Why only 300,000 tons back aft? Was it to lighten the maximum load for takeoff? Say, why wasn’t this brought to his attention earlier? While he was rummaging through the files in search of something, he became so distracted that he completely forgot about the ship’s past history; the moment he laid eyes on the dismantled chronometer, however, he winced in recollection. A second later he found what he was after: a little slip of paper on which it was noted that the last hold—the one abutting on the reactor chamber—was stocked with forty-eight crates of what was generally described as “food perishables.” Why in the hold with the worst ventilation? he wondered. Didn’t they care about the spoilage?

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in!” he hollered, hurriedly gathering up the papers scattered on the desktop and stuffing them back into their folders. Two men entered but ventured no farther than the doorway.

“Boman, nuclear engineer.”

“Sims, engineer-electrician.”

Pirx got up from his desk. Sims was a young, lean man with squirrelish features, a nervous cough, and flickering eyes. One glance at Boman was enough for Pirx to know that he was dealing with a space veteran. His sunburned face had that peculiar orangish tint that comes from prolonged exposure to cosmic radiation. He barely came up to Pirx’s shoulder (ever since he had begun flying, Pirx had been accustomed to counting every kilo aboard ship). His face, in contrast to his scrawny build, was puffy, bloated, and there were dark bags under his eyes—the mark of a man who’s been tested many times over the years. He had a drooping lower lip.

“You’ll be looking like that yourself, one day”—it crossed Pirx’s mind as he went to greet them with outstretched hand.

Hell began at 0900 hours. The launch site was the scene