makeshift thing that was the best the human race could do."

"The man you spoke of," Sherwood said. "The one who was about to die...."

"He is part of me," said the Ship. "If you must think of him as a separate entity, he, then, is talking to you. For when I say 'I', I mean both of us, for we've become as one."

"I don't get it," Sherwood told the Ship, feeling the panic coming back again.

"He built me, long ago, as a ship which would respond, not to the pushing of a lever or the pressing of a button, but to the mental commands of the man who drove me. I was to become, in effect, an extension of that man. There was a helmet that the man would wear and he'd think into the helmet."

"I understand," said Sherwood.

"He'd think into the helmet and I was so programmed that I'd obey his thoughts. I became, in effect, a man, and the man became in effect the ship he operated."

"Nice deal," Sherwood said enthusiastically, never being one upon whom the niceties of certain advantages were ever lost.

"He finished me and he was about to die and it was a pity that such a one should die—one who had worked so hard to do what he had done. Who'd given up so much. Who never had seen space. Who had gone nowhere."

"No," said Sherwood, in revulsion, knowing what was coming. "No, he'd not done that."

"It was a kindness," said the ship. "It was what he wanted. He managed it himself. He simply gave up his body. His body was a worthless hulk that was about to die. The modifications to accommodate a human brain rather than a human skull were quite elementary. And he has been happy. We have both of us been happy."

Sherwood stood without saying anything. In the silence he was listening for some sound, for any kind of tiny rattle or hum, for anything at all to tell him the ship was operating. But there was no sound and no sense of motion of any sort.

"Happy," he said. "Where would you have found happiness? What's the point of all this?"

"That," the Ship said solemnly, "is a bit hard to explain."

Sherwood stood and thought about it—the endless voyaging through space without a body—with all the desires, all the advantages, all the capabilities of a body gone 

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