Jim grinned broadly. “Just because I loved it. I loved to go aboard space ships and pretend I was a real passenger. I’ve wanted to go into space ever since I knew there was such a thing. It seems now as though I’m in a wonderful dream and that all this is not really true at all!”
A pause followed, as Jim looked at Babe. “You’ve never told me anything about yourself.”
Babe shrugged. “There’s not much to tell. I’m thirty-two, unmarried. Been going into space since I was seventeen. Like you, I have space in my blood, and I hope I’ll be rocketing until I’m eighty.”
Jim had a multitude of services to do for his patrons before the end of the trip. He had a half dozen mild cases of “collision,” resulting from tourists’ carelessly bumping into the walls of their compartments, not realizing their increased powers in “free fall.” On another occasion a traveler had failed to hitch onto a wall ring during a nap and had floated down the corridor half the length of the ship. A child had a minor case of radiation burn when he wandered into a restricted compartment next to the atomic reactor.
The trip was nearly over in a few weeks’ time, for the Hercules was traveling the way of the straight line and crossing the orbits of the other planets. The day of landing, Jim and Babe looked out of the port in their compartment at a pearly mist. The sensation of weight had returned with the cutting in of the rocket motors.
“How long before we touch down?” Jim asked.
“Several hours yet,” Babe replied. “We’ve got to circle the planet several times to brake our speed. If we were to go straight down through this pea soup, the friction would turn us red hot.”
Jim was glad when they were dropping at respectable speed directly down. The landing, moments later, in the colony space harbor was made safely.
After Jim and Babe had made their rounds readying the passengers for debarkation, a voice came over the wall microphone:
“Steward Al Hogan, report to Captain Coppard’s suite right away.”