Sitting rigid in the tense stillness of a rocket ship that was about to leap from Earth, Marcia started as an officer ducked his head into the passenger compartment from the pilot room's deep glow. But it wasn't Jack. The officer's lips moved hurriedly as he counted over the seats. He ducked back out of sight. From the bulk-heads, the overhead, everywhere, came a deep, quiet rumble. Some of the passengers looked anxious, some excited, and some just leafed casually through magazines.
Now the brown-clad Miss Eagen was speaking from the head of the aisle.
"Those of you who haven't been in a rocket before won't find it much different from being in an airplane. At the same time—" She paused, quiet brown eyes solemn. "What you are about to experience is something that will make you proud to belong to the human race."
That again! thought Marcia furiously; and then all emotion left her but cold, ravening fear as the rumble heightened. She tried to close her eyes, her ears against it, but her mind wouldn't respond. She squirmed in her chair and found herself staring down at the field. It looked the way she felt—flat and pale and devoid of life, with a monstrous structure of terror squatting in it. The scene was abruptly splashed with a rushing sheet of flame that darkened the daytime sky. Then it was torn from her vision.
It was snatched away—the buildings, the trees, the roads surrounding the field seemed to pour in upon it, shrinking as they ran together. Roads dried up like parched rivers, thinning and vanishing into the circle of her horrified vision. A great, soft, uniform weight pressed her down and back; she fought it, but it was too big and too soft.
Now Earth's surface was vague and Sun-splashed. Marcia's sense of loss tore at her. She put up her hands, heavily, and pressed the glass as if she could push it out, push herself out, go back, back to Earth and solidity. Clouds shot by like bullets, fell away until they were snowflakes roiling in violet haze. Then, in the purling universe that had grown around the ship, Earth was a mystic circle, a shallow dish floating darkly and heavily below.
"We are now," said Miss Eagen's calm voice, "thirty-seven miles over Los Angeles."
After that, there was scarcely room for thought—even for fear, though it lurked nearby, ready to leap. There was the ascent, the quiet, sleeplike ascent into space. Marcia very nearly forgot to breathe. She had been prepared for almost anything except this quality of peace and awe.