As the ship sped swiftly upward, Joe watched the indicators. As far as he could see, everything was functioning well.