I couldn't sleep. I could relax a little, but I couldn't sleep.
I've been in space a long time.
Eleven years. And five years in training before that. I flew the third ship around the moon and the second to land on it. I flew one-sixth of the materials that built Ley, the first "stepping stone" satellite, and one-twentieth of those that went into Goddard, the second. I didn't bother keeping track of how much of Luna City got there in my ship. I flew the first and last ship around Venus, and brought back the report that settled that mystery—dust. Those were the old days; the days of two-couple crews and the old faithful Canfield class three-steppers—the "cans."
The days, too, of the satellite-hopping Von Brauns—each of which consisted of a Canfield crew can stuck on the end of a six-hundred-foot winged javelin with two dozen times the cargo space of a Canfield. The "super-cans."
Just four of us then; myself and Mary and Ted and Belle Leonard. Four who might just as well have been one.
Then Mars.
Not that we were ready for it; just that it was a financial necessity to the rest of the project, with Venus eliminated from the picture. Taxes kept us in space. The scientific value of Ley and Goddard and Luna City wasn't enough for the tax-paying public. They didn't want ice cream; they wanted a chocolate sundae, with all the trimmings. Apparently our public relations people couldn't tell them that the fact that we could get that far in eight years, without an accident, did not necessarily mean that we were in a position to shoot for Mars.
So we shot for Mars.
Ships were no problem, of course. A Canfield could have made it from Goddard to Mars and back, and wouldn't even have needed its third stage to do it.